If you love to pull triggers then you owe it to yourself to give 3-gun shooting a try. This fast-growing sport will challenge your shooting skills with just about every scenario you can think of, from long-range precision rifle work to up-close and blisteringly fast shooting with a rifle, pistol and shotgun. It's all on the clock, and the shooter who hits all the targets the fastest wins the match.

This sport moves fast, burns a lot of ammunition and is more fun than you thought possible. It's also great training, because 3-gun builds shooting skills that are useful for self-defense and hunting. I am addicted to 3-gun and on a quest to improve, which means picking the brain of anybody who is better than me. Trust me, that's a very long list. In June 2008 I attended the Midwest 3-gun championships hosted by FNH USA, and I was lucky enough to spend time with some of the top shooters in the world, learning their secrets firsthand. Here is a little of what they taught me.

The Duck Walk
In my first 3-gun match there was a pistol stage that had to be shot while moving. My brain seized up, and I flashed back to the devastating stage disqualification or "DQ" I endured for taking a step with a loaded gun in a big Cowboy Action Shooting match. Instinct took over, and I stopped moving every time I started to pull the trigger. Because I was new, the Range Officer cut me some slack, but after three or four violations he figured enough was enough and issued a procedural penalty for not moving while shooting.

Even more important, I found when practicing later that I couldn't hit anything while walking anyway because the sights were bouncing all over the target. Larry Wayland shoots on the FNH USA team and he gave me some tips. "We call it the duck walk," he said, much to his regret later. We filmed this for "American Rifleman Television," and it ran the night before the DPMS/Brownells Tri-Gun challenge in August. Every time it was his turn to shoot, his buddies heckled him with loud quacks.

But, the duck walk works. The idea is to bend your knees and walk with short baby steps, heel to toe. The key is to remove movement from your shoulders and upper body. It really clicked for me when Wayland said to "walk like I was on slippery ice." I still need some practice, but my sights stayed steady and my hit ratio went up dramatically.

Loading Your Scattergun
In the Tactical Optics class in which I shoot, the shotgun is limited to nine-round-magazine capacity. The second stage I shot in the Midwest 3-Gun Championship match was all shotgun and required 39 shots ... if there were no misses. I thought I was hot stuff with a shotgun, but I blew that stage because I tried to go too fast, outran my abilities and had some misses. This is a common problem with any gun during a match. Shooters try to go too fast and start missing. Control that, shoot to your ability and the speed will follow. Besides, as any shooter knows, a fast miss is still a miss. But the single biggest reason I blew that stage is because I was too slow when reloading the shotgun.

"The secret to winning with a shotgun is not necessarily in the shooting, but in loading," James Darst, a Team DPMS shooter, told me. "Any good shooter can empty all nine shots in a few seconds, but reloading takes time for everybody. Learn to load your shotgun fast and you will improve your scores. In fact, the guy who loads his shotgun the fastest often wins the match. It is that important. " To start, Darst showed me two drills. First with the shotgun "shot dry" and the bolt locked back. I would load one shell, shoot it, then load another. Then he had me load two shells, fire one and reload one to practice loading when the gun still has some ammunition on board. This builds skill and muscle memory for loading in both scenarios. Muscle memory is very important. If your body is familiar with the movement, it will do it well and without hesitation, which is why practice is important. He showed me how to grab the shell and position it in my hand to load it into the shotgun with one smooth move. "When you load, don't lay the shell on the gun and then move your hand back to push it in. Position the shell so when your hand puts it in the gun, your thumb is on the back of the shell and you can push it with one smooth motion. This saves a few tenths of a second with every shell you load, and they all add up," said Darst. We practiced loading with the gun at my shoulder for a fast extra shot with a shell in the barrel. Then we practiced with the gun upside down for a complete reload. I found it best to position the shotgun waist high for this, the butt tucked under my arm and the fore-end supported by my left hand. The right hand does the loading.

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