When you go for an introductory clay-shooting lesson, your coach will cover the basics of safety: gun handling, stance, gun mount and so on. Very early in the lesson, when describing the shooting process, they will emphasise: “Don’t look at the gun, all your focus must be on the target.”
This is the key difference between rifle shooting and shotgun shooting; rifle shooting involves stillness and the careful alignment of the gun and the target, whereas the shotgun requires movement and hand/eye co-ordination.
So why do they make guns with ribs and beads on the top? Well, they didn’t always, and they don’t always today. You can get shotguns today with just barrels, one or two, but no rib if that’s what you want. The original reason for the strip of metal in the trough between the two barrels of a side-by-side shotgun was to hold the barrels together; above and below the set
