Vincent Hancock’s Gold Medal Winning Shotgun

When Vincent Hancock, the only shooter to ever win four Olympic gold medals in international skeet, won his first gold at the 2008 Beijing Games, he did so with a production-line Beretta DT10. There were no custom triggers or standard modifications to the shotgun. He didn’t use aftermarket chokes, instead sticking with the standard OptimaChoke system that comes boxed in many Beretta shotguns, including the 682 and some 687 models.

After his victory in Beijing he eventually switched to a DT11 with a custom stock built by the German manufacturer Ergosignbut the rest of Hancock’s DT11 Black is the same gun you or I can order from Beretta. He won gold again at the 2012 London Games with a DT11, and again in the summer of 2021 in Tokyo with the DT11 Black (Hancock finished 15th at the 2016 Rio Olympics). This weekend at the Paris Olympics, Hancock won gold again in the men’s skeet when he hit 58 of 60 targets and held a lead or tie the entire time. (He narrowly edged out teammate Conner Prince, who hit 57 targets.) On Monday, Hancock and teammate Austen Smith won silver in the first-ever mixed skeet event; the Italians took gold. In qualifying, Hancock shot a perfect 75.

The Georgia native is also a four-time world champion, 16-time World Cup medalist (including 12 victories) and five-time winner of the World Cup finalHere’s a closer look at the shotgun that won no less than three Olympic gold medals in clay pigeon shooting.

Specifications and features of Vincent Hancock’s Beretta DT11 Black

• Track width: 12
• Action: Over/Under
• Capacity: 2
• Chamber: 3 inch
• Barrel type: steel, carbon fiber rib
• Barrel length: 30 inches
• Barrel Weight: 2.98 pounds
• Chokes: IC, M
• Visor: Fiberglass
• Draw Length: N/A (Standard DT11 LOP is 14.37 inches)
• Trigger Pull: N/A (Standard DT11 pull is 3½ pounds)
• Price: $15,000

Building a custom inventory

Hancock won his first gold with a standard Beretta stock, but decided to switch to a custom stock made by Wilfried Nil. He flew to Germany to have multiple molds made of his right hand until the fit was perfect. The customization was so detailed that the creases of the palm of his shooting hand were pressed into the molds. Once the fit was perfect, the wooden stock was cut on a CNC machine.

“It evolved from an Olympic pistol grip,” Hancock says. “They’re very unique because the entire grip is molded to your hand. They basically take an impression of your hand around a pistol grip and when I assemble the pistol, it fits perfectly in the palm of my hand.”

Once you get past the pistol grip, the rear of the stock is mostly aluminum, although there is a wooden comb that can be adjusted for drop in relation to the rib height. There is also a walnut butt plate that is equipped with a rubber recoil pad. Cast and pitch can be manipulated to suit individual shooters. There is also an adjustable, hydraulic recoil damper to reduce recoil. Weight can also be added and removed from the stock by screwing metal rings on and off a balancer. Hancock built his stock 11 years ago and has not changed it.

“They don’t sponsor me or anything,” Hancock said of Ergosign. “Theyhave a superior product than the rest of the world. I’ve had the chance to watch other people who [custom stocks] but I am a firm believer in using the best product possible rather than working with a company whose product I don’t fully believe in. And there is nothing wrong with the other [stockmakers]it’s just for me, this one is better.”

The Perfect Balance of Hancock’s Shotgun

You’d think that an Olympic clay pigeon champion like Hancock would be extremely picky about the overall weight, trigger pull, and trigger length of the rifle he’s won three gold medals with, but that’s not the case. Hancock has no idea how much his DT11 weighs, only that it’s over 8 pounds and that it’s perfectly balanced for his frame. He also couldn’t tell me what the trigger weight or trigger length of his rifle is. His only real concern is keeping the barrel weight at around 1.35 kilograms (2.98 pounds). Because the DT11 Black has a carbon fiber rib, he can shoot longer 30-inch barrels (Hancock previously shot 28-inch barrels without a carbon fiber rib to keep the barrels lighter).

“That little bit of extra length [in the barrels] helps with some of the longer targets that we have, but it doesn’t add any weight to the weapon, so you can still move it just as smoothly and fluidly as you can with a shorter barrel,” Hancock said. “We don’t have time to stop the weapon and get it moving again, so if you have a heavy barrel, you need a heavy stock so that your weapon is balanced. A heavy barrel causes you to do what we call a check mark when you mount the weapon. That means your barrel drops when you go to mount it, and you have to bring it back up to get on target. In international clay pigeon sportyou must keep your weapon on the plane of the target at all times to be able to break consistently [because the bird is moving so fast].”

Competitive shooters are fanatical about shotgun cartridges. Many of them use aftermarket choke tubes to maximize cartridge density. Hancock has done so in the past. But a few years ago, he couldn’t find a pair of his favorites Muller chokes when owner Dan Muller moved his business to Florida. So Hancock tried the standard Beretta Optima HP chokes. They delivered a superior pattern and he has stuck with them ever since.

Hancock shoots 2¾-inch No. 9 Federal paper-hull shotgun shells with a 24-gram load (Olympic shotgun shells must be 24 grams). That’s slightly less than the load a 7/8-ounce shotgun shell delivers. There are about 511 pellets in a lead 7/8-ounce No. 9 and about 495 in a 24-gram No. 9. Hancock doesn’t count pellets when he models his shotgun on paper. He wants to see a solid bulge in the center of the target. The shot string isn’t a problem for him either. In international skeet, it just doesn’t matter; the clay pigeons fly too fast. Plus, the targets are moving horizontally, as opposed to the trap, where the targets fly away from the shooter, and the shot string is more of a factor.

“The shot is so fast on target — I think it’s half or two times around the target — that the string doesn’t even come into play,” Hancock says. “I used a lot of information from Dean Clark, who was the coach for the U.S. Army Marksmanship Unit when I was there. He did all kinds of cartridge density testing and found that you really only have a couple of inches where the cartridge is actually impacting the target.”

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Three Shooting Questions for Vincent Hancock

In late January 2022, I had the chance to go duck hunting in Kansas with Hancock and a few friends. He grew up hunting quail in Georgia, but is just getting into waterfowl hunting. Not surprisingly, he’s a damn good wingshooter. One afternoon, a flock of Canada geese landed on his side of the hide, and Hancock and two other hunters completely destroyed them. It was as if someone had shot a hole through seven or eight geese that were backpedaling over the decoys. There were dead geese everywhere. He missed at least once, though, when he missed a gadwall that flew away from 40 yards away—the hardest shot for waterfowl. It was nice to know that even Olympic champions get screwed.

During our drives to and from duck hunting destinations, I had the chance to ask Hancock a few questions about shooting. Here’s the best he had to say.

Outdoor Life: How do you mentally prepare yourself to smash goals with the consistency it takes to win three gold medals?

Vincent Hancock: The most important thing is to guide yourself through the process. And if you’re competing, you have time to do that. If you’re hunting, you don’t have as much time. If you’re duck hunting, you have some time to see the bird, but if you’re quail hunting, you don’t have that. But you can prepare yourself. Before I break a target, I have a checklist of things I need to do. Are my feet in the right place? Is my barrel aligned with where I want to break the target? [I tell myself] Stay in front of the bird and adjust the barrel speed to the bird as it comes out of the house. Hold the bird for an extra split second so you can see the underside of it. If you can’t see clearly what you’re shooting, you’re not going to hit it. And finally, pull the trigger. It all happens very quickly, but I think about all of those elements before I shoot, every single time. The key to better shooting is having a process.

OL: You shoot in front of an audience or with new people, like on our duck hunt in Kansas, all the time. Do you ever feel pressured to perform in those situations?

VH: You definitely feel like you’re going to shoot in front of people. If I were Tiger Woods, I wouldn’t want to walk onto a golf course and miss one off the first tee. For me, it’s kind of the same. I know there are expectations because I’ve been successful. But it’s also fun, and that’s what I try to focus on now. When I was younger, I felt a lot of pressure to perform. As a kid, I struggled shooting in front of people. But a sports psychologist I worked with said, ‘You just have to imagine that everyone is watching you because you’re really good. And whether you shoot well or not, they’re still going to be impressed with how you shoot.’ It makes it so much easier [when I] miss. And it’s more fun that way. Because I’m really good at this, and it gives me a chance to show people. You have to have the confidence to go into these situations and know that you’re going to do well.

OL: You dropped three targets in your final round in Tokyo before going to a shoot-off and winning gold. How do you shake off misses, refocus and succeed?

VH: You have to be able to place it [missing] out of your head and focus on the next goal. In the last round I went from perfect to three goals. To miss that many, something went wrong. So I had to think about what I did wrong. You have to play that back in your head. Find the problem and then tell yourself the correction. That’s easier said than done. Because it can be really frustrating to miss goals, but you can’t do anything about it. And as I’ve gotten older, I’ve gotten better at realizing that everyone’s going to miss goals at some point. You have to stay positive. I broke 122 goals and missed three at the Olympics. So I had 122 successes and three failures. I knew I had to make a correction to be successful and that’s what I did. I figured out what I was doing wrong, corrected it and won.

This story was updated on August 5, 2024, to include reporting on Hancock’s performance at the Paris Olympics.