A Churchill shooter focuses on economy of movement, elegant gun mounting and natural point. When done correctly, this method is very fast and efficient, allowing you to achieve the lead with a simple motion of the gun (the swing). It also enables you to make corrections in flight to compensate for wind. The Churchill method is often misunderstood, but it was developed as a practical shooting system that can be used on grouse moors and in other sporting situations where speed is critical.
Churchill was a lifelong sportsman and a champion piper. He excelled in archery, winning a second place medal in the officers’ class at the national championships in 1938. He was a member of the British archery team at the 1924 Olympics and was also a fine equestrian.
He had an uncanny ability to judge the course of a bird, and his instinctive wingshooting helped him win many high-profile matches against top British competitors. He was a great raconteur and a man of immense intelligence, as well as a staunch advocate for Britain’s high-tech weaponry. Churchill was credited with convincing the government to develop tanks during WWI, and he consistently funded newer planes, spies’ equipment, submarines and other technological innovations as Prime Minister in WWII.
In his later years, Churchill devoted his time to writing and became a prolific author. His quintessential book on instinctive wingshooting for game birds and sporting clays, “Game Shooting,” was a true classic. It is widely regarded as the best shooting manual ever written. His friend and renowned shooting coach Macdonald Hastings twice revised and updated the work, which has never gone out of print.
Churchill was an avid supporter of the right to keep and bear arms, and he was particularly fond of Britain’s favored automatic pistols, such as the.45 caliber Thompson. There is a famous photo of him, in a pinstripe suit and chomping on his cigar, holding a ‘tommy gun’ and presiding over an audience of soldiers. Adolf Hitler despised the British prime minister with a ferocity that may have been exceeded only by Churchill’s own contempt for him, and he used the photo to portray Churchill as a clone of a stereotype American gangster. Churchill shooting