If you’re around shooters who enjoy the challenge of shooting a shotgun – and even some who say they do but look as confused as a mosquito in a mannequin factory when they shoot, eventually the subject of lead comes up. The more people talk about it, the more confusing it is.
Our research shows that people rarely perceive lead the same way on identical shots. There are even people out there who think we don’t believe lead exists and we’re afraid to say the word. The fact that they’ve never had a lesson from us doesn’t stop them from telling to all who will listen that we don’t teach lead, and “how can you hit a moving target without lead?”
Well, all you pontificators and philosophers who don’t want to be confused with the facts because your mind is made up, tighten up your screw chokes and get ready for a real ride as we lead you into a discussion of perhaps the most confusing part of shooting a shotgun.
“Lead” is a very confusing if not downright weird word, because even though it’s spelled the same, it can have different pronunciations and completely different meanings based on how it’s used in a sentence. It can be a heavy metal, the first to play in a card game, someone who is ahead in a race, a principal role in a production, and at the same time the person who plays that role, the length of a rope, the act of guiding, directing an orchestra, a blow in a boxing match, to have charge of something, to lie, to go at the head of something, to begin batting in an inning, a news story of great importance, a thin stick or marking substance, framing for glass in a window, to aim in front of a moving object… And on top of all of these meanings, it has only four letters.
Is there any wonder why we get confused when we talk about lead in shotgunning?
Oh, there is lead. The paradox, however, is that the more you know about it, the worse you will perform when shooting a shotgun. And the more conscious your approach to measuring lead during the shot, the more visually confusing it becomes.
“To aim in front of a moving object” comes from Webster. And wherever we go, we constantly have to deal with this misconception. The phrase on the surface makes logical sense, but when you try to apply the logic it becomes very confusing. To just about everyone we come in contact with, “to aim” means to align sights on something. If you are “aiming in front of a moving object” then what are you aiming at? Just try aiming at nothin’! You can’t align your sights on a spot in front of the bird because there is nothing with which to align!
You can’t have one eye on the bird and the other on the gun either. Now, we all agree that the gun must be in front of the bird to hit it, so can you see how the simple phrase “to aim in front of a moving object” can on the surface be logical but can be very confusing when attempted.
Well, read on because we are going to explore what lead is, what determines how big it is, and how to apply lead consistently to moving objects. Let’s just try to simplify the concept of lead and what exactly creates lead on a moving target. We had better first define what it is before we get into how to calculate it.
Lead is the distance in front of a moving target you must shoot to hit it. When a target is still, you can aim at it and if the sights are aligned properly and you squeeze the trigger, you will hit your target. When the target is moving, if you aim at it and pull the trigger, then by the time the projectile gets to where it was aimed, the target will have moved, creating a miss “behind” the target.
To hit a moving target, you must shoot in front of it so that when the projectile arrives on the line of the target, they both share the same spot and the target is hit. Damn near impossible to do with a bullet, and that’s why we shoot a swarm of pellets that expand to a sizable diameter, so when we’re not perfect in our pointing ahead of the target we have some pointing error that ensures success.
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