Gil: Welcome to the Coaching Hour, November 2021. It was 20 years in November 2001 ago when we did our first one. And the commitment to do one of these once a month has pushed us to research and come up with new things, and it’s really pushed us to become better coaches, always looking for why things happen. We’re all pretty proud of what we’ve done. It’s an amazing thing. Always looking under the rock or around the corner or behind the tree to try to figure out why some things happen a certain way. So welcome to the 21st year of doing the Coaching Hour podcast.
So tonight, we’re going to discuss the new website briefly. And then Vicki and I just got through with our advanced diagnostic course for certified instructors. We have some reflections on how they practice, what we talked to them about and how to practice. Brian is going to share some of his reflections on the National Championship along with me and Vicki, probably. And I think that’s pretty much going to take up the whole hour. I reread some of Bee Epstein-Shepherd’s golf book, and I’ve reviewed some of her relaxation techniques. If we have time, I’ll share those.
Getting right into it: our new website is done and up. We had a few glitches. But all in all, it was a great success. There are a lot of people out there that have given us positive feedback. I want y’all to know how much we appreciate that. We’ve been waiting to put the right team together to begin the marketing effort for our Knowledge Vault and I think we finally have the right team together. And we’re going forward with that.
Vicki and I are leaving for L.A. Thursday morning, we’ll be teaching at Moore N Moore. We’re full every day, Friday, Saturday and Sunday and coming back to Houston on Monday to enjoy a long, extended relaxation period. So, the website’s doing well. It’s taking a long time to get it the way we wanted it. There are still some things that will evolve. Please continue to let us know if there are any links that don’t work, or anything that you think could be improved. We’ve got somebody that we can have do that on a daily basis now.
Gil: So, last year, Vicki and I did the first advanced diagnostic clinic in Sarasota. And this year, Friday, Saturday, and half-day Sunday, we did the second one. It was full with 12 people. In the first one, I think we had 10 people. We had some other people who wanted to come in but we just didn’t have the time to do it.
There was a lot of discussion in this one, because two or three people were shooting pull-away and they expressed a problem with consistency. They asked us point-blank what we thought about it. Well, you know what we said. It’s just one of those things. [Chuckles] I mean, I’ve tried it. Brian Featheringham, our host at Sarasota, said emphatically “you got to keep it simple.” We began to explain the risks of shooting pull-away as a baseline move on all targets. For pull-away to be effective, the speed of the pull-away must be really consistent. And that’s where most people have problems with consistency.
They just kept asking, so we went a little deeper into it. We talked about how pull-away shooters typically have issues with unforced errors, meaning misses after you’ve hit the target on preceding pairs. Pull-away shooters are trying to fix the shot at the end. And to win, you’ve got to run stations. If you’ve run half of them, you’ve done pretty good, but you got to run three-fourths of them to win. And as the pressure mounts, the speed of your pull-away seems to increase, or the amount of time you’re with the target seems to increase, creating inconsistencies and the shot has no end. And it’s not nearly as quiet in your head.
That was a pretty long discussion, and I have to give credit to the people asking the questions, because they had open minds. They really did want to know what our 30 years of experience has shown us in coaching people on three continents. Their approach, their inquisitiveness…they were looking for answers. They weren’t looking to trap people in conversations. And when we show them the kill shot reviews on the Knowledge Vault, they begin to understand really how easy it is to recognize when the bird and the gun are going the same speed.
When your approach involves matching speed, then the shot has a definite end and you can predict what it will look like when you pull the trigger. When you pull away, you’re trying to fix the shot at the end, and nothing good happens when you’re trying to fix it at the end.
Brian Featheringham got up and exclaimed about how simple the OSP method is, and how it’s correctable, it’s repeatable. With our system of shooting, it’s either on the left side or right side of the barrel. And all you do is create separation. Match speed and send it. You know what it looks like when you hit it and you can replicate it or correct it. Then we went into how the brain interprets our reality, which is another big “aha” for these guys.
We talked about how the brain always wanted to know what’s coming next and how the shot will end. How the shot will end is really big in the overall scheme of things when it comes to consistent performances. These are not new things. We’ve all talked about them on the Coaching Hour. But as the candidates who had shot with the OSP method began to talk to the candidates who were shooting pull-away, the big thing was when you miss, you can consistently correct your shots. That was the one thing that turned everybody around. Because if you’re pulling away, you don’t necessarily know exactly what it looked like when you pull the trigger, and that’s critical for being able to correct.
Then there was a lot of interest in the routine and what is in it. Many were surprised when we talked about the quiet eye visualization was to be thinking of nothing. And when I talked to them about the value of the quiet eye, we took them out and told them they had to hit the target. We took them to a very difficult target. And as they made their approach before they called “pull,” we just said “Time out. Do you see how your eyes are darting all over everywhere?” And we knew that because the gun was nervous. The gun barrel was nervous.
They were amazed at how we helped the self-induced pressure that they put on themselves by putting them on difficult target. They were amazed how their eyes were nervous and skittish, simply because of pressure they put on themselves. Then they understood why the quiet eye was so important.
We’ve talked about that on the Coaching Hour the last couple of sessions. They were all amazed at how the quiet eye in the breakpoint, and then the quiet eye on the trap made everything go quiet. They were all amazed. They all learned a lot. It was hard to get them to understand how the brain actually functions and decodes the sequence.
Gil: We spent a lot of time getting them to understand how the brain functions and decodes the sequences from our senses, and in turn creates our reality. But it was a real revelation for them to understand that they were products of their past experiences, and the more experiences that they had that are similar, the less input the brain needs to perform at higher and higher levels. They also understood that what you perceive is really a very small part of what you’re aware of based on your memory and how you choose to remember certain instances. This is why practice is so important and deliberate practice allows for the brain to automatize circuits so much faster and deeper.
We talked about how the brain fills in a lot of things. I used an example of the first time I ever saw a palm tree. I went and I studied it deliberately. I looked at all the fronds, I looked at the long skinny trunk. And because I looked at it deliberately in detail, I didn’t see the next one I saw in as much detail. And now I’ve seen them for most of my life in different places when I travel, now when I see one from a distance, my brain just fills in all of the things that I call a palm tree.
We got them to understand that the brain fills in so much more than you’re really aware of. And that’s the automatization of the circuits. Because as you get better, you’re aware of less and less visually. And the brain fills in more and more, which allows you to have higher and higher levels of performances. It’s based on your memory. What your brain can fill in is based on what you remember.
We also introduced the priming words to them. We taught them the stroll and the challenge. And they were amazed after the middle of the second day how quickly their brains held on or grasped the three-dimensional image of what they were doing when they would challenge or stroll. They did the apex move. And that blew everybody away. It was just a real great learning experience.
It was interesting to us as coaches, when you have other people who want to learn how to coach. We explain to them what we’ve learned over the last 30 years, why we have arrived at this technique, and how our shooting system allows the brain to operate the normal way, and how your skill is actually what the brain fills in the sequence. It allows for very simple focus on the target, match the speed and send it.
One of the coaches, my good friend Dan Fisher from Chattanooga, Tennessee, level two, was having a real hard time with the challenge move. And Sunday morning, when we were meeting for about 30 minutes before we went to the course to teach, he was really concerned about that. And I said, “Okay, so I’m going to take the whole class out. I’m going to show them how to create memory in a sequence so that you can use that memory to become successful.” And that piqued all their interests.
Everybody has trouble with the challenge move because they’re moving the gun before they call “pull” in the beginning. Everybody has trouble with it. And my concern was that he was letting trying to break the target interfere with trying to learn the challenge move at the same time.
So, we got to a station that had a right-to-left quartering bird, not real deep, but pretty fast, to the right, and throwing it across the center of the field in front of the cage. I decided “Okay, we’re gonna start building some memory here.” I took the bullet out of the gun, I had him soft mount the gun, head off the stock, looking at the trap, and he called “pull” and moved the gun.
I said, “No, no, no, we’re not trying to break the target. Let the gun move six inches and call ‘pull.'” And he let the gun move six inches and called “pull” and let the gun move six inches and called “pull.” Then again, he let the gun move six inches and called “pull.”
I said, “Okay, now I’m gonna pull the target this time. And once the gun’s moved six inches, and you call ‘pull,’ it’s a given now that once the gun moves six inches, you’re gonna call ‘pull’ and you’re just gonna let the gun move. Once it settles in and is still, just let it drift to the left, call ‘pull’ and get in sync with the target.” He did that and was fairly close to it. But the target kept beating him.
So, I said, “Okay, move your hold point out 10 percent.” He moved it out. And the next one was almost perfect. He said, “that really slowed it down.” I said, “Well, it slowed it down if you were on the correct side of it. But this time, you’re going to have to be closer to it.”
All of this was without a bullet in the gun. We took trying to break the target out of the equation. So, once he came up where he should be three or four times in a row, then we put the bullet in the gun, and he broke the first six targets and was amazed.
Then everybody in the group wanted us to go over what we did. And I said “Okay, I created memory in each step. I gave him simple commands that weren’t complicated.” I broke down the challenge move into very simple terms. One base layer, six inches, call “pull.” Six inches, call “pull.” Six inches, call “pull.” Then I put the target in the picture for him to be looking at. Let the gun move six inches, he called “pull.” And he got some memory on that. And then when he was getting beat, each time, I added one small thing but used his memory of what he just did to help him get in sync with the thing that I added. They were all fascinated with that.
One of the guys said, “So really when you’re teaching people something new, it’s about creating some sort of memory in their mind so that the brain can call on it and build on it.” I said, “Bingo, you got it.”
The brain only understands sequences of impulses from our senses and based on our memory. And how we have remembered things interprets our reality. That’s a hard thing to get across to most people. But it is so real, and when you understand that your skill, while you have built automatized circuits, the goal is to be able to think of fewer and fewer things and to begin to need less and less input from the target to be able to shoot at higher and higher levels. And that’s done based on creating memory in the brain.
That’s what practice is for. Absolutely. That’s what practice is for. But if you don’t predict and execute your prediction, nothing goes to your long-term memory. Coaching is actually creating memory in the shooter’s brain, and the coach can actually help them remember certain things in the right way, which is what we were doing with those coaches down there. It was a real satisfying experience.
The apex move was a real hit. That’s a little easier move to get. And next month, hopefully, we’ll have Jack Flesher on and I’m going to do extensive feedback with him on the apex move. It is an absolute killer move on targets, going from 10:30 to noon, and from 1:30 back to noon. Anything rising in that area right there, it is an absolute killer move. It just is amazing, and it amazed the people.
Gil: We’re going to get Brian to go over some of the things that he practiced getting ready for Nationals this year. And tell us a little bit about the targets. We had some questions last time from a couple of people who wanted to know if going to the National Championship, looking at the targets gave you a feeling for what was going to happen in the coming year. Brian, how did you answer that question last month?
Brian: Well, I thought that, given my experiences, working it and shooting it, the targets this year were spot on. They were a lot more difficult than I anticipated. But at the same time, it’s a national championship. The scores were a little bit lower than I think that the shoot director wanted them to be. But it is also the national championship. All the targets were fair. But if you didn’t know what the target was doing in the breakpoint, you were not gonna have a good day. [Gil chuckles]
But also, like you were saying, the majority of the people out there shoot pull away. Those targets that we shot, you could not pull away from those targets, because if you’re pulling away, that target was doing something else.
Everything we shot from the main to the K-Kup to the super sporting, which are all the events that I shot, the targets were phenomenal. They were all fair. They had distance, they had speed…
It was a real awakening to me, not being a tournament shooter anymore, just shooting that shoot every year, that I was exhausted after the first day of trying to figure out and making plans. There wasn’t a gimme target on the property. Everything took work. And even though I did get to practice this year, I got to shoot about 500 targets before I went up there, I learned a lot about just not being in shooting shape physically and mentally.
I can’t tell you the last time I went out and shot a tournament or shot 400-500 rounds in a period of three days. I was worn out. Absolutely worn out. Even when I got home, I went to sleep for a day and a half. [Gil laughs] Just because I was worn out, trying to figure all this stuff out.
And I’ve learned that now that I’m getting older, if I want to perform at a higher level, I’ve got to put in a lot more work, which was a big awakening to me. That means, you know, we’ve got to start working out again. We’ve got to start eating right, start practicing.
But the targets were phenomenal. They really were. And if you didn’t get a chance to shoot it, ah, you missed out on a lot.
Brian: As far as my practice routine, I went out two weeks prior to leaving. I went out with my youngest son, and he just wanted to drive the golf cart around Able’s. I took out a case of shells and got to shoot a little bit while he pulled for me. And that was more about getting my timing back because timing was way off for me.
I can break the first target, the second target, but the third and fourth, and fifth were just rough. And so, it took about a case of shells at Able’s, shooting in the trees, shooting fast quartering shots, because that’s always been a downfall for me. And learning the challenge and the stroll move and being able to use it on all of them. I really needed to practice a lot more of that. So that’s what my goal was when I went there and shot really fast, quartering shots with a stroll with a challenge and shot in the trees where everything looks different. Because if anybody’s been to American Shooting Center in Houston, there is no place to practice stuff in the trees. And I know at Nationals on the main road on the mains that you do shoot in the trees and everything looks different.
Then, after that day at Able’s, Doss called. We were shooting the main event together. So, we decided to go shoot at Greater Houston. We started with the north course and shooting some big targets, far targets, hard targets, and I wasn’t hitting anything. I looked at Doss and said “Look, you’ve been shooting this stuff. You’re used to it. Let’s go find something easy so I can at least hit something and get some confidence back.” [Laughs] And so we went and found something I can hit and I hit two, three, four in a row, then we went to another station on another course and we shot it and finally got some timing and I got some confidence back.
Then we went back to the north course where 45 yards is an easy shot. And so, I started putting that together and none of the targets was a straight line. They were all looping, had subtle quartering, rolling presentations. But after I got some confidence back, I would put the gun way out in front, and then when the line got straight, I pulled the trigger, kind of like we were shooting towers at the ranch.
As soon as my brain made sense of “look, the target’s there. When it becomes straight and slow, pull the trigger,” everything was fine.
The first day of practice I shot probably 125. But after about the first two or three boxes, I was just worn out. Because I’m left-handed, my right arm moving the gun was just exhausted. My brain was done trying to focus on pre-shot visualization of what’s going to go on.
And it never occurred to me that when I demo shots, it’s no problem on the first one or the second one. I can do that, no problem. The problem is the third, the fourth, the fifth, because I’d never done it. And when Doss and I were shooting, we got in there and there are four traps per station. They’re all hard as hell. But I got to break four in a row. And by about the fourth or fifth station, I was just done. I could hit the first two, but then my brain’s just like mush coming out of my earmuffs. It wasn’t frustrating, it was just more exhausting. It’s like, holy crap…
Gil: Was it that way mentally as well, son?
Brian: Oh, it was mentally and physically. I mean, my gun’s never been heavy before. It was heavy. [Gil chuckles] You know, again, as I take this journey like everybody else, I’ve never experienced that before. And so, it made me realize “Hey, kid, you’re not a kid anymore, one. You’re actually going to have to do something now. You got to train. You can’t rely on those skills.” Because back then I never practiced. I still shot good but I but now it’s…whoof. There’s so much more to the game and… man. I’ve got a lot of work to do before next year. [Vicki laughs]
But also, it was a great thing for me and because when I got back from Nationals, I was talking to customers who were calling me telling me I shot well. And I did. I shot well for me. I shot really well. But it lit a fire under me. I told them, “Hey, whenever you want to go shoot a tournament, you call me. I’m going to go shoot, because I need to shoot some tournaments and start shooting tournaments again and get into that to where it’s not so exhausting and I can enjoy myself a little bit better and perform a little bit better.”
On the first day, we shot the red course. So, if anybody out there shot the Nationals, you know the red course was the one there in the middle. I started out great. I started out every course absolutely phenomenal. And by about station six, seven, or eight, something would happen. I just ran out of gas and then it was “break the first pair, break the second pair, and then dead lost or lost pair.” You know, I just ran out of gas. It’s all on me, of course, just because I haven’t trained enough to do it. And it was a big awakening to me that I’m going to have to really put forth some effort to get in there to break four or five pairs in a row every single time.
And Doss experienced the same thing. We would start out, he started out the first day a little slow, but then everything started clicking for him. And he had shot a lot more than I had, so he rocked and rolled. It was really fun to share that experience with him because when we shot the main, the two other guys on our squad didn’t show up, so it was just me and him. So, we rocked and rolled through the whole main and we learned a lot about the challenge move and the stroll and how we implemented that on every single target we shot. Without those two things, we would have shot a lot worse. [Laughs]
And another thing, Dad, we’re talking about workspace. Doss and I talked about it, and even Lisa. Lisa was riding around on a golf cart with us and she even made comments about it. She’s like, “Man, both of you guys are like machines on the first six, seven stations. And then after that…” It wasn’t like the wheels came off. It was just like, everything was the same the first six stations and then everything started to matter because we weren’t down very many, and so we started to count and be careful.
It’s like you always say, Dad, it’s impossible to be straight through six stations or only be down two going into the last three. That happened to all of us.
Gil: You know it. You know.
Brian: And instead of relying on what got us there and then all of a sudden, we got to get involved and we got to start trying. And that’s when you know. And for some reason – this never happens to me. I got strapped on any battue that was coming left to right. I couldn’t hit it.
Gil: Yeah, we got to San Antonio and ran into Brian. I said, “how you doing?”
“I can’t hit a left-to-right battue.”
“I didn’t want to know how you were shooting, I just wanted to know how you were doing, son!” And that’s the first thing he told me. [Laughter]
Brian: Fuck, I can’t hit a left to right battue, because I missed eight of them. Never even touched them, never even cut a feather. Never moved one. I turned around and looked at Doss. Doss was like “Uhh…I don’t know.” [Laughter] “I don’t know, either.”
It was funny because the squad following us, because everything was so backed up because there were too many shooters, I would come off the stage and the squads would be like, “Man, you’re in the middle, you’re in the middle.” Because I disintegrated every single target I hit. And the battues… [Gil laughs] I just couldn’t hit coming from the left. And so, on the last day, our last flight, we’re on yellow 10 which was a tower. And if anybody shot it, they know which one I’m talking about. It was hard as hell.
Dean: A midi and a standard off the tower.
Brian: It was a three-pair station. Hardest station on the course. I ran it, and one of the guys in the group behind us was like “Well, that at least makes up for them battues.” [Laughter] And I still can’t hit a battue. Not coming from left. I hit them coming from the right. But I can’t hit them if they’re coming from the left for some reason. [Laughter] I don’t know what it was.
Gil: You may have to ask your mother to go out and show you how to do that. [Laughter] I’m sure she can find time for you next week sometime. Everybody on the air feels your pain. We’ve all been there.
Brian: I already called Laporte. They’re gonna have a battue machine delivered to American Shooting Centers in a week and a half. [Laughter] And I’m gonna put that sonofabitch on the field and I’m going to figure out how to shoot a battue coming from the left.
Gil: [Laughs] Oh, my goodness. Wow. You had mentioned in your writeup that you got to a point when you were practicing on the third day with Doss, that you were eight or nine stations in and starting to get tired. Everything you saw was a straight line and your plans were on the money and your timing was as good as it’s been.
Brian: Absolutely.
Gil: Okay, so when you say “everything was a straight line,” what does that mean to you? I think I know what it means to me. But I want to know what it means to you.
Brian: It means that when we first started shooting the harder targets. I just started getting involved in the process. And there was like a little voice in the back of my head. There was an argument. I was still hitting the targets, but it wasn’t right. There was something wrong. The birds were still breaking, don’t get me wrong. But I could do it better. And that’s why I told Doss, “I’m breaking them, but it feels more like luck.”
And when everything connected and everything became a straight line, I shot another station, and then it was a real hard going away bird drifting from left to right, teal type target with some roll but it was across the pond. I mean, it started at 40 yards. First, we were shooting it at 50. And I missed the first three in a row and then all of a sudden, I connected with it. I connected with it again. And I broke it four times in a row. And I said, “Everything looks straight. Yeah, I’m good now. Visually, I’m good. I don’t need to shoot anymore.” Because I’d shot more in the last week than I had in a year. I’m already exhausted.
But visually, the brain put the dots together to where the target was there, my barrel was to the right of it, and it looks straight, and I pulled the trigger, and it broke. And so, then all I had to do was just make them straight. And every target that I shot at Nationals was straight. That was a big anomaly for me because I hadn’t seen it in a long time. I hadn’t seen it since I left the ranch in March when we were shooting towers.
So, that’s why I looked at Doss and I said “I’m good. I don’t need to shoot anymore.” I feel confident in that. I’m good. And to see that, because I hadn’t seen it in a long time, where everything was in slow motion…I knew the target was gonna break. It was just how hard it was gonna break. That was the question. And that was a big “aha” for me because it’d been so long since I’d seen it.
Gil: Do you think it was because you weren’t playing far enough in front of the bird and keeping your nose on the bird? Because typically, when that conversation starts, it’s because either you’ve let the bird get too close. Or you’ve pulled your nose off the bird because you went to the stock too early.
Brian: I would say that yeah, I was playing too close. Yeah, I was just playing too close. I was playing scared trying to break the bird. And trying to look at the lead. When I would start out on all the mains, shit, you couldn’t throw a target that I couldn’t hit. Because all I was doing is seeing the bird. And I knew what it was gonna look like. But then after doing it, and it was station six or seven. I would just…I wouldn’t say the wheels would come off. I just didn’t have the edge, you know. I was kind of playing scared. You know, I was going back to when I would pull the trigger. I didn’t know if it was gonna break or not. Whereas, on the first six stations I knew every one of them was gonna center punch and blow up. And that’s just from not shooting.
Brian: You know, and my mental prep this year has the best it’s ever been. But the problem is my little pea brain just got tired of doing it, just because I hadn’t done it enough. You can ask anybody that watched me shoot. I was a freaking machine on stations one through five. Because we started on station two every day. Man, I didn’t miss very many targets until about station seven. It just took a toll on me.
It was a great learning experience for me. And even on the K-Kup and the super sporting, it was the same thing. I would shoot phenomenal up until about station seven, eight. And it wasn’t like the wheels came off and I was a dumpster fire, but I just started making little unforced errors. You know, dropping one or two instead of running out.
Gil: And with the technical targets that they had this year, it was easy to fall apart.
Brian: Oh, absolutely. Yeah. If your mental game wasn’t there, if your pre-shot routine visualization wasn’t there, if you weren’t used to doing it 100 times over and over and over and over again. Oh, man. There were some people that struggled this year.
Bob Shannon: Brian, did you take anything with you to eat that had fruit in it?
Brian: Yeah, I had little fruit cups. I had water. I had electrolyte drinks.
Bob: Did you take it about the sixth station, or did you end up taking it much later? The one part that would have gotten you because we hadn’t been practicing literally was decisions. A lot of that was just as much as physical.
Brian: No, no I didn’t. I would eat a good 30, 45 minutes before, and then I would take some trail mix and have some trail mix. Mainly water was what I drank and I would drink Electrolit if I started getting hot, but I didn’t really eat while I was on the course except for some trail mix.
I’ll tell you what, Bob. As technical as these targets were, if you didn’t have a decision made before you called “pull,” you were out of luck, brother. You really were.
Bob: But it also sounds like they were tough decisions that you had to make.
Brian: Yeah, they were. And I know I only got so many good decisions. I just ran out of them too quickly, I guess.
Gil: Well, if it’s any consolation, Vicki and I worked and traveled for 12 days straight before we got to San Antonio, and neither one of us knew how tired we really were. It was a marathon for us. I enjoyed shooting the targets. I made some great shots. My scores were not as good this year because I was just worn out.
I think the person that I’m the proudest of is Vicki, because the hole in her retina has not completely filled in and she still has the black hole. It’s not a black hole. It’s a gray hole, right, Vicki?
Vicki: Yeah, well it’s just a hole. [Chuckles] When you look at things, it blinds – it’s in the middle of my vision, so. It’s just a black hole. And it made my barrel really big.
Gil: Yeah, I mean, all you can see is the barrel when you all of a sudden have monocular vision. I mean you’re binocular in the beginning. But depending on which way the bird came from, or which way she had to look to see the second bird, it was targets that she’d normally own. It just was zeros. I’m really proud of her for sticking in there. It’s tough when you can’t see.
We had a pretty good time. As Brian said, the targets were very technical. They were the most technical targets I’ve ever seen at the National Championship. Now, I haven’t seen some of the regional shoots. I understand that at some of those regional shoots the targets were extremely technical, also. But I’m going to ask John Eagle when he hears this to get on the phone. I want to talk to him about some of the targets at the regional shoots just to see what they’re doing. And I’ll ask a couple of people that I know who went to the regional shoots.
Brian, I didn’t look at any of the scores. I didn’t even look at my scores. You said that they were probably a little bit off.
Brian: Yeah, all of the scores were pretty low. But when I talked to Neil, he said that he expected it to be low. But hey, the guy that won, I don’t even know who he is. But he shot phenomenal and all those guys, they were gonna win anyways. They still shot phenomenal. But again, it’s the National Championship.
Gil: Yep.
Brian: And everybody got to see all the targets. It wasn’t like it was a visual game, you know. I mean, everybody had to shoot the same things and I thought that the difficulty was spot on. I just loved them.
Gil: Yeah. And then the wind came. [Chuckles] It blew out of the North for two and a half days. Holy cow.
Brian: And if anybody wants to shoot the National Championship, shoot the first rotation, because that has been when the cold front does not come through. Shoot it the first weekend. That’s the last bit of advice I will give you.
Vicki: We are all set.
Gil: Yeah, we had an event come up at the last minute. And we decided that we really needed to do that, it was for a longtime customer. And he was really depending on us being at his ranch in Montana. And we had to change our whole shoot schedule.
And as I said, when we got there Sunday evening, we had to shoot Monday morning. And we just thought we could rest up. We just never did get our game on. I don’t even know what my scores are. But two days in the wind. Wow. I mean, I shot pretty good on the 20-gauge course, and on the 28-gauge course, but that wind tore those targets up. And so, it was a mentally tough time for me. When we finally got home, we slept for almost a day and a half. I mean, I just didn’t realize, I guess I have to say what my son just said, and I’m getting old. I’m older now.
The other part that I want to share with you before we lose time here is my determination to do certain things was not there this year like it was last year. Last year, I was on a high. I shot for two or three weeks. I was developing the challenge move and was using it everywhere. I was thinking about it everywhere I went. I couldn’t wait to go shoot it again. Using the priming words. And I was determined. I was more determined to do what I had been practicing at that tournament at that championship than I have been in a long time. Mentally, I was determined to do it. And that determination began 30 days out.
As the challenge move began to be more and more understood by all of us as we were practicing it and developing it, and the stroll and all those things, I began to make a greater and greater commitment. “I don’t care what the result is, this is what I’m going to do. I’m going to challenge every first bird and I’ll stroll or catch or converge on the second bird. But I will challenge the first bird of every pair I’ve got.”
And as I look back on it, because I was so tired, that determination wasn’t there. At the time, I didn’t understand why it wasn’t there. Because I wanted to do it. I had done it before. Why? But after the second day of shooting 75 in the morning and 75 in the afternoon, 75 in the morning 75 In the afternoon on Tuesday, after the second day after that 3:30 rotation, I looked at Vicki and she looked at me and we were tired. I mean absolutely worn out.
While we only had one event a day – well, we had 20-gauge main and 20-gauge FITASC in the afternoon and 28-gauge main and 28-gauge FITASC in the afternoon. But there was no catching up. Absolutely no catching up. I learned a valuable lesson: I need more rest. I need more preparation.
I feel like that I shot well for me. Based on the time I had to prepare and based on how tired I was. I shot incredibly well. And we hope that Vicki’s hole in her eye grows together in the next two or three months and she can get her stick back on.
It was a unique experience and we wanted to share this with all you guys, because the targets were incredible. They were very, very technical. If you didn’t read the first pair right it could be a long station. It could be a real long station. We enjoyed it though.
Gil: So, Brian, what do you think you’re going to do to change your approach for next year?
Brian: I’m gonna go shoot more tournaments.
Gil: Are you? Okay, good.
Brian: Absolutely. It lit a fire under me, for sure. And I got a couple of guys that I’ve talked to on the phone and we’re gonna do at least one tournament a month, one of the local shoots, and just go do it. That’s what I need to work on. For sure. It opened my eyes up to what it actually is going to take for me to be there and do what I need to do.
Gil: Will you practice more?
Brian: I will practice more. But the big thing for me is when I get in the cage and have a referee there, when I call “pull” they’re putting the score down on the scorecard. That’s what I need. Just because I haven’t done it since last year, and that’s what I need.
Gil: And when did you say the battue machine was going to arrive? [Laughter]
Brian: A week and a half.
Gil: [Laughs] You better go get some targets from Ed, because we’re all going to go out and watch that. I may invite Doss to come out and help.
Brian: I need everybody’s opinion, that’s for sure. So, somebody can show me where I’m at, because I sure couldn’t figure it out when I was there.
Gil: Well, everybody knows if you ever get lost in the woods. All you have to do is take a shotgun loaded with two shells and shoot it up in the air. There’ll be seven or eight sporting clays shooters who come out of the woods to tell you where you were, so… [Laughter]
Brian: I’ve never felt the emptiness of not even cutting a feather on a target before. [Chuckles] On every course. If it was left to right battue, I wasn’t even close.
Gil: [Laughs] So, I got one more question. I want to ask Bob Shannon, where were you going with your questioning with Brian? What do you think he should have done? Should he have done something different with his nutrition?
Bob: What I was going after, because I’ve talked to a couple of people who talked about the same experience and none of them took something that had glucose immediately or very quickly available to them midway through the courses they were struggling with. And it’s decision fatigue. Grapes, apples.
Gil: Yeah, apple is what I use.
Bob: Yeah, those should work. But you got to do it probably about midway through. And, you know, if you had experienced trouble anytime on the previous course, use that as the guide for the next course. Take it a station or two ahead of when you really crashed on the first course.
Gil: Okay, we may want to do something on that, Bob, in December or January. Let’s you and I talk about that a little bit and we can use our last experiences. Of course, none of us are in perfect physical condition.
Bob: Agreed.
Gil: And our age is really showing. But anything we can do. I know that when we competed years ago, we used apples. Sometimes grapes, sometimes plums, but mainly the apple was what I depended on.
Bob: It’s easiest, but the grapes are the fastest.
Gil: Oh, really?
Bob: Yes, that’s why it’s easy to make wine out of them because it’s pure sucrose.
Gil: Don’t say “wine” in front of my wife – it’s almost nine o’clock here. [Chuckles] She’s giving me that “it’s wine time” look.
So anyway, we enjoyed sharing our experiences. I’m sure if you’d like to talk to Brian about what he’s talking about any further, he would love to talk to you about it. But it was a real experience. And we all learned a lot of things from it. And hopefully, when we talk again in December, Brian will be able to tell you that he can hit a left-to-right battue. We’re gonna do everything we can to help. We’ll start with left-to-right chandelle before the machine comes in, so…
Brian: Hey, I can hit those.
Gil: Just the battues, sorry.
Brian: It’s just the battues. I don’t know what it is. I can hit a chandelle, I can hit a tower target, I can hit everything else coming from the left. Just not a battue.
Gil: Well, we’ll have your mother take a battue and put it on the ground and step on it and let your gun sniff it and see if that helps.
Brian: Maybe I need a new gun. Who knows?
Dean: Maybe it’s about time you start putting something on your blog. I’m missing you writing on your blog. [Vicki laughs]
Gil: You are not the only one.
Brian: Yes, sir, Dean. You’re gonna have a post tomorrow. Don’t worry, brother.
Gil: Yeah. We’ve all had a long talk with Brian. And he’s been a little tardy at the blog post. He’s gonna start doing that. And Vicki and I have some more cooking videos to do. And we’re getting ready to get the videos back out and do some challenge and stroll and apex and all that stuff so we can illustrate that better. It’s been an unusual year.
Dean: Why don’t you guys get some of that boneless quail from down there in Texas and show us how to cook it?
Gil: I have some in my freezer as we speak. I will show you how to do that. And I’ll even give you the address and the phone number of the ranch that raises them.
Dean: Excellent.
Gil: If you’d like to get them, you can have them shipped to you. They’re absolutely incredible. I’ll tell you that.
So anyway, hope everybody has a nice Thanksgiving. Be sure and thank your families for letting you pursue your dreams. And until next month. My wife and I are going to go and have a glass of wine now. And we’re going to toddle on off to L.A. on Thursday and come back. It’s our last trip for the year and we’re gonna go fishing after that.
So, we look forward to talking to y’all in December. Have a good Thanksgiving, everybody. Good night.
