Hunting is over for a while here in the Lone Star State, but not so in other countries. It’s not too soon to begin preparing for an international trip or next year’s early teal season or dove opener.
I had a lesson with long-time customer and friend Tim Mercer and new-to-Houston gunsmith Dustin Mounts, and the subject of gun maintenance came up. Tim is a passionate wing shooter and travels all over the world in pursuit of all manner of flying creatures: Argentina for dove and duck. England for duck, pheasant, and partridge. Canada for duck and geese. The west Houston prairie for duck. He and his hunting buddy J. P. have put together a string of successful duck hunts in past years.
Did I mention he was passionate about hunting with a shotgun? Being a fairly driven “type AAA” personality, he is passionate about everything he does – both work and play. He also recognizes the advantages of going to a professional coach; not just to learn the fundamentals, but to brush up on his technique and learn anything the coach has learned in the interim. He sees Butch Harmon for his golf game and sees us for his shotgun game. He’s constantly amazed at how our teaching styles and things we stress to our students are so similar.
When possible, Tim hooks up with us before each trip, both to tune himself up and make sure his equipment is in top condition and ready to make the trip. He says, “If you are going to travel anywhere to shoot birds, the last thing you want to have happen is equipment problems. When you travel and hunt as much as I do, inevitably, you’ll eventually have some kind of equipment problem. But with the proper maintenance program, the chances of that really go down.”
I borrowed a page from Tim’s playbook with another customer, Houston developer Sam Yager. Sam got our name from the folks at Briley when buying a new 12 & 20-gauge Merkel O/U for an upcoming dove hunt in Argentina. He originally called us for a gun fitting session and when he arrived, he admitted he’d never been able to hit anything with a shotgun. He was convinced that his dyslexia was the cause of his problem.
After he told me his concept of what he had tried to do in the past when shooting, it became obvious that his dyslexia wasn’t the problem. Like so many of our first-time customers, he was trying to aim the shotgun like a rifle, rather than focusing on the target, pointing the gun in front of the bird and pulling the trigger. Not only was Sam dyslexic, but he was my age (which puts him toward the end of being middle-aged). That means he doesn’t see as well as he did when he was 25. Adding to that, he was an engineer who’d been chasing birds unsuccessfully all his life with the muzzles of a shotgun, trying to figure out the lead on a bird he wasn’t focused on in the first place.
This all might make you wonder WHY we would want to take on anyone as messed up as him. Well, we like a challenge. And when you look up the word “challenge” in the dictionary, you’ll find a picture of Sam.
“Can you teach an old engineer with dyslexia to hit something with a shotgun?” Sam asked when we first met at the range for his gun fit.
“Yes,” Gil said. “If you will do your homework.”
So we began our journey. The first lesson after we had the gun altered to fit Sam was not pretty, but there was a lot to learn. He was a typical hunter when it came to mounting a shotgun – slam it into your shoulder, put your head down on the stock, then find and chase the bird and try to get ahead of it, making sure the lead was precise and correct, while at the same time never taking his eyes off the bird. He managed to stop his gun from swinging at the precise instant he pulled the trigger, consistently missing the bird behind every time. Vicki calls this phenomenon “cash flow.”
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