I’ve been shooting sporting clays for about 10 years. In the last two years, I’ve tried to improve my game by taking a few lessons, reading Sporting Clays Magazine cover to cover, especially your articles on the sport. My daughter bought me your book and it’s very good. I’ve read it once and am now reading it again.
My problem? On what I consider to be easier stations, I seem to have a lapse of concentration, at times, even when I tell myself to concentrate, focus on the leading edge of the target, and block out my surroundings. Would you think this to be a lack of concentration, or a problem fixed by going back to the break ten in a row drill?
It’s not every time I shoot, but frustration when I think I’m doing everything correctly. When I have a round like this, it generally causes me to drop four to five targets. Just wondering what your thoughts may be on this problem.
– Ed
Ed,
You’re not alone in your frustration about missing the easy targets in sporting clays. We see this occur in shooters of all ability levels.
One of our students, Craig Hill, recently shared with us his take on this matter. He explained that you have to run stations to win tournaments. If you run half of them, you’ve done okay. If you run two-thirds of them. you’ve done well. If you run three-fourths or more of them, your chances of winning the tournament go up dramatically. All that’s left is to do your job on the separator stations and you’ll win.
On our Coaching Hour a few years ago we interviewed Mick Howells after winning the Seminole Cup, The Browning Briley World Open, and the World Sporting Clays Championship back to back. During the interview, we asked Mick how he felt about his shooting during the world shoot. He explained that he knew he would be in contention to win because he hadn’t missed any easy birds on the first day and only one on the second day and he got his share of the difficult birds on both days.
Sound familiar?
We’ve heard Bobby Fowler say, “You’ve got to bank everyone they give you.” While talking to George Digweed after the Browning Briley a few years ago, we asked him about the targets at the shoot. He said, “It was not that the targets were so difficult to hit but that they were easy to miss.” We’ve heard other top shooters say that you win on the hard ones and you lose on the easy ones.
As you can see, Ed, you’re not alone. In fact, you’re in some pretty distinguished company!
Knowing as little as we know about you as a shooter and not having watched you shoot a tournament, our findings indicate that the answer could be one of three things or a combination thereof. Either you are not staying with your pre-shot routine (or you don’t have one), you don’t have a committed breakpoint, or you are not giving the easy targets enough respect.
We’ll start with the last one first. You must give every target you shoot the same amount of respect. What we typically see is that when the shooter looks at a target presentation as “easy,” they feel that they don’t have to try as hard to break them. It’s as if they’ve already broken them all and run the station.
When you look at a station thinking like this you have left the present and gone into the future. You can’t control the future. You can only control the present.
Thinking that a target is easy is another way of saying “I don’t have to try as hard on these.” When that thought enters the computer, you immediately go mechanical. You call “pull,” mount the gun, and instead of focusing on the target you get complacent, check the lead, the gun stops, and you miss the target. But it looks right! This usually happens on the third pair. You are a good enough shot to “shoot the lead” on the first two pair, but you typically knock the butt of the second bird of the second pair. At this point in time, you really make sure the lead is correct on the third pair and you miss one or both of them, but it looked right.
This brings us to the next reason you may be having this problem. Not having a committed breakpoint will cause you to miss hard targets as well as the easy ones.
Think about it. Everything you do in your setup is based on your breakpoint. Everything! Being able to shoot the first bird in the correct breakpoint makes the second bird easy to focus on and easy to get to. If you break the first bird of a pair in the same place each time, then the second bird will be the same each time.
When you look at the targets as easy, the commitment to the breakpoint is the first thing to go. You must tell yourself “When that target gets right there, I’m going to blow it up!” Commitment to the breakpoint is BIG on all targets if you want to win.
Lastly, let’s talk about your pre-shot routine. If you don’t have one, get one. If you have one, use it.
A routine is simply something that you do the same way each and every time before you call “pull.” It’s the foundation for consistency. There is no right or wrong with respect to your routine because it’s a personal thing. There are, however, some parameters.
Your routine should have a beginning that is the same every time. We call this a trigger. It’s something that you do to signal to your mind and body that it’s time to begin the shot. It comes to an end when you call “pull.” It needs to have a rhythm so it can be done without thought. It needs to be longer than 1.4 seconds and shorter than 2.4 seconds.
Why the time limit? If it is shorter than 1.4 seconds you have not given your body (and more importantly your eyes) time to relax and get ready to function. If it’s longer than 2.4 seconds, you’re thinking, which means you doubt your plan. You can’t think and shoot. You must make your plan and then shoot your plan.
The pre-shot routine is designed to allow you to go from conscious planning or thought to subconscious reaction when you shoot. Until everything you do on game day is a 100% total reaction to what you see, you are thinking and you are not there. Hope this helps!
P.S. When you practice, shooting five pair in a row, five pair in a row, five pair in a row, with a routine and committed breakpoints will definitely help!
