Annoyances As shotgun shooters, we use concentration as one of our tools in order to be proficient at our chosen games. Concentration is, in my opinion, the one thing that separates the mediocre shooters from the great shooters. We all can handle the physical parts of shooting, but the mental parts are much more important. For many of us, there are things that we find annoying that break our concentration. Among these are loud voices, tobacco smoke, aircraft flying overhead, and circumstances in your family or home life. As you can see by that short list, the things that can … [Read more...]

Ask Before Touching A few years ago, I was at a gun club when I saw an unusual shotgun in the gun rack. The shotgun had a significant modification to the rib on the barrel. The gun turned out to belong to a member of the California Golden Bears Trap Club, a gentleman that I knew.  He had lost the vision in his right eye, and he was right handed.  He was in his early eighties and, rather than learn to shoot left handed, he chose what I called a canary ladder. That's what it looked like to me. He could still mount the gun to his right shoulder but use his left eye for alignment—an … [Read more...]

Test Shots Many times, a shooter needs—for one reason or another—to test fire their gun before a competition begins. This can also be the case after a gun malfunction during a round to ensure that the malfunctioning gun will fire as intended. If you find it necessary to test fire your gun on a competition field, always gain permission from the referee and inform the other shooters on your squad that you are about to fire your shotgun. In this way, everyone will make sure they have their eye and ear protection in place, and they won't be startled by the shot. Also, if you are on a … [Read more...]

Shooters Distracting Shooters Last month I was participating in a two-gun registered shoot. The squad I shot with had two experienced shooters and three relatively new shooters. The most experienced were in positions 4 and 5. We were moving at a good pace during the first round, but at station 5, the three inexperienced shooters advanced at least halfway toward station 6 after they had shot. The fourth-place shooter tried to ignore them but stopped and asked the three to move back out of his view. There were no problems after that. When we had finished the last round, I told the three … [Read more...]

Referees One of the most important, and often overlooked, parts of our game is the referee. A good referee will see everything; a bad one can hurt your scores. Before my wife and I moved to Oklahoma, we shot in an area where we sometimes had good referees and sometimes didn't. Since moving to Oklahoma, we haven't had a bad referee. In fact, the local referees — previously under Chief Referee Jim Beavers and now under Chief Referee Andy Schuppert — are the finest referees we've had the good fortune to shoot with. We need to show our referees appreciation for their skill and knowledge … [Read more...]