| Oh boy, this is my specialty. Barry had a very informative post for you. To the rest of the posters, I would say their advice is fine if you are only going to shoot trap.
However, if you want to be more than a one-game'd snob (You will meet a lot of older gentlemen who ONLY shoot one or the other), you shouldn't limit yourself with a pump.
A Remington 1100 is a great place to start. Get one with a Rem-choke barrel of at least 28" (the receiver is longer on a semi vs. an O/U). The standard in skeet barrels used to be shot, light field guns w/ 26" barrels. The Pros are now using 32's for skeet and 34's for trap.
The 1100 is upgradable. Longer barrels, forend weights, actions jobs, release triggers, etc, etc. You will never fundamentally outgrow it, although your tastes may change.
For some more cash, you could step up to a Beretta auto-loader. The 391 is what I use as my backup/int'l skeet gun. Absolutely flawless design, great ergonomics, etc.
But, you can pick up a used 1100 cheap, buy a few cheap o-rings and throw them in your shooting bag and be good to go. If you ever feel like it, you can get back out of it close to what you put in. You can also put a slug barrel on it for deer, or get a custom stock set and turn it into a real hum-dinger.
Now when you start shooting Sporting Clays, you will want to move to an O/U style firearm, as different shots will mandate 2 different choke selections.
For now, don't worry about chokes. We used to practice with skeet chokes and turkey chokes... A good shooter will put bb's on the bird no matter what. There are lots and lots of drills to help you improve your game. I shot competitively in college and high school.
The difference between the two games is best described by Google.
Work on your fundamentals. Body position and hold-points are going to be your biggest hurdles to begin with. Once you get a taste of shooting moving targets, everything else will take a back seat. |