2004-06 June 2004 Coaching Hour – Review of the U.S. Open

…….June – Review of the U.S. Open…….

 – The Open in Hindsight

 – Overthinking the Shot

 – Watching Master Class Shooters

 – Don’t Discount the Medical

I went to my practice deal and I decided to conquer those targets, and I shot way too many of them. That kind of messed up my routine a little bit, and instead of shooting pairs solidly, I wound up missing one or two. The biggest disturbance, I think, was to my routine.

So I shot the Cayman Cup and was not happy, and I said: The only way I’m going to get through this is to go back to routine and back to focus and try to stick to my correction routine.

The second day, I shot really well and somebody came up and said: Oh, great job yesterday. I kind of looked at the scoreboard and didn’t know what was happening, and just kept shooting. On Sunday I was tied for first. I guess I was tied for first at the end of the first day and by the end of the day I was still there. But, boy, I dropped. I was a little disappointed that I dropped so many targets that I had been real solid on before. But it was a great tournament.

Dick: Well, Willy, I want to congratulate you. You did a great job.

Willy:  Thanks Dick.

Brian: He sure did.

Gil: Well let me ask you. If you had it to do over, when you were practicing your window shots, what would you have done differently in preparation for the Open? 

Willy: I think I would have shot those shots, but I set up probably 80 percent of my practice with that, and what I’m going to do now until   the State Shoot is maybe work on those things for five or ten percent   of my practice targets, and for the rest just work on my fundamentals inside of 30 to 35 yards. The targets I have to focus on. The targets that still have transitional lines, but I have time to see them and time to do my routine and kill the pair. I’ve been thinking about it ever since then, and I think that if I’d just stuck with my fundamentals, I would have broke more of those targets than I did by just practicing them. And I broke more of those type targets, but I lost a lot more that I had in the bank before I started messing around.

Gil: So you would have practiced the window shots, but you wouldn’t have practiced the window shots exclusively?

Willy: Right.

Gil: And you feel like practicing just the basic fundamental trajectories and some of the window shots, that you would have had a more well- rounded game going into the Open?

Willy: Yeah. And more than anything, just making sure my routine was just rock solid.

Gil: It’s a comforting thing to have a routine you can depend on, isn’t it?

Willy: It is. The only way I got back any kind of consistency was with routine.

Gil: So you got there, you realized you hadn’t prepared the right way, you were a little disconnected and you said to yourself in the Cayman Cup: Look, I’ve got to start depending on my routine and get back in my routine and trust my correction routine and routine my way out of this problem.

Willy: Yeah. When I looked at the Cayman Cup after a few stations, I went: Oh, jeepers, I really messed up already. I’m just going to practice my routine from here on out. By the end of the Cayman Cup, I was shooting  pretty good.

Gil: What was it that triggered you to realize you had possibly not prepared the best way that you could have? Missing targets that you’d been hitting all year? Were you out of connection? Was it the target jamming the gun? Or was it just a thought process?

Willy: I think it was a couple of things. I felt like I had a hard time, the bird got close to the gun way too much of the tournament. I don’t quite know why that is, because in practicing the window shots, I was making sure that didn’t happen, but on normal straightforward pairs, I kept getting jammed or stuck, so I really don’t know why that happened. Maybe it was just a loss of feel. I don’t have a good answer.

Gil: It might be that in a window shot, you don’t have a long time to look at the bird so you have to react fairly quickly, and on shots were you see the bird a long time, your reaction might have been a little too quick when you got focus on the bird early and you had to slow down and get back in sync with the bird, and the bird overran you. That’s a good possibility, but did you get that trophy glued back together?

Willy: I did.

Gil: My wife tried to get Willy to take the Styrofoam box that his trophy came in, and put that trophy in there and put it back on the airplane that way and in his infinite wisdom, he said: No I’ll just wrap it up in my clothes, it’ll be okay in my suitcase. And when they inspected his suitcase to take a look at the trophy, they didn’t pack it quite as well as he had packed it, and when it got back home, it was in several pieces right?

Willy: (laughs) Yeah.

Gil: Did you learn anything from that?

Willy: Always do what Vicki tells me too. (laughter)

Vicki: I was wondering when that was going to come about.

Gil: Well it didn’t take you long to figure that out, but I’ll be glad to get you another one if you can’t get all the toes back in the right place.

Willy: It’s good.

Gil: What kind of glue did you use to glue it back together? 

Willy: Superglue gel.

Gil: Well all right. I talked to Dean about this same thing, Dean are you out there?

Dean: Yes. 

Gil: I’ll get to you in just a second, but I think you’re going to hear the same thing echoed when I talk to Dean. And that is, I mean, he was working on a different kind of target, but it was the fact that his objective in practice was not to produce the best, well-rounded game he could. He was training more on one particular thing that gave him a problem. Now, and for all you guys who are out there, if you have to work on something in particular, work on it, but remember that you’ve got to be able to shoot them all equally well and have a well rounded game. So that would be the change that you would make going into your next shoot right?

Dean: Yes.

Gil: Anything else?

Dean: No, I just like to keep everything well rounded.

Gil: Okay. Dean, talk to me about your shoot. Didn’t I talk to you Friday night  about something?

Dean: Yeah.

Gil: What did we talk about Friday night?

Dean: I shot really well on Friday and was really happy with that. I shot a 59 on the red course. Looking back, there are probably two targets I felt like I shouldn’t have missed. On Saturday, I shot the white course. I probably dropped seven targets, and those targets were all on the last pair. I’d run the first pair, break the first pair and then drop one or break the first two pair and then drop one. I did that seven different times on seven different stations. They were all basically easy targets; they were nothing I should have missed.

Gil: I still think I talked to you on Friday night. Where did you drop your birds on Friday?

Dean: No, that was on the Cayman Cup. I shot a 91 and that was also on Friday. We also might have talked about that. I dropped five targets on the last three stations. 

Gil; Yeah, we talked about that Friday night. You were concerned about that and we talked a little bit. I didn’t think you really had a problem, and said to just go out and do what you have to do. And all of the sudden you went back to —let’s see—you shot the red course in the morning?

Dean: Yeah the red course in the morning, the Cayman Cup in the afternoon. It was really hot too.

Gil: Yeah, very hot. Then you went to the white course the next day, and that is when I saw you out there.

Dean: Right.

Gil: And you were concerned about the last bird–itis thing, and what did we talk  about?

Dean: Basically just going back over the day. I had not slept well at all that previous night. That is the only thing I can still look at and still want to be in denial about that because normally that isn’t an issue. I don’t have to get a great night’s sleep to shoot well.

Gil: Well, but are you normally shooting that many targets in one day?

Dean: No, but I lined that whole deal up to where I never shot more than 200 in one day. Friday, I shot 66, and Saturday I shot FITASC, which is 50 targets and then 66 in the afternoon. So I kind of had that all balanced out so I never shot more than 150 to 200 targets in one  day.

Gil: Well, I’m still going with the bad sleep deal.

Dean: It’s the only thing left isn’t it?

Gil: Well, it’s the only thing out of all of it that makes sense. I mean, when you’re a shooter of your caliber and you have a mental game as strong as you have, it may not have manifested itself early on, but it certainly gets you right toward the end of the course. And that is just something you need to be aware of. Why didn’t you sleep well?

Dean: I must have been sick or something. I woke up in the middle of the night covered in sweat. I didn’t feel particularly bad, but I was up and never went back to sleep. I just didn’t sleep well.

Gil: Well those extra seven targets that you would have had if you were on your game would have certainly made a difference in where you finished.

Dean: Oh yeah.

Gil; I’m confident in telling you that I think it was the lack of sleep. 

Dean: Probably.

Gil: Maybe? Don’t get committed now.

Dean: It probably is, but I still think that anything under 25 yards I ought to be able to hit. I don’t care how messed up you are. 

Gil: Well, but you compile the lack of sleep with what you’ve been training on, which is the next thing I wanted to talk about. Tell the guys what you’ve been training on in your practice sessions.

Dean: Well, to back up before that to reemphasize your point, I went to bed on Saturday night at eight o clock and didn’t get up till eight o clock the next morning and I never laid in bed that long. On Sunday I shot a 64 on that blue course. So I had pretty good rest that night.

Gil: So is it more than just a probably that that might be the problem?

Dean: It could be. (laughter)

Gil: Don’t get committed, Dean. Don’t jump out there and get committed. Are you trying to hold on to this problem as long as you can or what?

Dean: I guess so.

Gil: Well, you obviously didn’t get much sleep if you stayed in the bed for 12 hours.

Dean: Right. 

Gil: Yeah, I might be talking him into it. Well, regardless of what the final score was, it was a hell of a score. Talk to the guys about how you came to the same conclusion that Willy did. Your training right before the Open didn’t really help you all that much.

Dean: No. I’ve got a basic philosophy that you have to hit absolutely all the easy targets and most of the hard ones and you’ll do real well, if not win. We also have, here in Texas, the Texas Challenge Series going on. Those are basically 12 or 13 separator stations, and we’ve really been working on the longer or more difficult targets, and I’ve gotten quite good at them. Last year I would always shoot two or three boxes of shells intentionally at stuff under 25 yards. And I haven’t been doing that. I kind of took it for granted. Thought I had  it.

Gil: And the gun speed is dramatically different on a 15-yard bird as opposed to a 55-yard bird. And you feel like that is something that cost you some birds.

Dean: Absolutely, because I’d miss it the first time and I’d think immediately: gun speed. Then I’d pick it right back up.

Gil: Okay, well I think it’s remarkable, once again, just to revisit the scores. You only missed two birds on the red course the first day that you felt like you should have killed. You missed seven birds on the white course the second day after a poor night’s rest. And after a very stellar night’s rest, you didn’t miss any birds on the blue course. Would that be a fair  summation?

Dean: That’s it.

Gil: Well, it might be the fact that you didn’t get any good rest.

Dean: Might be. Do I need to just say it, Gil? Do I need to just spit it out?

Gil: Well I’m just beating around the bush, here. I just know you’re not. So how are you going to change your practice? You’re just going to implement more small shorter target practice?

Dean: Yeah.

Gil: When you go back on your first practice session; will you shoot a greater amount of close targets than you normally would on a practice session?

Dean: No. I mean, I still have a lot of confidence in my short game; it just wasn’t where I wanted it to be. Obviously I’m going to shoot a couple boxes of shells at something under 30 yards and then go back to my normal deal.

Gil: And your normal deal would be longer targets?

Dean: Longer targets, and I would do some things such as, if I’m working on true pairs, I’ll shoot a true pair the way that you would do it in a tournament and then I’ll shoot them backwards.

Gil: Okay. Just to change the rhythm.

Dean: Just to do something different. It’s more about changing the breakpoints than anything. If you’re going to shoot a pair backwards, you better shoot one dramatically quicker than you normally would, to save time on the second one. I’ve got to do something to keep it interesting, and one of the things I do is to shoot pairs backwards.

Gil: But shoot them in a breakpoint.

Dean: Oh yeah, I’m committing to a breakpoint, it’s just dramatically closer or farther than what you would normally do if money was on the line.

Gil: Okay. So you’re looking for a more balanced game? 

Dean: Yep. 

Gil: I think that you said it well when you said you never really master the game, you just try to control it through your thoughts and through your practice. Just for everybody else out there, even if you’re having problems with one target, work on it, but always go for a well rounded game, especially when you’re coming up to a tournament. I would tell you this again, and anybody who wants to argue can argue, but it isn’t the hard ones that hurt you. It’s not killing everything within 28 yards. You’ve got to be lethal out to 28 yards. You gotta bank everything they give you. You just can’t give it up, and that is the only way that you’re ever going to win consistently and bring your game to an overall rounded game.

So you had a pretty good shoot Dean?

Dean: Very good. I’m very happy with it.

Gil: And we also talked a little bit earlier about what you’re going to do prior to Nationals. You’re going to maintain the fact that you are practicing closer targets, especially coming up to Nationals.

Dean: Yeah. I’m going to do some homework and find out how they’re going to be set as best I can. I’ll find out who’s setting them. But if they’re set anything like they were last year, I’m going to probably work 75 percent close game on my training and 25 percent on longer stuff.

Gil: And how many weeks out before Nationals will you do that?

Dean: Three. 

Gil: Okay. And how many times a week are you able to practice  now?

Dean: I shoot on Wednesday evenings typically just once a week. Occasionally I’ll get out on a Thursday or Friday, but that is not very often.

Gil: Something else we talked about in one of our conversations this last weekend is that you’re able to keep up with and in some instances beat people who are literally shooting   professionally.

Dean: It’s astonishing to me. Because I don’t spend near the time and money that some of these guys do, and I compete with   them.

Gil: Much to my dismay, you understand, about the money thing. And Dean made that comment and we talked about that for a moment, and  I feel like it’s a testimony to the simplicity of the   system.

Dean: Absolutely.

Gil: And how easy the system is to apply to a wide variety of targets. I think he’s  whole heartedly behind that statement, and in some ways, it’s a little bit more difficult in the beginning of a system to learn, but once it’s embedded and subconscious it certainly makes the diversity of target presentations seem more similar, and it’s a lot easier to apply both on the short game and the long game.

We’ve had a lot of people come walk this path with us. Some have stayed and some have gone on to other things, and the people who have stuck with it are really performing well. It’s something that isn’t going to happen overnight. It’s something you’re going to have to work on.

Overthinking the Shot

Gil: Before I go to Driscoll, I want to go to Dick Baker. Dick called me the other day after I was eating one of the last fresh tomatoes he gave me. He said, “I just don’t know what I’m doing coach.”

I said, “Well get the gun out of your damn shoulder and quit thinking.”

Have you thought any more about that?

Dick: Oh yes, I sure have. I made it. I knew I was out of it on the last day and so I just decided I wanted to do some things differently. I lowered the gun down some and I came from too low to too high. Coming up too high just doesn’t work for me. I thought I had that down and it was going to work good, but when you get all those different variety of targets, it doesn’t.

The second thing for me was this. You know, we’ve talked about a breakpoint and I had had breakpoints, but I’m guilty sometimes of passing that breakpoint some. I guess I reached a point that I just really didn’t give a damn, and I picked spots out. Things on the ground or bushes on the ground, and I made a promise that I wouldn’t pass that spot. And you know, when I’m really glued to that breakpoint, it made   a lot of difference to me in my last round of shooting. So I always pick   a breakpoint, but there’s two ways to have a breakpoint. You can slide by six yards, or you have one where you just pull the trigger no matter what, and that is what I’m going to do.

Gil: I would make a prediction that you would shoot much more subconsciously if you would do that. With respect to where you start your gun. If I need to, I’ll bring me a marker and we’ll put a big X on all your shirts so that you won’t start your gun any higher than that on your shoulder.

Dick: Okay, that would be good.

Gil: Either that or I’ll tattoo a spot on your shoulder so, boy, you’ll make damn sure you don’t get that gun up too high.

Dick:  I thought  I was really  on to something,  but coming up too high blocks your vision. It was a learning experience. I don’t know if I’ll live long enough to get all of these learning experiences down, cause I’m getting down to the end of the road. But some of these really make a difference.

Gil: You’re too ornery to be that close to the end of your tape measure. Don’t be worried about that.

Dick: (laughs) And then I’ve got some other changes I’ve got to make on my mental game as well. I’ll talk to you sometime about that off the air. I won’t bore anybody with that. But those two points as far as breakpoints and getting the gun too high really hurt me. Other than that, I had a good time, but I did realize a couple things out of it, which made me really feel good that at least I learned something. 

Gil: Yeah. Well I’ll go back to Dean for just a second, about something that Dean said to me Saturday afternoon. I saw him coming off the course and he drove up and we talked for a second. I said: What do you think?

He said: The targets are close and they appear to be easy, but they take a great deal of technical expertise to break them. They’re very deceptive.

And Dean, didn’t you tell me you talked to Cory about those?

Dean: Yeah. He said it seemed like a whole week went by to just about the time when he was on them they’d drop under him when he pulled the trigger.

Gil: Was he mystified by that?

Dean: Oh yeah. He didn’t have a clue. And in his defense, the style that he shoots just isn’t great for those short, constant transition targets.

Watching Master Class Shooters

Gil: Driscoll, didn’t you tell me that you were shooting near Cory?

Driscoll: I was shooting behind Cole Story.

Gil: Okay. And tell us what you witnessed?

Driscoll: You want the whole version or the short version?

Gil: The short version is fine.

Driscoll: Well I had a great shoot. I went to exorcise some demons and I did that and had a lot of fun. My scores weren’t very good, but I got to hang out and see people I hadn’t seen. When I left I’d really enjoyed myself, which was the whole point of me going to the shoot.

I showed up Thursday and registered, and was lucky enough to get put on a squad with four master class shooters, one of them being Cole Story. I shot behind him the whole time. We started off Friday and he shot a 63 on the blue course. I wasn’t paying a whole lot of attention  on Friday; I was kind of doing my own thing. But Saturday we started out shooting red course Saturday, and I think he may have dropped one target on the first or second station, but after that he ran the next, I think, nine stations.

I sat back and I started saying: you know, I’m watching an upward spiral. He got up and dropped the one target and it didn’t bother him. He started getting in the groove and I’d watch him get in the stand and get set. He’d shoot and kind of flip his shells down into the trash and load real quick and he’d adjust his vest and had his little routine and quirks, and I just watched him go into the zone. He just smoked every target. You could see he wasn’t even thinking about it. Right before his turn, he’d get up and look at a couple targets and you could see him mark his breakpoint and get into the zone.

Like I said, he ran nine or ten stations. He dropped one target toward the end and I could see that it bothered him. It was the first target of a pair and it was only a two pair station. And it kind of bothered him because he had been running everything. We had a couple stations and he ended up dropping three more targets on the next two stations. So I could see it kind of bothering him. I could see the downward spiral kind of starting but he still only dropped five targets on the thing, so after two days he was two targets out of the lead in third place.

We show up, and I’m shooting with some other master class shooters and they’re shooting off and on. We show up Sunday morning and we’re shooting at eleven. We’re shooting the white course. We show up and Janet, who we were shooting with says: Hey I heard you didn’t get in until two last night, did you get enough sleep? He said: yeah, I’m fine. Who’d you hear that from? Oh, my dad. Oh yeah, I’m fine and whatever. And he’s pacing around, and I can tell he’s thinking about it.

He was very nice to me and very polite. I was shooting terrible but I could just tell. So we started off and he missed a target on the first station. I could see that it really bothered him. He came out of the station, and I’d shot with him. I’d been behind him every station for the last 26 stations, and I could see him come out of the station and he threw his shells down and he was frustrated. He came out and everybody said: Hey, don’t worry about it.

We go down to the next station and he drops another target. I could just see that downward spiral start. He got to where he quit talking to people, and he’d get up there, his routine was kind of the same, but it was more rigid. You could see he was really bearing down. He’d miss a target and he’d just slam his empties into the can instead of flipping them like he did before, and when he came out of the station before it was high fives and he’d say something or whatever. But now, he’d come out and wouldn’t look at anybody. He wouldn’t say anything.

I was going: Man, this kid’s exploding. I watched him and it just kept going on and going on, and we finally got to the last station, our last station on the white course, which was number two. It was a couple of close targets, it was a left and a right crosser. And he missed the first bird of the pair and slammed his shells into the trash. Put two into his gun, put his gun up, called pull and just pulled the trigger twice and never even came close to a bird. He ended up with a 52 on the white course, which took him out of contention.

So I could kind of watch what was going on. The whole weekend I was watching what was going on. I shot the K cup. And at the K Cup I shot with another bird class shooter and an E class shooter, which was totally different than shooting with all these master class shooters. But I got to sit back and say: Man, I really got to see the upward spiral and the zone and then the downward spiral and what the emotions will do to you, because the emotions just killed this kid.

I could hear him talking early on: Yeah I worked with this coach and he’s really helping me on my mental game and whatever, and I wanted to say something to him: Hey dude, you need to do something here, you’re exploding, but I didn’t know him well enough to say something to him.

But it was very interesting to stand back and watch all this happen. Because, you go back and listen to the CD and listen to the spirals and I was listening to that CD when I drove to Houston. Then you go out and you watch it happen and you go: You know, this is really accurate. It was very amazing to me. I can say that I did not shoot well, but I didn’t go to shoot a score, I went to have fun, and every time I walked out of the station I never had a negative thought. There was one station where I said: Man, I should have broke all those because those were my targets, but I never really had a negative thought. I did find out, I don’t have a plan, I don’t have a routine and I don’t have a correction routine so I know exactly what I need to work on for the next few years.

Gil: It ain’t gonna take that long, Bubba.

Driscoll: (laughs) But I learned a lot. It was very interesting. It was a great shoot for me. Probably one of the best I’ve ever been to. And I got to meet Dean.

Gil: Let’s see, Dean, so he was down five birds going into the last day and he didn’t get any rest and look what happened to him. You know there might be something to   it.

Dean: Could be. I did not go out drinking the night before, I can promise that.

Gil: No you didn’t. I know you well enough to know you didn’t do that. 

Dean: It hurts me too long  anymore.

Gil: We’re getting too old.

Dean: I used to be healthy by ten o clock the next morning, now it’s ten o clock a week later.

Gil: Well, he’s a gifted shooter. He really is. He’s got quick hands and good eyes like all those young kids, but it doesn’t matter how much experience you have, it doesn’t matter how good you are, that spiral is going to hold true. Was it not interesting to watch him go into that zone?

Driscoll: Oh, gosh it was great. Another big ah-hah for me was that the people I was shooting with, almost everybody I was shooting with was shooting pretty much high gun. Gun mounted or almost mounted. And Cole shoots basically a mounted gun. So I’d get up there, and I’d basically be shooting a mounted gun. I couldn’t hit anything. Then all the sudden I’d say: Why are you shooting mounted gun? You don’t shoot mounted gun, you shoot low gun. So I’d go to low gun and try to hit the last pair. Well I’m at fifty percent. I’d miss the first pair and shot the last pair. That was another thing that I was doing, I was following these people and watching everybody shoot high gun. So I’d get up there and try to shoot high gun instead of the way that I know how to shoot, which is in the plan and the routine and the whole nine yards. So that was another reinforcement for me.

Gil: Dean, you used to shoot high gun.

Dean: Yes.

Gil: Contrast the difference between high gun and low gun. 

Dean: Well having come full circle now, I do both depending on the target. But probably 95 percent of what I do is gun down. It just allows you to do two different things, gun down and let the target come to the gun. You can see the line. You can see the target and everything just works better. If I really want to snap shoot a target, then I’ll put the gun up if I feel like I need that extra time. Especially on a trap target. If I want to kill a trap target really quick, I’ll shoot gun up, but not very much.

Gil: The only time you would shoot gun up is if the time constraints for you to breaking the target are very short. For example, if you had to break it really quick out of the trap to give yourself enough time to kill the other bird and you didn’t have the luxury of time to make the mount, then you would start the gun up. But that is the only time.

Dean: Right.

Gil: Now let me ask you something else. Even though you’re shooting gun down, how far it is off your shoulder? Does it vary from target to target?

Dean: Not really. I’ve got it worked into my routine. I’ve got a place where it goes, down probably six inches, and it’s very consistent there.

Gil: But you’ve worked on that.

Dean: Oh yeah. That is part of my routine that is worked   in.

Gil: When you practice your gun mounts?

Dean: Right. 

Gil: That was one of the big things that you started working on when we started working, wasn’t it?

Dean: I don’t remember it being that, but if you say so.

Driscoll: You know I find myself holding in different places depending on the target. What is the consensus there? 

Gil: Well I think that is more personal preference there. The only time I would recommend that you shoot with a mounted gun is on a trap target that is five yards or more in front of you, if it’s either straight in front or off to the side a ways. Or on a target where you had to break it really fast out of the trap in the first third of it’s flight path, because you don’t have the luxury of time to make a really soft smooth mount when you’ve got to break a target that quick.

If you’re not comfortable shooting with the gun all the way in your shoulder, just pull it out of your shoulder a couple inches, just so you can raise your head above the gun enough to where you can see around the gun and it doesn’t get in the way. When we do our strategy video, we talked about the blind spot. We discovered that, for every inch you raise your cheek off the gun, the blind spot diminishes by 50 percent. So when your head is about three inches off the gun, you can literally see around the gun and it doesn’t get as much in the way as it would if your head was on the gun.

There are some birds that I would start with the gun a little higher than others, but Driskil, it’s more personal preference than anything. And anything you can do to improve the consistency of that is good, such as starting more closely to the same place each time. I think that would improve your approach because then you would have the same distance to mount the gun each time.

In fact, when I first started working with Dean, his big thing was: I shoot with a mounted gun. And I said: Yeah and you’re tapped out at 82. I don’t give a damn where you put the gun. I don’t care if you shoot with a mounted gun after you learn to mount the gun, because until you learn to mount the gun, you have no feel. After you have feel, it’s very easy for you to transfer that feel to a mounted gun. But I would tell you that a minimum of 80 to 90 percent of the time, and I think Dean will back me up on this, you’re going to be much better off visually and rhythm-wise as far as feel, when you start with the gun out away from your shoulder so that you can feel the connection to the target in your hand.

I think Dick’s problem was that he was starting with the gun way too low. We got him to move it up a little bit higher. I mean he was starting with the gun butt at his elbow and almost halfway to your waist weren’t you Dick? 

Dick: Yes.

Gil: And that created too much movement. You understand what I’m saying Driscoll? 

Driscoll: Yeah.

Gil: That created way too much movement, therefore, when he had to move fairly quickly, he’s an old fart, so once he starts moving it’s hard for him to control that stuff. So taking a little bit of the excessive move out of his overall mount made a real dramatic difference for him three years ago, and it made a dramatic difference for him this year at the beginning. But the problem is, Dick being a little bit forgetful, being on the latter end of his tape measure, he’ll overcorrect things.

I think Dick’s problem was that he over corrected. He was shooting out in the pasture with a mounted gun, and hell, it’s  all great as long as you’re controlling the target presentation, but not when somebody else is controlling the target presentation like happened this last weekend. Like Dean said, these targets that we shot last weekend were simple. Not far, they were all fairly close targets, but they were in constant transition. And whenever it takes that much expertise to break a good score on targets like that, targets that are transitioning, I think you’re a lot better off with the gun out of your shoulder than you are with the gun in your shoulder. Would you not agree with that Dean?

Dean: Yes.

Gil: I mean, with the gun out of your shoulder, you are much freer to get the front hand involved and moving the gun. You begin to move the gun from the muzzles back instead of from the gun butt out. And it’s a much more efficient move. You’re able to insert the muzzle in the lead as the bird comes to you, as opposed to having to swing the gun and the body to get out there, trying to get in sync with that bird. I think that is what cost Dick quite a few targets this last weekend.

Even though you might want to start with the gun in your shoulder on certain targets, I would tell you not to mount the gun hard into your shoulder, locking it into your shoulder. Just put it back on your shoulder, but don’t jam it in there, because what I’ve found in helping people to learn to shoot with a mounted gun, the tighter you grip that gun and the tighter you pull that gun into your body, the more tension you’ll have. You may be able to whack the first one real quick, but because you have so much muscle tension in your hands and arms and shoulders, then you’ve got to completely relax everything, in order for you to make a quick move to the second target.

So when you’re shooting with a mounted gun, you want to put the gun on your shoulder, but don’t grip it tight like you see a lot of skeet shooters and a lot of trap shooters doing, because as soon as you break that first target quick, you’re going to have to go somewhere else with that gun. The tighter you are when you begin that shot, the tighter you’re going to be when you finish it, because regardless of how tight you grip the gun, you’re always going to grip it tighter when you pull the trigger as a reflex getting ready for recoil. So if the gun is just barely up there on your shoulder when you grip it, you’re not going to have near as many muscles tense and tight, gripping that gun when you get ready for recoil by gripping the gun stock. Does that make any sense to you Driscoll?

Driscoll: Yeah. Probably my preference, I mean I like low gun. I can see better with low gun and shoot better with low gun, and I understand all that. My low gun that I’m really comfortable with may not quite pass FITASC. But I wouldn’t have to drop it much to pass FITASC.

Gil: And that is another benefit of learning to shoot with an unmounted gun. You can shoot FITASC. To me it’s just a lot less stressful and it’s a lot easier on your visual circle. And we’ll talk about that at another show down the line. Maybe we’ll talk about that this winter.    I’m going to get Steve Brown to come on and talk about the eyes, and he’s had a couple more ah-hahs, and we’ve been talking about that. I’m anxious to have him on. I’m anxious for you guys to hear him because he’s a very gifted teacher and communicator. And he has done a lot more research into everything that has to do physiologically than I have. I know how they work, but he knows a lot more about the behind the eye thing than I do. But as far as how low the gun needs to be, that is personal preference.

There are a lot of great shooters out there who shoot with a mount- ed gun. Every damn one of them has a good gun mount. It’s just like when I first started working with Dean, I told him: learn to mount the gun, and once you learn to mount the gun, I don’t give a damn where you start the gun because you’ll have feel. But it’s awfully hard to move the gun from the muzzles back and make a good insertion as the target comes to you if the gun is already mounted when you started.

So if you shoot with a mounted gun, don’t jam it into your shoulder, and don’t lock your body into it. Just put it on your shoulder and raise your head. And when you see the bird, just let the gun come to your face and take the shot much quicker than you normally would with an unmounted gun.

Don’t Discount the Medical

Gil: Anyway, Brian, I’ve got a little bit of time to talk to you, so I’ll put some of these topics off until next month. Guys, just to kind of fill you in on Brian Brewton’s saga, he’s been shooting FITASC really well and he’s been having trouble with sporting. We’ve been trying to figure out what the deal has been for a long time.

I mean, he was shooting fantastic last year at the end and over the winter when he trained. He was really shooting well and you guys heard him talking how well he was shooting. And he noticed when he went to the Seminole Cup that he was shooting FITASC really well, but he didn’t shoot well in sporting clays. That is something that has been plaguing him all year. He just couldn’t put his finger on it. And he went to the doctor, and what did the doctor say Brian?

Brian: What it all boils down to was that I started taking Lipitor in February, right before the Seminole Cup. I had been taking it up until just about three weeks ago. I had placed in three tournaments in FITASC. Like you said, I was shooting like a dog on sporting. I also had just started taking blood pressure medicine. Within three days, I had to go back to the doctor and say: Hey I can’t take this stuff. I’m totally lost. I don’t know what in the hell is going on here. I just don’t like this.

So he put me on another prescription and I started taking it and it wasn’t so bad. But I still am having some problems. I went back to him again and he put me on a diuretic, a 25 mg diuretic. That seemed to be okay but just the day after I left the doctor’s office, cause I told the doctor, I just said: I’m not able to hold a conversation, my thoughts are not there. I can’t think.

So the next day I was watching one of the morning programs and they had a doctor on talking about one of the side effects of Lipitor. And you take that for high cholesterol, but consequently one of the side effects, which was not being advertised, is you lose cognitive function.

Driscoll: Does somebody want to define that for me?

Gil: That means you lose the ability to reason as quickly as you normally would. And Brian called me about this about three weeks ago when he got off of this drug. And it just hit me like a ton of bricks. I mean, FITASC, the overwhelming majority of the shots are singles or report pairs, not requiring a lot of specific breakpoints and a lot of specific planning.

In sporting clays, the overwhelming majority of the shots are true pairs requiring specific breakpoints and they require you to react and plan a shot or make a quick correction if you’re not hitting the birds. It just so happens that we’ve found that Brian has this problem with this drug. We’d been talking about this problem and I’d been racking my brain, and when he called me and told me about this cognitive dysfunction side effect, the mud fell out of the water. It became a crystal clear glass to me.

He can shoot FITASC because it doesn’t require as much planning, and it’s a much slower game. Therefore, the cognitive dysfunction problem he was having was not manifesting itself in FITASC, but it was definitely manifest in his sporting game. The other thing that occurred to me when I was talking to him about his performance here at the Open was that he had some thoughts going into the future, he had some thoughts about score, which probably, this problem that you were having made it easier for you to go mechanical.

Remember a couple months ago we talked about how it’s a perfectly normal thing for you to go mechanical because you got there from being mechanical from learning things mechanically and then trusting them. With the problem he was having taking this drug, I feel like he hasn’t lost anything in his game, it was just something getting in his way of his reasoning and his ability to think quickly on his feet. Which manifest itself more on his sporting clays game then on FITASC. Would you agree with that Brian?

Brian: Yes.

Gil: So anybody that is out there that is taking any blood pressure medicines, just be aware of  that.

Dick: Brian, are you still taking the Lipitor?

Brian: No. He said, stay off of it and we’ll do another blood test in two months.

Dick: To the hell with that cholesterol, you’ll live longer if you stay off it.

Gil: Well it’s true; I think cholesterol is more an inherited problem than something you can regulate.

Dick: Oh they’ve cleared me plum out with that. It’s gotten to be where your doctors are so scared not to give it to you now that they’ll make you either sign off, don’t take this stuff. It’s effect on your liver, my god. What way do you want to live, without a liver or with cholesterol? Cholesterol ain’t all that damn bad.

Driscoll: I lowered my cholesterol 100 points by going on the south beach diet.

Dick: Yeah there’s a lot of ways to do it.

Gil: Well I wanted you all to hear that because I don’t know much about them drugs, but I know that whenever you take any kind of medication, there is always some kind of side effect, and it took Brian struggling for three months to really find out what it was. He’s been off of it for three weeks and the doctors are telling him it’ll take him at least six weeks to get it out of his system.

So by this time next month or maybe the month after when he’s had some time to go retrain and get back in touch with himself, I’m looking for a lot of those problems to go away. But it just makes perfect sense to me. When you have that kind of a reaction, that kind of a function, you have to be very quick in your mind to read and plan sporting clays. You have to be even quicker and sharper when you have to make a correction in sporting clays. It just came together and made perfect sense for me. I’m glad he’s not on them anymore and I’m looking forward to seeing you get a lot better a lot quicker once you get all that junk out of your system Brian.