Churchill shooting combines instinctive and tactical skills. It emphasizes a smooth, flowing action and the ability to visualize and pick up a target on the move. The method was popularized by Chris Craddock of the Churchill Shooting School in London, who developed it after studying with Churchill’s nephew and disciple Richard Churchill. Churchill’s students were famous British aviators, sportsmen and politicians. In the 1920s, Churchill was one of Britain’s leading authorities on firearms ballistics, testifying as an expert in dozens of cases brought by Scotland Yard against criminal suspects.
After WWI, Churchill was one of the most vocal advocates for high-tech warfare, and is credited with convincing the government to invest in tanks. During WWII, he funded newer and better airplanes, espionage equipment and the like. He also remained a keen wingshooter, using the Churchill Method on game birds and sporting clays.
In the early 1950s Churchill published his classic book, Churchill’s Game Shooting, which quickly became a standard text on instinctive wingshooting for game birds and sporting clays. The 1955 first edition was revised and expanded by Churchill’s friend Macdonald Hastings, a well-known shooting coach.
The latest version of Churchill’s Game Shooting is the third revision of this important work. Hastings has incorporated comments from Churchill himself, and brings the text up-to-date. Churchill was a noted wingshooter himself, and his shooting school in Kent provided him with much of the experience that went into this book.
A few years after Churchill’s death, his nephew Robert Churchill took over the family gun business and introduced Churchill shotguns based on his uncle’s original design. The Churchill gun’s 25-inch barrels had a high tapered rib that made them look longer, making them a lively performer on the grouse moors.
Churchill was also a strong advocate for Britain’s signature SMG, the Sten gun, and carried a variety of them in his limousines, often with his Thompson, an infamously unattractive pistol that competed for the distinction of ugliest handgun ever produced. Research by Richard Law, a noted British advocate for gun owners’ rights, turned up photos of Churchill in which he is printing a remarkably 1911-looking object under his overcoat or ulster, in his right hip pocket. Churchill shooting