“The way we see is not
determined by what we want to see, but by how we have learned to practice
seeing!”
– Gadi Geiger
My, how the science is changing when it comes to our brains, how they really function and create the almost impossible synchronous movements we call skill. If you get the chance to see any of the episodes of “The Brain Games” on the National Geographic channel, don’t miss them. They do an incredible job at showing how proficient our brains really are, as well as how our brains can be tricked into thinking they see something that is really not there.
As we have continued to study the visual processing system of the brain, we begin to learn that as we become skillful at something, the less we are consciously focused on any one thing.
To create an analogy of what we are writing about here, we can look at talking or walking or playing violin, or shooting a shotgun for that matter. Regardless of what it is, when it becomes a skill, the less and less you have to consciously focus on when performing, and the more things just take care of themselves as you do your skill. As you get better and better at anything, the brain begins to take more and more of the things you do and chunk them together so that you perceive them as one.
The more you practice, the more your brain is able to chunk more and more of these actions into one chunk. This act of chunking is what allows you to perform at higher and higher levels. Because you have done the action so much it has become a skill, and you find yourself concentrating on less and less. Then the brain just fills in everything that needs to be there for you to perform.
We call the stuff that is chunked together “filler.” The brain’s ability to create the filler is totally dependent upon how many times you have done something, not on how well you understand how something should be done. The act of seeing and interpreting what we see and how quickly that happens is a circuit in the brain that must be developed, just like the circuit that allows for the mounting of the gun. The reason we are constantly on all wing shooters to practice their gun mount is that most of them will never mount their gun enough for it to become a skill. As a result, they will have to think more about what they are doing with the gun, which in turn takes away from their ability to focus on the target. It makes them look at the gun in the shot, which causes misses in the field.
The other unique thing about this filler is that it’s something you develop for yourself. You must develop it through doing the action, not thinking about it. And you can’t use someone else’s filler; you must develop it on your own.
So how does this pertain to wing shooting or clay shooting with your favorite shotgun? We don’t care who you are or how much you have talked about it or read about it. The first time you picked up a shotgun to shoot a moving target, painted or feathered, it was the most confusing thing you have ever done. Come on now, admit it. It was confusing, wasn’t it?
However, if you were among those of us who had a desire to overcome the fear of facing the confusion and you just kept shooting, you got better. As you got better you allowed the brain to stumble through the misses and begin to chunk different parts of the movements together. They became easier and easier to do, and then all of a sudden, you began to shoot better by thinking of less!
You just experienced chunking and building the filler in the brain.
As your journey continues and you shoot more, the more the brain develops this filler based on your experiences. And the more filler you have, the more the brain has chunked things together and sees many chunks as one. In the beginning, you were focused on the many different parts of the gun mount. But after 5,000 gun mounts, it is now all of a sudden just one thing. It happens consistently, but you are focused so much less on what you are doing.
All skill resides in the filler in the brain – not in the analytical part of the brain. You must build your own filler. As we said, you can’t use someone else’s filler. That’s why you can’t take a lesson from a pro and all of a sudden become a pro! Through the experience you gained by mounting the gun 5,000 times, you built this filler we are talking about, and you no longer must think about what you are doing when you move and mount the gun – it just happens.
So, why is this so important in shotgunning? Well, read on and you will begin to understand why Vicki said at convention last year, “You will never shoot better than the quality of your basic move and mount!”
It seems as though wherever you go with a shotgun you hear shooters always talking about seeing the front edge of the target or the head of the bird. Bob Brister told us once that when he shot pigeons he could see the eye of the bird. We can say with some certainty that all shotgunners agree: you must see the target to hit it. Well, focusing on a target is a brain thing, too, because when you focus on a target, the brain must interpret what it is seeing and then begin to anticipate where it will be in the future!
As a shooter, you can tell yourself to focus on the front of the target or the head of the pigeon or duck or pheasant or dove, but if part of your brain is tied up in focusing on what you are doing while mounting the gun, then that takes away from your focus on the target!
So we find ourselves back at the beginning, realizing that anything done as a skill is developed by the person doing it. That is the only way it will become a skill. Any skill is a circuit in the brain that is developed through a person’s experience of doing something – not thinking about it. When something becomes a skill, as you perform the skill there is less you have to focus on. The brain fills in what is necessary to perform the skill, which allows for greater amounts of focus on fewer things, which allows for higher and higher levels of performance.
Until your move and mount become a skill, it is impossible to focus enough on the target to shoot consistently well and continue to improve. Imagine what it would be like to never have to worry about whether your gun was mounted correctly or never have to look at the barrel to know exactly where it was pointing! You will never experience this utopia until you, through repetition and experience, build the filler in your brain to the point that it just knows all this stuff and you become less and less aware of the stuff you are most worried about.
Remember: the more skillful you become at anything, the less consciously aware you become of fewer and fewer things. You will never become skillful at anything, much less shooting, if you keep constantly second-guessing your mount, move, lead, or anything else while you are performing!
