[Dave McCracken]

OK,folks, this will cover(I hope)the mental part of shotgunning.There may be a few surprises....

One day back when the world and I were young,Pop was trying to help me connect with some supersonic doves. I was barely adolescent, painfuly aware of the fact that Pop was missing few of the shots he took, and the number of empty 16 gauge hulls in my vest greatly outnumbered the doves in same by a factor of 4 or 5. Teenage Angst was kicking in.

Pop wasn't a great teacher, but he was sensitive to my feelings. After trying a few things I know now as part of a sustained lead technique, he said."Try hitting them in the beak". Within a shot or two, doves started to drop more frequently, though not all the time, of course. A little critiquing on the way home nailed it down for me. While lead was important, FOCUS was critical. I was using less perceived lead this way, but I wasn't shooting for the whole bird.On geese later that fall, it was the cheek patch I tried to shoot.

Bowhunters know to "pick a spot". Fred Bear used to say to pick a hair over the vitals and try to split that hair.

A woman friend I taught to shoot a bow claimed at the time she'd never hunt.I knew she would be an active hunter from her expression. She had the same level of concentration as a good barn cat does when staking out a hot mousehole. She's taken a deer or two so far. That's the level of concentration we need.

Same applies to shotgunning. Shoot for the beak, the eye, the white band that gives the ringneck it's name. Bring your concentration down to the foremost molecule of a speeding clay and hit that.

I've long thought that the ability to concentrate on a shot time after time is the reason some folks run 100 straights fairly often and the rest of us hardly ever. If we treat each shot as a single isolated event instead of a link in a chain, it's easier to hit them time and again.

And, sometimes using fantasy to psych us up for the shot helps. Visualize the bird launching, the swing,the shot,the feathers or clay dust drifting on the breeze, then take the shot.

As we sometimes hurt ourselves by thinking something like ,"I never make these shots". IF we think that, we're probably right. If we think, "I can do this", we're probably right also.

We all rerun our shots in our minds. Do this with the hits, but do not play your tape of a miss over and over. The target's lost, nothing can be done about it, but we can hit the next one. And with the right technique, we will.

And, after one's spent a few days shooting a particular game or game bird, there's the fact that we've done this before. The Confidence Factor is under-rated. All trapshooters know the first 25 Straight is the hardest, and the first 100.

If we've done it once, we know we can do it again.

The first 25 I ran, I looked at the last bird and thought, "It's a piece of cake, I just did this 24 times in a row, once more is easy".

Any guesses on what would have happened if my thought train was something like"OmiGawd, I can't blow this one, I'm straight"? Right....

[TrapperReady]

Just a couple comments about things that have worked well for me. First of all, in keeping with your idea about focus, I always try to narrow my focus onto the front edge of the clay.

Especially with long or fast moving shots, it helps me to think "if you're going to miss, miss out in front". Many years ago, when I was golfing quite a bit, I heard someone say that if you leave a putt beneath the hole, you never had a chance. It's the same with shotgunning. If you are behind, there's no way to break the clay (and when hunting, you are only likely to miss or cripple).

The one other mental trick I sometimes use is to "get mad at it". Specifically, if I'm shooting trap and drop a bird or two, I'll pretend that the clays are actually chukars. For some reason, I don't like chukars, and enjoy shooting them. So, if I visualize a chukar flying out of the trap house, my concentration and focus is increased. Then I almost never miss. Other people may try visualization of their boss or mother-in-law.

One thing I've noticed shooting trap is that sometimes the birds look clear and big, almost like basketballs floating up there. Those are the good nights. However, once in a while, they look small and fast. It's not that they've changed, it's just that my level of concentration is reduced.

[Correia]

Agree with the above, but I have a few other things that have helped me.

1. Don't think about shooting. Just shoot. If you take the time to think about what you are going to do you are going too slow. Shooting with a shotgun should be fast and natural. You should already have played the mental game. You know the answers to the questions. Just see the target and shoot it.

This is kind of hard to explain but let me try an analogy for those of you who play sports. When you are playing basketball you don't actually think about what is going on, you just do. You don't have to actively tell yourself to dribble or shoot or anything like that you just do it. You know what zone you are covering, you know where your teamates and the other players are. You know because you have practiced until it has become natural.

Good competition shooters are the same way. They think to themselves, ok there is the buzzer, draw gun, find target, front sight, put finger on trigger, etc. They just do what they know to do.

2. Practice your focus until you learn to call your shot. I mean that you kind of take a mental snapshot of your sight picture the instant you pull that trigger. When you learn to call your shot you know that you hit the target before you ever hear the clang of steel, or see the clay turn into powder. When you get to this point you not only know when you miss, but more importantly you know why.

And go read Brian Enos's Practical Shooting book. It is a book for IPSC style pistol shooting, but the chapters on focus are worth the price of the book for shooters in any discipline. (well, maybe other than high power or bullseye style stuff, but you know what I mean). :)

[Dave McCracken]

Thanks, TrapperReady. Glad you brought up clays big as basketballs. Washtub is my simile.

In trap, focussing on the area in front of the traphouse helps those clays get bigger. So will expecting big targets. If you think the targets will be big and slow, they'll be big and slow. If you think they'll be aspirin sized and moving at NASCAR velocities, so be it.

And chukars are here because they got thrown out of Asia for bad behavior.

Back to concentration....

Ever note how much a bad pull will ruin some folk's string? A No Bird situation will distract many folks, and a sign of better shotgunners is the ability to refocus, concentrate and bust the thing no matter what.

[HS/LD]

Thanks again Dave for the time and effort. I am out again this Sunday for an informal clay killing session.

I will be again taking your advice to heart.

Regards,
HS/LD

[Mannlicher]

Old Rev. Lee, my shooting mentor from years back, taught me much of the same techniques when bringing me up to speed with the shotgun. He was a duck hunter, and a quail fanatic.

He coached me when shooting duck, to aim at the beak, or the neck, depending on angle and distance. With him guiding me, I learned to connect often. I still use that today.

With Quail, the process is a little different. Like Corriea explained, you just do it. Practice, and more practice, until the motions are ingrained. The bird flushes, you raise, lead, and fire, without really analyzing or thinking.

That works for me, other's experiences may vary.

[TrapperReady]

As I've read this thread some more, a few more things come to mind.

1) When shooting sporting clays (especially on following pairs), if I miss the first one, I'll say to myself "Gonna smoke the next one!". That takes just a split second to think, and it seems to remove that "Oh crap, I just missed one. Gee, I hope I don't miss this next one too." feeling.

2) When I'm shooting first (or observing others shoot) during sporting clays, I always try to not just view the clay, but also where the ideal place is to break it. I'll then try to break it at that spot, and adjust if necessary.

3) If something doesn't feel right, don't be afraid to slow down and restart. Usually, once overy couple of rounds of trap, I'll mount the gun and it won't feel quite perfect. I used to try to wiggle it into position, and would still be thinking about how my mount wasn't quite right even as I called for the bird. Now, I'll just take the gun off my shoulder, take a breath and start over. It only takes a second and keeps my mind focused on the target, not my crappy mount.

4) In conjunction with #3, when shooting sporting clays, I don't worry if the gun mount is wrong. With the bird already in the air, there's not much I can do, so I just keep focused on the bird. I found that most of the time, even with a fairly horrendous (like almost on my bicep) mount, I can still hit the target.

5) Whenever I start to get into a slump, I stop shooting seriously for a little while, and just play around. Sometimes I'll shoot left-handed, or with my wife's 20ga. I may shoot a round of trap seeing how many I can break if I wait for the targets to start dropping before shooting. I find that by doing this, I don't get aggravated enough to start over-analyzing things.

[sm]

Good advice from all.

I'm a 'swing through shooter'...and yes I still get razed, but if it breaks, its broke.

I too "have to not think" but focus and shoot . I focus on the leading edge...or just in front of that...a bit more if doves have afterburners,or the clays are fueled by the wind. I have an idea where I'm going to break a clay ( in relation to stake). In practice I push myself to shoot quicker...so much before the stake for instance.

I prefer to practice with and shoot in squads with better shooters.Seems to make me focus and I find my shooting improves.

Slumps, yeah well , I'm usually doing at least one of the 5'right' things I should be doing wrong. Main culprit at the beginning was 'measuring and thinking" . For me, My partner would just pull a bird--without me knowing when-or which house. Typical for me--I get into to trouble when I think. The Human eye/hand/ brain/ computer is awesome...disance myself and let it do its thing.

Assertive: I know some are afraid to lead off a squad, if I have to lead-off, I get real assertive, set the pace, and assist others, but I do not make the others feel rushed.

If shooting last, and I know some feel pressured/ hurried...well I am ready to shoot , assertive, but shoot my game well, I don't lag behind--if done right--one can actually make the lead-off guy feel like the last shooter...a good psych, especially if the lead -off isn't ready ...the pressure in on him.

I'm sure Dave will touch upon the 'psych' of shooting. I think its good to know so as to not fall victim to it..."course been known to use it myself ;)

"Good shooters are made--not born" --Fred Misseldine

[Dave McCracken]

Thanks,folks,the think tank here is truly a treasure.

There's lots of mental processes at work when we shoot. Our minds read speed, distance and direction, and tell our bodies how to make the shot.

Like someone said, thinking is bad at the moment. Unconscious thought processes and routines developed by practice are what we use.

My Mantra,"Just shoot the darn thing". Most of the time, the shot happens and the target's hit.

A few things mentioned need reinforcement.

Shooting with great shooters might deflate the ego, but it's terrific for improvement and shooting to one's limits. Shooting trap with ATA Hall Of Famers gave me some straights I might not have gotten if I'd been shooting with folks closer to my level.

Corriea mention the mental snapshot, It's good to stick that in the mental files, because the shot will happen again. Nash Buckingham talked and wrote about a thought train when pass shooting of "The last time I got this shot I put it over there to hit".

As for the "Psych" game,we'll get to that later.

One more thing, if one is focussed on hitting the target in the beak, or the very front edge of the clay,they're guaranteed to not be "Bead Checking", a common way to mess up.

[Correia]

As for shooting in a squad with better shooters I totally agree.

I find that if I'm the most experienced guy in the squad I don't do nearly as well as when I'm shooting with some really good folks. All a mental game really.