New Browning Sweet Sixteen Help

Just purchased a new Sweet Sixteen 28" and cycled about 100 rounds on a grouse course shooting skeet. Love the gun,love it's weight. But oddly the gun jammed once (shooting RIO ammo), and the trigger stuck once. Both were easily addressed and I continued to shoot. I did take the gun apart before initially shooting it and cleaned and lubed all aspects of the action.

I have a question which I can't seem to find an answer to on the Browning website. The gun came with shims to alter the cast and drop, and also to increase the length of pull. Shooting the gun as I received it assembled was fine. Was hitting clay no problem. But how do you know or gauge if you need to alter either of the details mentioned above. Is it simply a "how it feels" thing or is there a physical way to check to see if indeed I need to increase/alter either characteristic and make use of the supplied shims?

Thanks in advance for your help.
 
If you are hitting the target(s) perhaps no adjustment is necessary. The "adjustment shims" can alter the stock fit, if the gun doesn't seem to fit you. You might try and experiment and add shims - see if it makes a difference; if you are doing well without, I would leave it alone.
 
The basic question is "is it shooting to Point of Aim"? If you are breaking targets consistently without special effort to position your head down on the stock, etc., etc. (in other words if you break them consistently by just using your normal gun mount) then your gun is likely shooting to your point of aim and you need no shims.

If you want to check POI, this is a pretty good description of how to do it and how to shim to change POI. There are YouTube videos out there and lots of articles about Shotgun Fit or Changing Point of Aim on a shotgun.

http://www.deadtargetschool.com/PAT BOARD GUIDE.pdf
 
The basic question is "is it shooting to Point of Aim"? If you are breaking targets consistently without special effort to position your head down on the stock, etc., etc. (in other words if you break them consistently by just using your normal gun mount) then your gun is likely shooting to your point of aim and you need no shims.

If you want to check POI, this is a pretty good description of how to do it and how to shim to change POI. There are YouTube videos out there and lots of articles about Shotgun Fit or Changing Point of Aim on a shotgun.

http://www.deadtargetschool.com/PAT BOARD GUIDE.pdf
That is really helpful......thank you!
 
Gave it a go this morning. Seem to be pretty darn good as a stock gun without altering the gun with the shims. This was 25 yards 3 shots of 7 1/2 RIO.....may try to add 1 shim and shoot the gun again

Shot 95% today with the clays
 
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Looks like the stock set up puts the POA a bit high; nothing wrong with that, that is how I set all my shotguns up. It let's me see the bird over the rib. In my youth I had a Winchester Model 12 Featherweight (well, I still have it) that required me to totally cover the bird (too much drop in the stock) in order to hit it. I never did like that approach.

If you're shooting 95%...don't touch nothing! If it ain't broke, don't go trying to fix it! :)
 
QUOTE=Chestle;249113]Looks like the stock set up puts the POA a bit high; nothing wrong with that, that is how I set all my shotguns up. It let's me see the bird over the rib. In my youth I had a Winchester Model 12 Featherweight (well, I still have it) that required me to totally cover the bird (too much drop in the stock) in order to hit it. I never did like that approach.

If you're shooting 95%...don't touch nothing! If it ain't broke, don't go trying to fix it! :)[/QUOTE]That's a great point!! I'm happy with how it shoots, and how I can bust the clays. Hope to try it out on the weekend on the pheasant skeet course. That will allow me to reach out to some clays further out. Forgot to mention that was with a Browning Skeet Choke
 
May I ask what choke you patterned this with? At 25 yards that pattern would indicate you had a pretty open constriction. If you want a better picture of POI whether side to side or up and down in relation to your point of aim use a tight choke, Full if you have one, otherwise a modified.

My guess from looking at that pattern is the gun is shooting roughly 65/35 high, but it appears some of the pellets went off the board on the top side. Full choke will give a much better picture.
 
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Gave it a go this morning. Seem to be pretty darn good as a stock gun without altering the gun with the shims. This was 25 yards 3 shots of 7 1/2 RIO.....may try to add 1 shim and shoot the gun again

Shot 95% today with the clays

Shoot the gun as is for a while as one round is not a tell all. Try and vary the type of target presentations e.g straight away, rising, falling, crossing and quartering. Note how you do on each. If you continue to have good success than I agree the gun likely fits you well enough not to mess with.
 
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Shoot the gun as for a while as one round is not a tell all. Try and vary the type of target presentations e.g straight away, rising, falling, crossing and quartering. Note how you do on each. If you continue to have good success than I agree the gun likely fits you well enough not to mess with.
Thank you sir!! This was a skeet choke. I will indeed shoot a full choke and see the results.
 
Post the results when you have a chance to do so. Remember you're patterning for gun fit which is quite different than patterning to where the gun truly shoots or its true POI. Patterning for gun fit is done off hand just like you were mounting the gun to shoot a bird, the later has to be done on a bench rest.

Something else to consider. Because of the possibility of having a bad gun mount it is advisable to shoot at least 5 shots one over the top of the other to give a better average of where the shot is going. A bad gun mount will be painfully obvious and will not align with a good gun mount when it comes to where the pellets hit.
 
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I may do it different than others and may not be correct, but this is how I do it. Since when I shoot, whether at live birds or clay birds, I never see my barrel/s, my bead, nothing. I guess I shoot instinctively through repetition. That said, I am no world class shooter. Just a hunter who loves to shoot.

I pattern on paper by marking it with a target/focus point, and then get into a natural shooting position and mount and shoot instinctively just as I would at a live or clay bird. I could care less if my bead matches my point of impact. I just need to have the pattern hit where I am looking in a natural shooting position. I would only shim or modify to accomplish this if necessary. Just my $.02 and works for me.

That said, turkey hunting is a totally different scenario.
 
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Put another 200 rounds thru my gun over the weekend. Shot the "pheasant" skeet coarse which is a combination of close shots and some clays that you had to reach out to hit. Shot using 1oz. Fiocchi target load which seemed to shoot nicely in the gun. Had to switch chokes a couple times as a few of the clays were thrown pretty far out. Probably much further out that I would ever take a shot at a bird maybe in the 35 yard range. All around the IC choke was a happy compromise as I was able to hit some that I really had to reach out at but really pounded the clays inside 20 yards. Love shooting this gun more and more
 
I got my new A5 Sweet Sixteen late in the season last year and was not hitting birds like I normally do. I was just winging a lot of them and not centering them up in the pattern. Fortunately my dog found all those cripples. I was going to do some patterning with it this summer but never got around to it. I've been reading about the shims and adjusting the point of aim. The one thing I do notice when mounting it is that I see a lot of the rib which would indicate my POA is high. Now that would probably be fine for shooting trap but not for me in hunting situations. I think I will install the #3 shim which should lower the drop at the comb and also lower the POA.

I see a couple of posts here where guys have talked about "adding" shims. My understanding is that you don't "add" a shim but rather replace the #2 shim (neutral) that is already in place with the shim you feel you need. The owners manual does explain fairly well what effect each shim has on raising or lowering the drop at comb or changing the cast.
 
I got my new A5 Sweet Sixteen late in the season last year and was not hitting birds like I normally do. I was just winging a lot of them and not centering them up in the pattern. Fortunately my dog found all those cripples. I was going to do some patterning with it this summer but never got around to it. I've been reading about the shims and adjusting the point of aim. The one thing I do notice when mounting it is that I see a lot of the rib which would indicate my POA is high. Now that would probably be fine for shooting trap but not for me in hunting situations. I think I will install the #3 shim which should lower the drop at the comb and also lower the POA.

I see a couple of posts here where guys have talked about "adding" shims. My understanding is that you don't "add" a shim but rather replace the #2 shim (neutral) that is already in place with the shim you feel you need. The owners manual does explain fairly well what effect each shim has on raising or lowering the drop at comb or changing the cast.

Dakotazeb,
On another thread about Sweet 16 choke tubes I posted some info about some patterning I just did. I didn't do any sort of extensive testing, just trying to get a general idea of things. Shooting at paper in a lightweight gun with pheasant loads in 99 degree heat isn't exactly my idea of fun!
But one thing that I did discover was that the factory Browning DS modified choke tube shot a drastically more open pattern than the Trulock extended Light Modified tube.
(the Trulock extended Improved Modified didn't throw a tighter pattern than the light mod, and in fact was a few pellets less)

Before I bought my new sweet 16 two years ago, I had read somewhere online that the factory tubes were more open than they're marked, and that does seem to be the case.

I'm getting into reloading 16ga shells now, and I do plan to do some more patterning when it cools off a bit.
 
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