Close Quarters Shotgun Technique

a couple of weekends ago I got to take a two-day shotgun class from 360 performance shooting taught by Ashton ray and Tim Chandler it was a phenomenal class and you will be hearing more from me about that in the near future for now I want to talk about just one of the topics covered it's a technique that I have seen in most shotgun classes I've been to but we got to spend a little more time on it than usual it's a technique for using a shotgun in close quarters called short stocking or some people call it short sticking the modern version of the short stocking technique was developed and popularized several years ago by Rob hot I took his shotgun class last year and he also happened to be in the 360 shotgun class the other day as a student short stocking has been taught and widely used by law enforcement for the last three decades or so it works great for SWAT teams and clearing buildings and that kind of thing but it could also be a really useful technique for the armed citizen who keeps the shotgun at home for personal protection it's an easy technique to learn but difficult to master especially the correct application of it I certainly haven't mastered the use of this technique but I wanted to share it because a lot of people seem to think that you have to have a registered short barreled shotgun or some kind of stockless shotgun in order to make good use of a shotgun in tight quarters fortunately that is not the case inside the home the shotgun really does shine in a sit and wait kind of role if you need to actually go searching around the house a handgun is probably better for most people and really if you think there might be a violent criminal inside your home going out to look for them by yourself is one of the most dangerous things you can do but sometimes you don't have any choice and a shotgun might be what you've got available the typical shotgun that's set up for home defense like this vanila Remington 870 has an 18 inch barrel and a stock that's about two inches too long if we use a typical high ready stance like this where you'd melt like that or a low ready where you come from here this can be kind of cumbersome like if you need to go up and down stairs or move through tight hallways or search around and behind furniture stuff like that your movement is going to be restricted unless you completely dismount the gun and then from here it's gonna be really slow to get it back into action if you suddenly find the person you're looking for we also don't really want the end of the barrel sticking out past every corner or doorway to announce our approach so with short stocking we can essentially shorten the overall length of the shotgun so that we have basically the same profile as if we were using a handgun so all we're gonna do is rotate the gun 90 degrees and then place the flat of the stock on top of the shoulder like that and now if I go from low ready here I can move around something if I need to I can come up to shoot it's a much shorter arc than if I were coming from all the way down here and on top of my shoulder the stock is still useful as a third point of contact it's gonna help me index the gun and keep it pointed generally where I need the rounds to go if my space opens back up I can easily bring the gun back to a shoulder mount and use it like I normally would if I need to fire from the short stocking position I just bring the muzzle up I get a really good push pull going that's another rob hot technique that's critical for any kind of shotgun shooting you push forward on the fore end and then pull back with the firing hand so then I would come up push pull and fire so even though I don't have the mass of my upper body behind the gun to help control the recoil the way I normally would with a good push pull I'm still able to manage that recoil and I can get it back on target for a follow-up shot if necessary here is Rob hot himself demoing the technique last year in his class obviously he has a much better mastery of it than I do notice his shoulder and elbow are more relaxed than mine were and just before he fires he pushes the gun out a little to accentuate that push pull effect I'm gonna run that again in slow motion and you can see the gun is still recoiling the stock is moving back a little bit when he fires but because he has such a strong push pull he's always in complete control of that gun you should be careful though when you try this for the first time especially if you have a rear sight or an optic or something on top of the receiver you really don't want to smack yourself in the face with that make sure you understand the push-pull technique before you try short stocking if you do it correctly it works really well even for someone my size it is easier if you're bigger but you don't have to be 200 pounds to use this technique you might have some trouble if you are using a shotgun that has a buttstock with a pistol grip it's doable but I've seen people in a couple of classes have some issues with that when Rob hot teaches this technique he has you keep the support hand and wrist in the normal orientation so when you rotate the gun the thumb ends up around the barrel like this I think that probably gives you a little bit better control on the push pull when you need to run action if you've got a pump gun you would just open the thumb like that and run it that way and then thumb goes back over the only issue is that if you practice this for several rounds the barrel is going to get really hot and if you notice in these clips I have of Rob demoing the technique he is wearing a glove on his left hand for that reason I don't usually have gloves with me at the range so I've just gotten used to rotating my wrists and my thumb is on the four in like that and not on the barrel and that seems to work okay either way I think running the action on a pump gun without the stock in my shoulder is actually more difficult than managing the recoil without the stock on my shoulder it's always it always feels kind of clumsy so with a semi-auto it's much easier especially with a gun like the beretta 1301 that already has pretty light recoil for a 12-gauge obviously when the gun is rotated we lose our sighting system whether that's a simple bead like this one or a red dot or whatever that probably isn't a huge deal since we are talking about super close quarters where we think the threat may be within a couple of feet but if we come around a corner and there's a guy across the room or down the hallway we might need to actually aim because remember we're not point shooting at clays or birds up in the air with a 20 foot wide cloud of bersia we've probably got buckshot in this gun and at typical indoor ranges the spread is only going to be somewhere between the size of a golf ball and a basketball so not only do I need to aim in order to hit the target I also need to aim because every pellet that doesn't hit the target is gonna hit something else and we are accountable for that so from here we can use the end of the barrel as kind of a course aiming reference but the gun is a good 5 or 6 inches lower than where it would be normally with a normal cheek weld so we have to compensate for that if you just put the muzzle on the target and fire the shots gonna go high at about 15 or 20 feet it could be a foot high or more so you might have to aim for the waist line or the gut in order to get a high center chest hit this is something you just have to experiment with to find out what point of aim works best for you and your gun in your ammo also make sure the muzzle is pointing straight forward if I'm not careful I have a tendency to let the stock kind of drift away from my head and that cants the muzzle to the left and when you sight down the barrel you can tell if it's way off like that so try to keep it centered up this short stocking technique is not the only way to compensate for using a long gun in tight quarters there are a lot of other options Craig Douglas showed us a high ready version in his armed movement in structures class last year and it looked like it would be pretty effective I've also seen techniques where it's almost like hip firing but you've got the buttstock indexed against the side of your body so there's not just one correct way to do this it's really context dependent and it takes a lot of training and practice to understand the best application of these techniques if you watch guys like Rob and Craig who have years of experience moving around inside buildings with long guns they can just fluidly transition from one to the next depending on the circumstances if you want to get some in-person training with these and other shotguns specific techniques 360 performance has another shotgun class coming up on September 21st in Virginia and Rob hot has a two-day course on October 19th and 20th in Arizona I highly recommend either one of those and I will leave some links below with more details you're training in a class with one of those guys or out at the range by yourself you can always get all the shotgun shells you need from us with lightning fast shipping at lucky gunner calm [Music] [Music] you

Channel: Lucky Gunner Ammo

Views: 907,434

Rating: 4.9115744 out of 5

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Id: PCqJIW4_K7s

Length: 9min 23sec (563 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 15 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/cqbteam]

Short-stocking isn't just for these types of shotguns. Marines in Fallujah with M16A4s did it quite frequently during room clearing.