Learning to shoot a fowler of normal dimensions is learning. Building a stock like a modern gun is not PC for the gun being built. One merely has to learn to shoot the fowler with a heads-up attitude, not scrunched down into the comb and climbing the wrist like a modern trap shooter. If field guns were meant to be cheeked like a modern trap gun, they would be built that way - they are not.
Trap guns are not field guns and field guns of the 19th and 18th century were meant to be shot with a heads-up attitude.
The steel block suggestion was meant as a learning tool - to get rid of the modern trap-shooters bad field form. Try snapping a trap gun to your shoulder and hitting a bird in that one motion - it is almost impossible without breaking your cheek bone.
To build up the stock to fit like a modern gun is a mistake and an ugly one at that. Of course, that is my opinion only.
A lot of the old guns do have too much drop, demanding high, heads-up shooting, but it takes very little shooting to learn to hit with them. Extra or too much drop seems to be an American style of the 19th century. There are some designs that have quite straight stocks - perhaps ahead of their time - like modern field guns in comparrison to the typically American style.
I don't shoot trap or skeet. Trap is a form of rifle shooting with a shotgun in my opinion and takes a different approach to a mount and stance than any other type of shooting.
Adapting oneself to a fowling gun with "normal dimensions" is really not a requirement to be PC in all cases and not always the best choice for some of us.
For someone like me, any off the shelf modern gun of average proportions has my cheekbone completely off the comb therefore I need to raise the comb by some means. For many others where a gun of normal dimensions is a somewhat closer fit, a certain pressure can be learned to be consistent. What I am getting at is the fact that just because one man has to scrunch down really hard on a stock another fellow may not have to on the same gun.
"Head's up" on most standard stocks for me is not making ANY contact with the comb to see down the barrel or either looking INTO the thumbpiece or carving. So for me to "snap" up a gun that has a high comb and hit a bird in one motion probably won't smack those like me as it will others
As an example, I can shave just a
little off the top of a standard Remington trap stock and have the perfect 50/50 field gun.
Although I do not know the exact stock drops on the stock I posted, I would bet there would be no scrunching and crawling if I were to mount that piece. For others, it might be quite high. The built up stock I have shown was done no later than the very early 19th century and possibly before. I have seen some 18th century references to that procedure.
Although I vary techniques, I mostly shoot a Stanbury or Lancaster style posture. A high comb and "heads up" style can go hand in hand.
A feature I see in muzzleloading shotgun shooting around me is that many shooters are keeping too much of their weight to the rear with their heads not just up but back on the stock as if aiming like modern muzzleloading rifle shooters. Of all the writings and paintings of the period I have studied this seems to be poor form even back then. A "Brewer" style of live pigeon type shooting has that same erect body style but without the head so far back. This is essentially a TRAP shooting style hence the rifle similarities but is not a suitable game gun stance.
Erect posture, head up BUT nose over toes style is my preference and is seen even in very early paintings.
