With so many different disciplines, specialities and tournament rules, determining the greatest shooter of all time is difficult, but it can be important to see competition from the point of view of a champion and which glasses would provide the best assistance in which events.
A master of short-range pistol target shooting, for example, is different from skeet shooting or sporting clays, all of which test very different skills. A master of one may not be the master of another, and both require very different equipment and sights to succeed.
However, possibly the most successful British sports shooter in history and amongst the best competitive shooters in history is George Digweed MBE, a 32-time world champion in shotgun shooting, and the holder of four world records.
Remarkably for a man who has won world championships in five different decades and as recently as 2023, he never received any formal training; his grandfather taught him the basics in gun safety and introduced him to trap shooting.
His crowning achievement was in 2015, when he won the three big shooting clay championships (The World Sporting, the World FITSASC and the World Compak) in a single year, a triple crown that has not been achieved since.
Interestingly, in a sport in which the small details matter so much, Mr Digweed made a point of not changing his equipment, focusing instead on the equipment that makes him comfortable and using what he calls an “operator-first” philosophy.
In the context of shotgun shooting, this means using a gun with a full choke, picking a cartridge which shoots well with your gun under a full choke and having faith in your ability, rather than externalising potential issues.
Because of this, his equipment and especially his cartridge loadout has not changed in 42 years, and he has managed to remain at the elite level of shotgun shooting because he found what worked for him and stuck with it.
