Don’t rush into spending lots of money on a gun until you’ve tried a few different brands and styles. Even then, the gun market is really flat at the moment, so you should be able to get a good deal on a mint condition secondhand gun.
Essential starter kit:
- Eye protection. Get some ballistic rated shooting glasses. Yellow or red for dull/hazy days and smoke tint for sunny days. Unless it’s super bright, regular sunglasses are too dark and offer no protection (unless they’re Wiley/ESS). Some people like the sets where you can swap lenses in a frame, but I found them too much of a faff and just had a yellow pair and a smoke pair.
- Hearing protection. You’ll have to figure out if you prefer earplugs or ear defenders. The disposable foam earplugs are rubbish. Get a good reusable set from a gunsmiths if you prefer plugs. With eardefenders, get them from a gunsmiths as the regular industrial ones are too bulky and will hit the stock of the shotgun when you have head in the correct shooting position. The top end lectronic ear defenders allow to have normal conversations whilst completely protecting you from gunfire noise.
- Clothing. A baseball hat or similar to protest your head from falling clay debris. Clay pigeon fragments aren’t heavy, but they can be razor sharp. Get a good shooting vest with big pockets that can hold a whole box of cartridges. A vest should have a gripping surface over your shooting shoulder and no exposed metal fasteners to scratch your shotgun. I prefer an adjustable/elasticated vest to a thicker shooting jacket so I can wear it over a t-shirt in the summer and layer up on colder days. You can get away with a fleece for the moment, just make sure it doesn’t have metal zippers.
Avoid the leather cartridge belts - not only with you scratch up the stock of your gun on the rims of the cartridges, but removing cartridges from their loops is far too fiddly and slow.
Gloves - forget the expensive branded shooting gloves and get down to you local discount golf shop. Go for a ventilated, lightweight leather pair or two that are a snug fit. I used to keep an old pair of skiing gloves in my shooting bag and pop them over the top of my shooting gloves when waiting to shoot on cold days.
- A small range bag to carry 2 boxes of cartridges, shooting glasses (and cleaner), spare ear protection and a bottle of water with you when you move round the various stands on a spread out sporting shoot.
