Good Shot by Steven Mulak

GOOD SHOT:

How to Shoot as Well as You Know How

(Work in progress)

Here’s a glimpse at my next book. This one will be published by Stackpole in about two years, during the fall of 2008. Good Shot will be an instructional “how-to” book dealing with shotgunning in bird hunting situations. The book will be heavily illustrated with both drawings and black & white photos, and will take the reader to both the skeet field (for practice) as well as into grouse coverts, duck blinds, and pheasant fields.

The target audience of this book, as implied in the subtitle, is the bird hunter and waterfowler who would like to improve his skills with a shotgun, but can’t seem to translate the time spent at the skeet range into bona fide improvements when birds are in the air.

In Good Shot, I use established procedures of shotgun shooting as points of departure. I address the complications that come of moving off the skeet range and into hunting situations. How to apply shotgun skills to field situations will be the main theme of this book.

The excerpt below seems to be finished. There is the table of contents, now revised, and the chapter dealing with skeet shooting. I’ll post more passages as they are ready, so stay tuned. (And if you have any ideas, don’t be shy: I’d like to hear from you.)

Excerpts:

Table of Contents

Introduction: What makes someone a “Good Shot?”

Chapter one: The Problem: It’s not about marksmanship

Chapter two: How to Hit ‘em: Skeet revisited

Chapter three: Getting Better: the formation of positive habits

Chapter four: The Gun You Shoot Best – The Field Shotgun

Chapter five: Truths: Physics, mechanics, and superstitions

Chapter six: Take it Outside: Shooting at upland birds

Chapter seven: Let them come to you: Shooting at decoying birds

Chapter Two

How to Hit ‘em: Skeet Revisited

          “Skeet shooting and bird hunting are about as much alike as paging through a Playboy magazine is to taking out the cute divorcee down the street for dinner and cocktails”. I once wrote that observation for a shooting article. (I still think it’s pretty funny, but I’ve never gotten a laugh with it.)

          In the first case—the Playboy magazine—it’s all about make-believe, and you can always turn the pages backward if you missed something or want a better look. Take your time, there’s no hurry. But the dinner and cocktails part is real: you need to react to a changing situation whether you’re ready or not. You can’t go back and start over if you make a mistake. There isn’t a guarantee of much of anything.

Similarly, everything in skeet shooting is predictable: Nothing happens until you call for the target, you know in advance where it’s going, and unless you’re in a contest of some sort, you can always “turn the pages backward” by calling for the target again if you’d like another chance.

In the field, sometimes a pointing dog can add a modicum of predictability to the unfolding situation by showing you in advance where the bird might be, but after that you’re on your own: You need to react to a changing situation and do it right now, you can’t go back and start over if you make a mistake, and there isn’t a guarantee of much of anything.

Skeet was invented sometime around 1925 by a group of Massachusetts bird hunters, among them William Harden Foster. He was the author of the shooting classic, New England Grouse Shooting. The game started out as a form of grouse-shooting practice, but it was so much fun that it quickly became popular among people who had never seen a grouse, let alone hunted one. Competition, as it does in all things, fueled an evolution of game-specific shooting methods, and before long the game of skeet shooting had evolved into 20 precise repetitive movements that were hardly recognizable as those practiced by a grouse hunter. With popularity came commercialism, and soon there were skeet vests and skeet guns and skeet loads and skeet shoes. By 1940, even its inventor bemoaned what had become of the game he originated.

Fortunately, the evolution of skeet involved only how the game was played, not the game itself or the playing field. We can still use skeet shooting to stay in practice for bird shooting because, physically, it's still the same game that Foster and his buddies invented: same targets, same distances, same speed. You don’t need a skeet gun or anything special to shoot skeet—You can do it with the gun you hunt with. 

Some things cry out to be stated: Skeet is not bird shooting. Birds usually accelerate once they leave the ground; Clay targets do just the opposite. Birds have a way of taking flight when you least expect it; In skeet, nothing happens until you say “pull.” Birds in flight can change direction and seldom follow a predictable line; Clay targets occasionally get wind-blown, but essentially follow a pre-determined flight path every time. Gamebirds fly faster and slower, nearer and farther, lower and higher, and rarely as straight as skeet targets.

All that is true. But skeet remains the single most important shortcut to figuring out how to hit moving targets, including all manner of gamebirds. The day is gone when a hunter could learn to shoot well just by learning from his hits and misses while hunting. Seasons are short, bag limits small, and game is hardly plentiful. If you’re ever going to become a Good Shot, you need to become intimate with clay targets. And, more than any of the other clay target games, skeet is where you can work out the problems of shotgun marksmanship.

Complicating all things shotgun is the previously mentioned “invisibility factor.” It permeates the sport. When we miss a bird in the field, we often don’t know why. More lead? Less lead? Did I stop the gun? Was I above the bird?  If another bird got up in a similar manner a minute later, we’d have a chance to try something different. Unfortunately, that doesn’t happen—You might see another shot like that before the season is out, but, then again, you might not. In the field, we’re usually given a too-large dollop of time to stew about a missed shot afterward. Sometimes, in that stewing time, bird hunters will arrive at conclusions that are not always correct. Men become desperate, and will change shells, change chokes, change guns—all because they don’t really know why they missed.

          There’s no such problem at the skeet range.

Each shot is predictable and repeatable and offers you a chance to go to work on specific problem areas. You can say, “Let me have that one again,” and continue to try different solutions until the right one is found. If you’re willing to pay for the extra targets, you can shoot the same shot over and over until the trap machine is empty or your shoulder falls off, whichever comes first.

Some men truly expect to hit them all—For them, every miss is a mistake. That may be a workable theory at the target range, but not in the uplands and waterfowl marshes. In field shooting, never missing might be nice, but is hardly a realistic goal. However, knowing what you did wrong when you miss is something worth striving for.

Skeet can provide that knowledge.

          The game of skeet affords a universal frame of reference for all shotgun shooters. The various shots all translate into those we see while hunting, and nearly every bird hunter understands what you mean when you speak of a shot as a “high-house two,” or a “station eight.” Of course, the translation is rarely direct: Usually, it’s “high-house two, but lower and curving away.” Or, “station eight, but with the bird climbing steeply.”

For a bird hunter on the skeet field, station one high house replicates the situation where a treed grouse looses his nerve as the hunter walks beneath. The situation is all but unique to grouse hunting—there are no other gamebirds that routinely flush from trees. A non-bird hunter might think high-one is a trick shot, but anyone who's chased grouse for any amount of time knows better. 

          (Illustration: High one)

The overhead line of the target’s flight goes straight away from the hunter. The difficulty is that the bird is flying level to the ground (or nearly so) and presents a weird perspective to the shooter. You must get in front of a moving target to make a hit, but in this case “in front” is actually underneath. Swing the gun along the flight-path of the target (which from your perspective is nearly straight down) and pull the trigger the instant you pass the bird. As with every other situation on the skeet field, when you miss it’s usually a matter of not keeping the gun moving right through the shot—in shooting terms, you “checked.” That is, you unconsciously stopped the gun as you pulled the trigger. Keep the gun moving and the target breaks.   

          I’ve placed stations two-high and low-six together. Both are wonderfully quick quartering shots, albeit from opposite directions. They are as fast and true as any hunting situation when the bird flushes on the flank and breaks across your front. We all need work on those shots, and it's a shame there are only these two examples in a round of 25.

          (Illustration: low six)

Here, the target line is the classic quartering shot. The left-to-right high-house-two shot starts ten feet higher and will be flatter than the climbing right-to-left out of the low house. Pull along the flight line of the target and keep the gun in front of the bird as you fire, and, as with every other target, follow through after the shot. The most common cause for missing this one is riding the bird too long and not being able to keep the gun from “rainbowing” off the flight line. All human motions are based upon a radius of some sort, and it is never more apparent than in trying to swing a shotgun along a straight line for more than just a short distance. Trying to take this shot beyond the center stake nearly guarantees you’ll pull the gun off the line of the target. The answer here is to find the line of the target—it slopes upward from the low house and (apparently) downward from the high. Swing the gun, fire quickly, and follow through.  

          Low one and high seven are incomers, and low two and high six are the same but with some angle on them. I lump the four together because in the woods or fields all of them are fast, challenging shots. They are supposed to represent birds that were driven in your direction by your partner or perhaps a flushing dog. Unfortunately, on the skeet field, shooters usually take them as floaters when the target begins slowing and dropping after a long flight. Too bad. For them to be good practice you should try to take them before they cross the center stake, while they’re still rising and moving fast. If you take them quickly, they’re challenging shots.

          (Illustration: low two)

The line of the bird is steeply rising in each of these four shots. You’ll need to lift your gun along the flight line and pass the incoming target and fire as soon as you do—not much lead is required. The difficulty is that, to do it right, you don’t see the target as you pull the trigger—the gun barrel has blotted it out. If you miss, chances are you peeked and wanted to see the target break. In golf, all you see when you lift your head too soon is a bad shot. Here, you’ll see a missed shot, but the message is the same: Don’t peak. Find the line of the incoming target and keep the gun moving.

What you get at station eight are two shots like you might see a few times each season in the thick stuff: Jackrabbit-quick incomers that you shoot almost in self-defense. Station eight is a trick shot, all but impossible unless you've seen it dozens of times and worked out the kinks ahead of time. In the field, of course, you wouldn’t take this shot—at least, not if you later expected to eat the bird. Instead, you’d turn around and take the bird going away. But don’t try that on the skeet field—the guys standing behind you won’t appreciate it.  

          (Illustration: High eight)

Here, the line of the bird is coming right back over your head, or nearly so. Since it’s all happening at a range of ten feet, this is a timing shot. The instructions for how to hit this one are the same for the above four, except that they’re written with an exclamation point at the end: Do it the same, but do it quicker and closer! And if there is anything niftier in the game of skeet than centering a station eight target and turning it into a smoke ball, I don’t know what it is. If you miss, you’re timing was probably off, or, more likely, you lifted your head.

          Low-seven is supposed to be a lay-up. It represents the sort of shot you get when the dog points or works up a bird. Even if real gamebirds don't always get up immediately in front of you, most field shots are classic rising straightaways of the low-seven type. It’s seldom as uncomplicated in the coverts as it is on the skeet range—Gamebirds hook left or right or get behind a tree or sometimes they give you that humpbacked up-and-down flight pattern that you can't stay on. Some are less difficult than others, but real birds are never quite as easy as when you're standing on the concrete pad with your back to the house.

          (Illustration: low seven)

You don’t need to move the gun much on low seven, but you do have to lift the muzzle to stay with the bird as it rises—a still muzzle will translate to a miss. This is a good station to begin practicing your gun mount if you’re unaccustomed to shooting “low gun.” Both in the field and on the skeet range it’s easy to put too much energy into getting the gun up and then having that extra momentum carry the muzzles higher than you intended. When low seven is missed, 90% of the time the shot is too high.  

          Stations 3, 4, and 5 are what we practice for. They’re difficult crossing shots that come naturally to no one. Crossing pheasants or landing ducks might not be going this fast, but bobwhites and grouse will, and so will doves. Low 3 and high 5 are absolute 90-degree shots requiring more lead than anything else on the skeet field. Low five, however, is the most frequently missed target of all, probably because it has so much upward slope to its flight line that it disappears from sight right around the time a  right-handed shooter is pulling the trigger.

(Illustration: High five)

(Illustration: low three)

The shots require big leads and a smooth swing complete with an exaggerated follow-through. These targets are always missed behind, and it’s easy to misinterpret the amount of lead needed. However, once you get the proper sight picture down pat, the most common cause for shooting behind these crossing shots is not matching the gun speed to the speed of the target—when we get as far in front as these targets require, we sometimes chicken-out and slow the muzzle. Another reason we miss is that we’re aiming so far in front that we want to peak back at the target and lift our head to do so. Be sure you’re in front of the target, swing smoothly on the target’s line and keep the gun moving.   

If you spend any amount of time at the skeet club, you’ll invariably hear other shooters talk about leads in terms like “three feet,” or “a-foot-and-a-half.” For believers of that school of thought, leads are the only problem and the only answer. Since I’ve never yet seen a cosmic yardstick out there in the sky 23 yards away, all that sort of advice ever meant to me was that some people see things a heck of a lot differently than I do.

I’ve never liked the “measure-the-lead” approach. Looking back over my instructions at the various stations, there’s not much said about leads, other than relative terms such as “hardly any” or “a lot.” Oh, lead is important—there’s no denying it. But the pattern is fully a yard across, and it’s conceivable that you can be off by three feet and still hit the bird. When someone misses a target on the skeet range, it’s not because his “foot-and-a-half” lead was off by a few inches.

There are only two fundamentals to hitting a moving target, and most misses are the result of improperly interpreting one or the other. Questions of “how much lead?” become minor considerations compared to the two rules of wingshooting: find the line of the bird and keep the gun moving.

Finding the line requires concentration—you have to look for it. It’s far more a matter of observation than imagination, but you’ve got to look hard. What you’re looking for is the flight path of the target. That’s the line the gun has to move along.

Keep the gun moving is one of those things our body is reluctant to do. We swing the gun just fine, but somehow we interpret pulling the trigger as something than concludes that swinging motion. That’s a mistake. If you think that way, your body will unconsciously begin to stop the gun in anticipation of the trigger pull, the gun will slow, and you’ll miss behind. Oh, we might think we’re not slowing the gun, but our bodies are lazy and don’t always do what the brain tells it to. A conscious exaggeration of the follow-through after the shot is the sure cure—that is, keep the muzzle swinging along the flight line of the target for a long time after the trigger is pulled.  It is physically impossible stop the gun if you’re trying to exaggerate a follow-through. (My own follow-through mantra is to say “Hit THE bird,” as I swing the gun. I pull the trigger on the word “the” and don’t stop the gun’s swing until I’ve gotten the word “bird” out.)

Do those two things—find the line and keep the gun moving—and the target will be hit even if you don’t have the lead exactly right. Ignore those two basic rules and you won’t accomplish much on (or off) the skeet field, even if you could somehow measure exactly a foot-and-a-half in front of an edge-on 30 m.p.h. target sailing through the air 70 feet away.  

          To repeat something stated earlier: Skeet is not hunting. It’s about marksmanship and nothing else. You can’t learn much about gun handling on the cement pad of the skeet range. Even though you might use skeet to practice these things, there is no reward for smooth gun mount, using the safety properly, or reloading quickly. There is no incentive built in for knowing when to shoot quickly and knowing when you have extra time. Being able to anticipate and to react to the unpredictable doesn’t come into play. It’s a game that’s only about marksmanship.

If you're a bird hunter looking to improve your marksmanship, welcome to the skeet field. If skeet is new to you, you might break 10 or 12 on your first round. From there to a point where you can regularly break 20 or 22 wouldn't take long—maybe a dozen rounds, if you’re paying attention. The "how to" you’ll pick up along the way really will make you a better wingshot: You'll have as many chances as you need to figure out why you always miss those out-of-the-tree shots, and you’ll get to understand the correct sight picture for those fast crossing birds. 

But then you come to the fault line.

There’s a difference between knowing how to break them all and breaking them all. Some men drive themselves crazy in the clay target games because they have acquired the first but can’t seem to succeed at the second. Inevitably, that leads to bad decisions. In their perfectionist’s quest, those men cross the fault line: They become “skeeters.” They remove as many variables from the skeet equation as possible, and every step they take leads them closer to perfection but farther from the skills needed while hunting. They put the safety off ahead of time, pre-mount the gun, and “grove in” on the target line. (I have known men who had the safety removed from their shotguns, since they never used it while skeet shooting.) They become fussy about where they stand on the pad, and the directions in which their toes are pointing.

And it works. Follow their example and you’ll break more targets—if that’s your goal.

But none of the “skeeter’s” methodology freely translates into more birds in your bag when you go hunting. In fact, exactly the opposite is true—if you become a “skeeter,” you won’t learn and practice the skills needed to hunt successfully.

So the first question of every visit to the skeet range is “Why am I here?” Are you a bird hunter who’s trying to become a Good Shot? Or are you a skeet shooter on a quest for perfection?

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This site was last updated 01/24/07