Ability, Gun Fit & Mentality...

As the title suggests, I believe that there are three areas that you must have covered to get anywhere in clay shooting. Yes, there are many areas that you must get right but there are three in particular that I think can hold people back from reaching a decent level of shooter at Club level. Or indeed higher levels of the sport.

The three areas are; Ability, Gun Fit and Mentality.

I can look down the list of names on the board at my club and have a fair idea of what is holding that person back.   From watching them shoot, talking to them, and the general way they conduct themselves on a line.  It can be frustrating to watch.  They are usually lacking in one of the above.

Ability

 

I believe that ability is the least important of the three.  Everyone who starts clay shooting has to begin somewhere.  When you start shooting, you really don't know what ability you have.  Through practice, listening to advice given and trying different things for yourself, ability can be learned.  You begin to know what works for you and what doesn't.

Of course ability is important, but sometimes ability can be hidden because of being told the wrong thing by the wrong people and bad habits setting in.  I honestly believe that every single person has it in them to be decent shooters. 

Getting people who are willing to listen though is another matter altogether.

Gun Fit

 

Gun fit is vitally important.  It is certainly one of the main reasons behind people being average shooters and being good or very good shooters.

In an ideal world we would all fly off to Italy or Germany or to some other far flung place and get measured up and fitted to a gun by the finest shotgun manufacturers from around the world.  Unfortunately this is only a dream for the vast majority of shooters.  We have to buy a gun off a shelf in a gunshop and hope we can hit clays with it.  Well, this isn't strictly true.

A good fitting gun can make hitting clays so much easier.  It is much the same as good fitting shoes.  Too small and you can't walk very far without hurting and too big you are stepping out of them making it so much of a chore to move around.  It is the same with poorly fitting trousers or jackets or anything at all.

There are so many people trying to shoot with guns that do not fit them.  It is painful to watch.  Unfortunately, there are some gun dealers out there who seem to be after a sale more than anything.  It makes me so angry when I see left handed shooters turning up to shoot with right handed guns.  "...aww the boy in the shop told me I could shoot with that alright..."! Talk about a facepalm moment!

Then there are those who get drawn to a brand.  Over the years I have seen so many good shooters who decide they've always wanted to shoot a particular brand of gun so buy one somewhere.  Shooters who have been hitting really good scores with a Browning or Beretta then take notion of something like a Perazzi or a Krieghoff.  It can send them backwards.  I've seen people going from consistently shooting 24 and 25 per line, dropping to 19 and 20 after changing to their 'dream gun'.

Guns can be very different.  Even within the same brand and model.  I once heard a top, TOP, trap shooter from Northern Ireland talking about the Beretta DT10.  He said there could be ten lined up in a shop and only one that he could shoot with.

Different guns have different characteristics.  In general, Italian guns like Beretta and Perazzi are a lot shallower in the action than a Browning or Miroku for example, which are usually higher.  Shooting for years with a Miroku and then switching to a Beretta can take a lot of adjusting and vice versa. 

If you can, try as many guns as you can to see if you can get on with them.  Failing that, take an experienced shooter with you that knows a bit about gun fit and check your eye down the barrel at least.  It could save a lot of hassle and frustration further down the road.

Mentality

 

So, you've reached a decent level of ability and have a gun that fits reasonably well.  Why are you still missing clays?

Down The Line (DTL) is a mental challenge. I honestly believe that hitting the target is probably the easiest aspect of DTL shooting but you have to hit that target 25 times in a line and possibly another 75 times after that again in a 100 Bird Competition.  How can you hit 17 targets on a line and miss your 18th and then hit the rest?  Always seem to hit 22 or 23 in a line but can only hit 24 or 25 every now and again? Of course there could be a gust of wind that lifts or flattens the target just as you pull the trigger.  That is just bad luck. Accept it and move on.  What is 100% certain is that the target didn't break because the gun wasn't pointing where it should be.  Why though?  There can be any number of reasons but most of them are a result of your brain switching off.  You can get over confident, tired, distracted, thinking of other things; there can be a whole host of reasons.

It is mentality that is holding me back at the minute.  I just switch off in the middle of a line.  I'm fine up until around the 15 bird mark and then I'm almost guaranteed to do something just plain stupid.  Moving the gun before I see a full target.  Locking onto the target with my eyes and not moving the gun after the bird.  Really stupid, silly, things that just mean you've lost a full target.  I get angry on the line.  Not because I missed a target, I've dropped plenty of birds in my life and am not overly bothered at missing targets, but the reason why I missed the target.  Purely because I've went to sleep in the middle of a line, AGAIN!

At our club practice on a Thursday evening recently I was on a line and was shooting quite well.  In the middle of the line I started to notice grass growing up through the stones between the shooting stands and the trap house.  I started thinking about spraying the grass with weed killer before I went home.  Maybe it would be better to cut the grass first with the strimmer and treat it with weed killer later.  Before the line was finished I'd dropped a couple of full targets and had a second barrel or two.  WHY WAS I EVEN LOOKING AT GRASS GROWING!!! 

This is what I believe is holding far too many back from getting to the higher classes of both club and national level.  There are so many people shooting who have ability in bucket fulls,  have guns that fit them well but don't have the ability to keep switched on for the entire length of a line or a shoot.

To shoot DTL well, you almost need to turn the entire line into something robotic.  You turn yourself almost into a machine.  Watch the top shooters at registered shoots and they'll all conduct themselves the same for the entirity of the line.  Every target is approached individually and the routine involved in lifting the gun, closing the gun, shouldering the gun, the hold point of the gun, calling the target and the pulling of the trigger will be the same to last detail. This is what seperates them from the rest. 

Part of this mentality training could be to get used to starting on a specific stand and work out a routine for shooting from that stand.  I personally don't like starting on Stand 1 but have a routine worked out for starting on stand 4 which I can then adapt to suit starting on stands 2, 3 or 5 if necessary.  If I start on stand 4 and can get on a line with a reasonable pace of shooting, I find it so much easier to shoot.  I do exactly the same thing when stand 1 calls 'pull'.  The same thing when stand 2 calls their target, the same thing when stand 3 calls their target, the same procedure myself when it is my turn to shoot and the same thing when 5 calls their target and then back to shooter number one when the whole process starts over again.  I never see another person's target leave the trap.  The only target I am interested in is the one I'm about to shoot at. That is the only way I can shoot DTL well.  When I start seeing other people's targets, seeing sheep and cows in the fields round about, wondering if that's a Buzzard or some other kind of bird of prey, thinking that the traffic looks busy on the main road... I may as well close the gun and set it on the stand as I'm only wasting cartridges.

The biggest part of DTL shooting is between the ears.  Get the mental side right and you'll go a long way to consitently hitting good scores.