If you’re looking to learn specialized techniques for competitive clay shooting, Wingshooting: The Art & Science is not the shotgunning guide for you. Nor does author Bryan Bilinski intend it to be. What Bilinski does superbly, however, is teach the fundamentals of wingshooting for the “bird hunter”—more specifically the American upland hunter. From long experience—Bilinski is the owner of the wingshooting store Fieldsport, Ltd., in Traverse City, Michigan, and his career in the shotgun trade spans nearly a half-century—the author has learned that this is precisely the type of shooter most in need of lessons.
Those lessons have been distilled from his longstanding column in The Upland Almanac into 43 short chapters covering the fundamentals (and then some) of the method he favors—that is, the “instinctive” shooting techniques of England’s Robert Churchill but modified from Britain’s driven-game battues to the quick-flushing game of America’s fields and forests. And instinctive shooting, or the “swing through” technique, places a premium on fundamentals: stance, posture, gun mount (“No pre-mounted guns for practice!”), target focus and gunfit.
There are discussions pertinent to aging wingshooters and women as well as on gunfit and gun choice. This is a fine book for almost every American bird hunter—from the beginner in need of a lesson to the intermediate who needs brushing up to those of us old enough to have forgotten what we should remember. For those who prefer visual aids, Bilinski has released an instructional video (available as a DVD or online) of the same name billed as “an advanced video course in the Fieldsport Wingshooting Method.”
The 199-page hardcover book is available for $50 and the video for $40 from fieldsportpress.com.
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