We find ourselves getting ready for Convention again. And we’re looking forward to seeing all of you and hearing your stories of shots in the field and on the range. We continue to receive emails from many of you telling us how you are using our OSP system in both settings, and it makes us feel so used!
By far the most referred to tip is when you start missing, slow down and focus more on the bird and less on the lead. There is something magical about being able to move and mount the gun consistently without thinking about it and without having to check the bead sights to make sure it is in the right place.
In our clinics we consistently see shooters who think they can become proficient with a shotgun without going through the process of learning how to move and mount the gun with the target! Well, believe us when we say that if you ever want to shoot a shotgun consistently, it won’t happen until you learn to move and mount it in sync with and to the target.
In conjunction with Texas Parks and Wildlife, we have done the OSP Flashlight drill in a more condensed version. If you will do this drill for three weeks for five minutes twice a day before your next hunt or trip to the range, we guarantee you will shoot better percentages on clays as well as in the field. We have added a new twist as a suggestion from Paul, one of our students in England. You will have to click the link to see what it is.
We have been talking about gun fit and its advantages for the last few months and just received an email from one of our students and feel strongly we should share it. Thanks, Kevin, for letting us do so.
“’There is nothing else I would rather be doing today than having Gil Ash cut down my stock.’
I said these exact words to myself while landing at the Houston airport early yesterday morning. After several passes with a wood rasp to lower my comb and offset it to the right, my eye was perfectly aligned with the rib. Then the fun really began.
With a relaxed upright shooting posture, not ‘fighting my stock,’ the last year of studying Gil and Vicki’s teaching came together. With a comb now fit so that gentle cheek pressure allows the gun to shoot flat, my head and eyes were free from the comb for a longer period of time before triggering the shot.
I just softly mounted the gun to my shoulder, (engage the target early, as Gil said) followed the target with my nose letting my cheek come to the comb, and allowed the target to push the gun to the same speed as the bird. When the picture was stable indicating that the gun and target were going the same speed (just like the animations and ShotKam shots on the website) I centered targets better than I had all of the past year.
I now understand why Gil and Vicki say that it is impossible to track a bird with your foveal (sharp or center) vision and have your head mashed down on the stock. When I mounted early and let the highest acuity centers of my retinas give my anticipation circuit and subconscious more time to do their magic, great shots occurred.
The only reasons I missed yesterday were: 1.) Shooting the old unequal sight pictures, which got better over the course of the lesson. 2.) Mounting too late in the shot. This caused me to hurry to get the gun in place on my shoulder and face and in front of the target. 3.) Not moving the same speed at the end of the shot.
Most importantly, I knew why I missed nearly every time. And the question of gun fit did not once come into the equation!
After 14 boxes of shells, I felt less physical, mental, and visual fatigue than shooting half as many just the week before. It was as if my brain was relieved and it did not have to do as many calculations for a gun that previously shot high and left. Gil mentioned that he had observed so many shotgunners with their faces mashed down into the comb in an effort to try to make the gun shoot true to aim, but they would never be able to shoot it well. They finally figure out that, if right-handed, they must see twice as much lead on left to right as they do on right to left – and just the opposite for left-handers. They don’t understand that the real problem is that their gun shoots high left if right-handed and just the opposite for lefties.
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