Be a Referee

In a recent Coaching Hour, one of our clients, Max McCart, made the suggestion that everyone that is going to shoot tournaments should be a referee in at least one big shoot, just to see what shooters do to themselves when shooting them. 

Max is retired and in a group of shooters who volunteer to pull at the various corporate and registered shoots at the clubs in the Houston area. He spoke up this night at what he witnessed at the Diamond Classic at Greater Houston Gun Club. The discussion that followed was quite interesting. 

Now you gotta understand that Max pulls for a lot of shoots and has an extensive background of pulling. In fact, he ran several big shoots as a local club was in the process of shutting down. So he knows a few things about tournaments from both sides of the event.

As the hour went on, Max shared with us several things that he had witnessed. He went on to say that the shooters’ approaches to the targets were so different that he could almost guess their class by how they reacted and what they did before getting into the cage to shoot. He shared that the pros like Desi and Zach and Craig and Bobby would get out of their clay cars, walk up to the cage and look at the pair and turn around and sit back in their cars until it was their turn to shoot. 

It was quite a different story with the less experienced shooters!

In describing the less experienced shooters he used the words “fidget” a lot, along with “indecision” and “nervous” chatter. It was as if they couldn’t make up their mind which choke and which load, where to take the first target and what the lead was. It was obvious they had no routine or consistent approach. It became obvious that fear was in the game of all but the top tier of shooters. And their routines were so consistent after the first pair, he knew when they would be calling “pull” after they closed the gun.