That @%$! Wabbit

Elmer Fudd never cursed, but he would have if he’d ever met a sporting clays rabbit. We’ve seen it many times. A student comes to us with the fire of frustration in his eyes – a glimmer of insanity. We can tell it’s difficult for him to hold it in. There’s obviously a problem, so we ask him what it is.

That’s when he lets fly. “It’s that @!#*! Rabbit,” he says. “I keep shooting in front of that @!#*! Rabbit!”

How uncouth.

When a shooter says he’s missing the rabbit in front, we know that one of two things is the problem: Either he’s not holding focus on the target, or more often, he’s moving the gun way too fast. Both are the result of never having good focus prior to beginning the move.

Rabbit targets appear to move faster than they really are because they bounce erratically, and you’re never going to see them fly in a straight line like a normal clay target. Also, because the target is rolling on the ground and close to the background, it appears to be moving faster than it really is. It’s like watching an airplane coming in for a landing; it seems to be floating until it gets close to the ground and even though it is slowing down, it appears to speed up until it touches the runway.  

Because the rabbit appears faster that it really is, excessive gun speed typically creates misses in front.  Even though everything looks right when you pull the trigger, you still miss in front because the gun is going so much faster than the rabbit. If you shoot many rabbits you will also see this. When you pull the trigger, the shot hits the ground all around the rabbit but it does not break.

What you have experienced is an optical illusion, the reality of which is that the shot was a near miss in front. 

Here is what happened. When you pulled the trigger, the shot missed the rabbit in front and by the time the shot hit the ground beyond the rabbit, the rabbit rolled in front of the cloud of dust kicked up by the shot hitting the ground. The illusion is that the rabbit slipped through the pattern. The reality is that the miss was in front. Slow down. They are not as fast as they look.