How To Use A Pump-Action Shotgun

hey guys i am chris baker from lucky gunnar dot-com i recently posted a couple of in-depth videos all about buckshot i was planning to move on to other topics not shotgun related but recent events have led to a lot of people becoming first-time gun owners so i thought this would be a good time to revisit our shooting 101 series this was a series i did a couple of years ago where I covered the absolute basics of how to use different types of firearms I covered revolvers semi-automatic pistols and ar-15 and today I'm going to talk about how to use a pump-action shotgun I have done many videos about shotguns and a lot of what I'm about to cover is gonna be familiar terra-tory if you've been following us for a while I wanted to put all of that stuff in one place specifically for the brand-new first-time shotgun owner if you or someone you know just got your first shotgun and you feel like you don't know what you're doing this video is for you now I can't teach you how to be an expert shot gunner in just a few minutes and I don't want anyone to think that a video can take the place of real in-person training from a qualified instructor however this should get you going in the right direction so you at least know the basics of how the gun works and how to handle it safely I'll go ahead and warn you now this is probably gonna end up being the longest video I've ever posted there's a lot of ground to cover here and I don't want to split it up into multiple videos depending on what platform you're watching this on I will try to provide timecode shortcuts to the various parts of the video we're going to start off with some safety guidelines and then a quick overview of shotgun ammo then we'll go over loading and unloading the shotgun and finally firing the shotgun which will mostly be focused on recoil management and efficiently running the action before we get into the shotgun specifics we need to start out with a couple of basic guidelines for safety and safe is a relative term anything we do with firearms is inherently dangerous every time you pick up a gun you are making life-and-death decisions fortunately we can mitigate a lot of that risk by following the four basic rules of safe gun handling there are different ways to phrase these rules but here is my summary number one treat guns the same way you would treat a loaded gun you cannot ignore the other three rules just because you believe a gun is unloaded number two always keep the gun pointed in a safe direction that means if it were to fire it's not gonna hurt anyone and it's not going to damage anything that you cannot afford to replace at the range that generally means pointing the gun either at the target or at the ground in front of the firing line at home you should really only handle the gun in a designated area or you've got a safe backstop number three keep your finger away from the trigger until you are ready to shoot something that's pretty straightforward but that is the one people seem to have the most trouble remembering any time we're gripping the shotgun but we're not actively aiming at a target and preparing to fire we will have our trigger finger straight and glued to the side of the receiver we don't just want our finger off the trigger we want it as far away from the trigger as we can reasonably get it if you're left-handed and you you've got a sidesaddle on your shotgun like this one you will have to adjust that technique just get the finger as up as high as you can or some people will wrap their finger around the bottom of the trigger guard or even put it down here you might want to consider using one of the shorter side settle that only has four shells in it so you have an empty space here to put your finger any way you do it just make sure you have a resting place that your finger calls home that is not on the trigger number four no what you are shooting at and what is around it and behind it that goes for the shooting range or anywhere else you might need to use your gun this is especially important with shotguns because we are not usually firing a single projectile that travels in a straight line we are firing many pellets that gradually spread out the farther away they traveled we are morally and legally accountable for every pellet that leaves the shotgun we never fire the shotgun unless we are sure of where those pellets are gonna end up that means we have to aim the shotgun and it also means that a home defense shotgun should probably have some kind of bright light on it like this one so that we can be sure of our target when it's dark there's a lot more to using a gun safely than just these four rules but if you follow you will greatly reduce your chance of unintentionally hurting yourself or someone else there are multiple ways to do just about everything I am about to show you these are not necessarily the correct or only methods for handling and operating at pump-action shotgun and the way you use the gun is probably gonna change depending on the context I am approaching this from the perspective of self-defense some of what I'm going to show you will still be relevant if you're using the shotgun for hunting birds or shooting clays but some of it won't my demo shotgun here is a Remington 870 it is probably the most common type of pump-action shotgun on the market followed closely by the Mossberg 500 and 590 series some of the basic controls and techniques are a little different on the Mossberg so I will demo those with this gun here this is a Mossberg shock wave it's basically a Mossberg 590 with a bird's head grip in place of the shoulder stock I don't necessarily recommend the stockless style shotguns like the shock wave or the Remington TAC 14 especially for beginners but they are really popular so in addition to showing you the Mossberg controls this will give me the chance to demo a couple of shooting techniques that are unique to the stockless shotguns i'll be covering that at the very end of the video if you are new to all of this I don't think you need to get too bogged down with trying to remember what every little part on the shotgun is called but you do need to know a few of the major ones just so you can understand what I'm talking about when I'm referring to them this is the stock also called the buttstock or the shoulder stock this is the barrel here on the top and beneath it is the magazine tube or mag tube this part that moves back and forth is the fore end and this big part in the middle that everything else is attached to is the receiver and all of the moving parts inside the shotgun are together refer to as the action shotguns are one of the most versatile firearms we have because they can fire several different types of ammunition now we could spend all day long talking just about shotgun ammunition like I said I recently did two videos just about buckshot but for now you don't need to know everything there is to know about shotgun shells well you do need to know is that there are three basic types of shells and the effect they have on the target is very different there's Burr shot buckshot and slugs a round of birdshot is loaded with anywhere from a few dozen to a few hundred tiny lead or steel pellets the largest birdshot pellets are just under a quarter inch in diameter the smallest armed not much bigger than a grain of salt birdshot is used for shooting birds and other small moving targets at a range of about 40 yards or less buckshot is similar to birdshot except the pellets are much larger and there are fewer of them most buckshot pellets are between about a quarter and a third of an inch in diameter depending on the size of the pellets you'll usually get anywhere from around eight to thirty pellets in a shell buckshot is used for taking medium sized game and for centuries has also been the shotgun load of choice against human targets the useful range of buckshot varies but beyond about 40 or 50 yards it becomes very difficult to reliably hit a target with buckshot a shotgun slug consists of a single large lead projectile it basically turns the shotgun into a very powerful rifle although with shorter range and less accuracy than most rifles slugs give the shotgun more penetrating potential and increase the effective range of the shotgun to roughly a hundred to two hundred yards if your primary interest is self-defense you will probably want to keep your shotgun loaded with buckshot when you're practicing at the range you can use mostly birdshot because it's a lot more affordable but you should also occasionally practice with your buckshot as well any time we handle the shotgun the first thing we need to do is clear it that means we are going to check and see if it's loaded and if it is we are going to unload it the first step is to make sure the safety is on for the Remington's the safety is this button right here behind the trigger press it from the left side so you can't see the little red ring anymore the Mossberg safety is on the back of the receiver just forward of the stalks make sure it is in the rearward position so you can't see the little red dot the safety will block the trigger so it can't be pulled but we never want to completely rely on that safety we still have to follow all of the safe handling guidelines that we just talked about okay now we can check the mag tube for ammunition the easiest way to do that is to just flip the gun upside down and visually inspect the opening of the mag tube on the Remington this little flappy thing here might be in the way that is the shell lifter sometimes called the elevator or the carrier just hold it down so you can get a good look into the mag tube on the Mossberg the lifter will not be in the way so you will have an unobstructed view of the mag tube on either gun you should see the follower it might be silver or black or red or some neon color depending on the specific model you have if you're not in good lighting it might be hard to tell if you're looking at the follower or at the base of a shotgun shell so do not get in a hurry when you're doing this if you don't see any shell and the mag tube your next step is to make sure there is no shell in the chamber so flip the gun right side up and then vigorously run the fore-end to the rear if the fore-end is locked in place and it won't open you will need to hold down the action release on the Remington's that is this little thing here on the left side of the gun right in front of the trigger guard on the Mossberg it is right behind the trigger guard just press and hold that and you should be able to open the action at this point if there was a shell in the chamber it should have a ejected when you open the action that would look like this just in case you will need to visually inspect the chamber to make sure there is nothing in there and also take a look at the shell lifter that's the part that lifts the shell from the mag tube to the chamber if there was a shell or multiple shells in the mag tube and you missed them when you checked that first shell will now be on the lifter and you'll be able to see it in there usually you can just tilt the muzzle down a little bit and then rotate the gun 90 degrees and that shell will drop right out of the ejection port now check the mag two again because apparently we missed that shell that was in there the first time okay now I am satisfied that the gun is unloaded if there are worse shells in the mag tube when you checked it and you want to unload them there are a couple of ways to do that the quickest way is to just hold down the action release and run the action back and forth until shell stop coming out like this but that's really not the safest way to do it especially when you are anywhere other than a shooting range with a safe backstop in front of you that's basically loading and unloading the shotgun multiple times which presents a lot of opportunities to make some pretty big mistakes there is a safer way to do it this method is easiest with the Mossberg so make sure the action is closed and then flip the gun upside down and look just to the right of the shell that is in the mag tube there is a tab there that's holding that shell in the tube that is the shell stop press that inward with your thumb and the shell will pop out and then slowly ease the shell out of the tube and then repeat that until you see the follower on the Remington's the process is similar but if you try to go straight to the mag tube the shell lifter is in the way you can hold it down and ease those shells out the same way you would have on the Mossberg but it's easier if you get that lifter out of the way first so what I suggest is first you open the action now you've got a shell on the lifter tilt the muzzle down rotate 90 degrees and that shell it's gonna fall out just like that now if you push down on the lifter it's gonna pop right out of the way now the Remington has shell stops on both sides of the mag tube but if you've got the action open the shell stop on the left is the only one that's holding the shells in so just press that and your shell should pop out just like that and you just repeat that until you see the follower okay so the magnitude was empty there is nothing in the chamber nothing on the lifter the safety is on the gun is clear now we can clean it we can do some dry practice we can put it away for storage or whatever else we need to do with it in this case we are going to load it there are different procedures for loading the gun I'm not gonna be doing any emergency or speed reloading I have covered some of those techniques in other videos this is just everyday administrative loading without any time pressure I'm going to demo this with these dummy shells that I've been using these are available in several places online I recommend you get a set of these so that you can practice loading and unloading the gun safely at home first open the action tuck the stock under your arm for support take the first shell in your other hand and just pop it into the action like that you might need to move the lifter out of the way but otherwise it should just pop right in now you close the action now your chamber is loaded if you push the safety off and pull the trigger the gun will fire but we're not ready to do that yet we want to load the magazine too so grab your next shell push it up into the action and pin it there with your index finger use your thumb to push the shell into the mag tube make sure the shell goes all the way in past those shell stops if you don't the shell will pop right back out your thumb will actually need to go into the mag tube a little bit like that on the MAS verts again the lifter won't be in your way so this will be pretty easy on the Remington's just use the knuckle of your thumb to keep the lifter pushed out of the way keep your thumb bent like this if you don't if you keep it flat like that the lifter is more likely to pinch the tip of your thumb and that gets kind of old after loading a couple of boxes of shells so keep repeating the loading process until no more shells will fit in the tube ok this shell won't fit so the gun is fully loaded the forehand is locked in place when we're ready to fire we disengage the safety press the trigger the gun goes bang after the trigger has been pressed the forend unlocks so before we can fire again we have to open the action that ejects the spent shell casing from the chamber and then we have the next round on the lifter so push the action closed and now that round is in the chamber and the gun is ready to be fired again you can keep firing until you're out of ammunition which you will know has happened because the gun will go click instead of bang or you can reload the mag tube before the gun is empty as long as there is room in the mag to you can fill the gun back up let's say you want to have the gun loaded and ready to use but you don't want to actually have a round in the chamber a loaded chamber is a good way to carry a handgun that's going to be on your person and in your immediate control with a hole that totally covers the trigger-guard with a shotgun that's in your safe we're in your closet a loaded chamber presents some additional risk you might reach for your gun in the dark and accidentally grab it with your finger on the trigger your cat might start pulling up the gun under your bed the gun might fall over in your closet and discharged because shotguns are not 100% totally dropped safe unlike most handguns to mitigate those risks you can store the shotgun and what is called Cruiser ready condition that's with a full magazine tube but an empty chamber start by clearing the gun just like before nothing in the magazine nothing in the chamber nothing on the lifter okay then after you have triple checked that there is nothing in the chamber close the action point the gun in a safe direction disengage the safety and press the trigger that will unlock the action for us now you just need to load up the magazine tube just like before okay the mag tube is loaded and it's ready for storage if you need the gun in an emergency all you have to do is grab it rack the action and chamber in around we didn't have to mess with the action release because we already unlocked the action before let's talk about shooting technique this is really important with shotguns because they're so powerful when you fire the gun the pressure generated inside that shell that pushes that heavy load of pellets out of the barrel at high speed is also pushing the shotgun against you that's what we call recoil if you don't learn to manage recoil effectively at best you'll be shooting very slowly and at worst you'll end up with a black and blue shoulder and you'll develop a bad flinch and you'll never hit what you're aiming at it doesn't matter how big you are if you don't have a good technique this gun will push you around but with the right technique even smaller stature people can manage a shotgun well I'm smaller than the average male and I do OK with a shotgun here's my friend Annette she's only about 5 foot 4 and she knows her way around a 12-gauge it's all about having the right technique good recoil control starts with a solid stance so stand with your feet at least about shoulder width apart maybe a little more your dominant side foot should be back a little bit lean forward at the waist you want an aggressive for posture with your weight resting on the balls of your feet now we're gonna melt the gun you might be tempted to place the stock on your shoulder or just inside your shoulder at the joint and kind of blade your body toward the target I don't recommend doing that instead bring the stock inward get it on the outside of your pectoral muscle kind of right here or even further towards your centerline if you can't you want the stock off your shoulder and off of where your collarbone sticks out keep your shoulders closer to being squared toward your target and this way this is gonna allow you to absorb that recoil with your whole upper body so it's not all just going into one single joint or bone all right so you got your mount keep your elbows pointed down not sticking out like that place your thumb along the side of the stock like this not wrapped around the back that way if you do get a bad mount or if you have to fire from an awkward position or something you don't run the risk of smacking yourself in the nose with your thumb mount the gun out high enough so that when you aim you don't have to bring your head down to the gun you're bringing the gun up to your head now if you do have to scrunch your neck down a little bit that's not a big deal the main thing is that you don't want to have to Crane your head over to the side to see your sights if your head is tilted when you're looking at the sights you're gonna end up missing what you're aiming at when you're bringing the gun up to your eye line rest the cheek against the stock kind of like that that's what we call a cheek weld you want the same point to contact with the stock every time if you have a consistent amount and inconsistent cheek weld the aim and the guns just gonna come naturally it'll be a piece of cake it will just automatically point at whatever you happen to be looking at and you only have to use the sights to kind of fine-tune your aim with a good shoulder mount go ahead and pivot the gun down about 45 degrees this is the low ready position it's kind of the default position when you're ready to shoot but you're not actually aiming at a target when you're ready to fire you simply pivot the gun up to eye level and index finger can move from its resting place on the receiver to the trigger the problem you are probably going to run into at this point is that your stock is too long now I hate to tell people that they have to go out and buy even more stuff before they start practicing with their new gun but in this case it really makes a huge difference the standard stock that comes on most shotguns is so long that if you bring the gun inboard off your shoulder you'll probably have trouble reaching the fore end and it's really hard to square up to the target and get your whole upper body behind the gun with a stock that's too long if you're more than about 6 feet tall this probably won't be as much of a problem but I know some very tall shotgun enthusiasts who still prefer a shorter stock if you can buy a youth stock or a Magpul stock like this one with all of the spacers removed it will make this technique a lot easier so what about using the safety wind should it be on when should I disengage it well if this was an ar-15 or a handgun with a well designed thumb safety I would say the safety should be on anytime you're not actually aimed at the target gun up safety off gun down safety on unfortunately some of our shotguns make that more difficult than it should be on the Remington's the safety is here behind the trigger guard if we have our finger up on the receiver where it should be when it's time to fire we've got to go all the way back here push the safety in and then go to the trigger now that's surprisingly difficult to do if you're under a lot of pressure if you mess it up you end up wasting precious seconds when you ought to be actually firing if you're left-handed it's not any easier you will have to use your middle finger to reach around and deactivate the safety that way some people keep their finger on the safety ready to disengage it kind of like that so they're ready position is here instead of here that is faster but I'm really not comfortable with that I don't want to get in a habit of having my finger that close to the trigger when I'm not ready to shoot now I've got an oversized aftermarket safety on this gun so I can hit the safety with the inside of my knuckle like that but it's still not really ideal in my opinion with the Mossberg this isn't as much of a problem because you can run the safety with your thumb and keep your finger well away from the trigger it works just as well for lefties as it does for right-handed people but if you've got a stock with a pistol grip is a different story you won't be able to reach the safety unless you completely break your firing grip on the gun so if you find that the safety is difficult to use on your gun or that using it compromises safe trigger finger placement I think it's okay to just leave the safety off whenever the gun is in your hands and you're in a ready position now I only say this very reluctantly it's probably not a great idea for some people it's an imperfect solution to deal with a sub optimal safety design this is another reason I like to store the gun in the cruiser ready condition that we talked about where you've got the mag tube loaded but the chamber is empty if I have the chamber empty it's not a problem that the safety is off I can grab the gun racking around and I'm in the ready position with the safety already off if I need to put the gun down for some reason then I can flip the safety on at that point okay back to shooting the gun besides a good stance at a good mount the other key to recoil management is the push pull technique just before you press the trigger you want to push the gun away from you with the support hand and pull it in towards you with the firing hand it should feel like you're trying to tear the gun in half now make sure the stock remains snug against your body if you leave any gap between you and the stock the gun will have room to accelerate into your body and instead of a slight push the gun is going to hit you and well that's not very comfortable but either way if you push out on the fore end you'll reduce the felt recoil against your body you don't need to push pull all the time you'll wear yourself out that way just the moment before you decide to fire just quick push pull at fire I'm gonna fire a couple of rounds without doing a push pull I'll still have a good mount and a good stance but no push pull watch the front of my muzzle and how much it rises and see how much my upper body gets pushed back okay now I'm gonna do a couple of rounds with the same stand same amount but with a strong push-pull besides recoil management cycling the action is the aspect of pump shotguns that's most likely to trip up beginners when you press the trigger the gun goes bang and then you can cycle action and fire again vigorously pull the fore-end back as far as it can go and then vigorously push it back forward again I say vigorously because that is the best way to avoid a malfunction if we don't open and close the action completely and don't use enough force we might end up with a spent shell stuck in action or an empty chamber or any number of other malfunctions so rack the gun like you mean it and rack it immediately after the gun fires gun goes bang back all the way then as soon as the gun stops push it forward all the way as the instructor Tom Givens says it should be boom chunk chunk the chunk chunk is not something that happens before the next boom it's part of the follow-through from this boom what this looks like for most people who are untrained and inexperienced is boom chunk chunk they don't have good recoil management the muzzle lifts way off target and they need a second to recover after the boom before they can even think about the chunk chunk but that's not gonna happen when you do it because you've got a good solid mount and a good push pull going the gun is just gonna move slightly and while it's recoiling you're gonna use that opportunity to run the action boom chunk chunk after you cycled the action go right back into a push-pull and get ready to fire another shot if you need to like I said at the very beginning we are accountable for every pellet that comes out of the gun so we absolutely do need to aim the shotgun inside of 50 feet or so the pellets have not had enough time to spread into a big cloud a shot like we would fire at a bird or a clay target if you fire around a buckshot across your living room the spread of pellets is probably gonna be smaller than a basketball it's very easy to miss completely if you don't actually aim the shotgun even if you don't miss completely I wouldn't consider it acceptable to miss at all if you fire a shell with nine pellets of buckshot and you hit your target with five of them where do those other four pellets go could they hit your spouse or your dog could they go out the window and into your neighbor's house you are accountable for that aim your shotgun and aiming is easier if we have a good stance and a good mount and cheek weld but we still want a reliable sighting system under the pressure of a life-and-death emergency in the middle of the night we need all the help we can get there are generally four types of sites for shotguns the simple bead site the rifle style sights ghost ring sites and electronic red dot optics the latter three are pretty straightforward I won't go into a whole lot of detail with those with a red dot you just put the dot where you want the pellets to go extremely easy to use and they work in all lighting conditions with the rifle and ghost ring sights you line up the front post with the center of the rear notch or aperture and then put the front post on the target if you get sights with the tritium glow-in-the-dark inserts they are also pretty good in low light but not as quick or easy to use as the red dot bead sights are a little more tricky to line up a bead the top of the receiver becomes the rear sight so when you look down the barrel the top of the bead should be just below the target and you want to see that bead centered on the receiver with the bottom of the bead touching the top of the receiver the mistake people often make is to aim too high and their shot goes right over the target when you're aiming with the bead you should not see any of the barrel if your bead has a base or a pedestal you shouldn't see any of that either when you get the hang of it at bead sight is very quick and some but of all the options it is the most difficult to see in low light there are some aftermarket sites available that can go over a bead site to make it bigger and easier to see some of them also have a tritium insert like this one from excess sites I think this can be a huge improvement to a home defense shotgun without spending a whole lot of money the last thing I want to cover is firing one of these things a stockless shotgun with a pistol grip only or a bird's head grip I did a video a while back where I called the shockwave mostly useless a lot of people took that literally and got a little upset obviously they're not useless that was hyperbole but a lot of these guns are being sold to inexperienced shooters and I don't think that's wise these are like the 38 special snub nose revolver of shotguns they are appealing because they are small and light and powerful relatively simple to operate but they are much more challenging to shoot proficiently than their full-sized counterparts that pesky little issue of shot accountability really comes into play when you're shooting without a shoulder stock without much trouble you may be able to fire the gun from the hip and hit a tin can at 20 yards because you've got a three foot wide cloud of birdshot but that doesn't mean it's equally easy to shoot a human target across the room with a load of buckshot and not expect some of those pellets to fly off into the great unknown so we are not gonna fire this gun from the hip even if that's what the owners manual says to do we're gonna hold the gun up at eye level and aim it you know you can't get a laser sight for these and that does make hip firing a little more viable I still don't think it's ideal because if the laser dies then you're back to guessing where the pellets are going so I suggest you hold the gun up just beneath your dominant eye and then push it out a little way away from your face from here you can see your sights and aim properly keep your thumb straight along the receiver and then when the gun recoils even if you have poor recoil control the grip will come out that's to come back beside your face you've got a really good push-pull going like I just talked about it's not gonna be a problem anyway but if you keep your thumb straight you won't pop yourself on the mouth with it when you cycle the action you don't have a stock that's braced against your body to counteract that rearward motion if you have a brand new gun the actions going to be kind of stiff and racking it without a stock might feel kind of awkward so instead of bringing the four end back and forth you might think about keeping the four end in one place and moving the gun forward and back with your strong hand or maybe kind of a hybrid technique where you bring the hands together to meet each other with some practice you can get pretty good at running the action and recoil management on these things it's really aiming the gun responsibly that becomes the most difficult part of this with the stock shotgun your mount and your cheek weld are doing half the job of aiming for you when you take away the stock you lose that advantage so you really have to pay attention to what your bead or what your sights are telling you about where those pellets are about to go if you found that at all helpful you might want to check out our other shotgun videos we have a playlist of those on youtube or you can find them on our blog at Lucky gunner comm slash lounge just click on shotguns under the series tab on the menu at the top of the page you'll also find full transcripts of all of our shotgun videos there and some additional shotgun articles guys I know the ammo market is crazy right now with all that's going on we are doing our very best to get more ammo in stock but it's flying off the shelves just as fast as it comes in hopefully things will calm down a little bit soon and then you will be able to get any of the shotgun shells you might need from us at lucky gutter comm [Music] you

Channel: Lucky Gunner Ammo

Views: 372,152

Rating: 4.9451632 out of 5

Keywords:

Id: Z4tc1mKdAiU

Length: 32min 8sec (1928 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 02 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/yoshistherealpanda]

His videos are generally fantastic and this one is definitely a great source for beginners.

I've had an 870 for almost 20 years and I still enjoyed it.

[u/WarrantsOutOfVarrock]

I saw this last night! Definitely important for all the people who just panic-bought

[u/InformalCriticism]

Mine was https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=49kcp5vep_I