I realize that you pay for it with weather on the other side of the spectrum in the winter, but I am absolutely loving the weather in michigan now. High in the upper 70s, low 80s, except the humidity is only 30%, so instead of feeling warmer and grosser, it feels even cooler that it actually is. Of course, Michigan is definitely a slightly different culture than what I’m used to as well. We went out to shoot shotguns this morning where I found out that while I’m a passable shooter considering it was my first time out, my brother is a crack shot (my uncle once went to launch a clay pigeon, but it slipped out and fell to the ground about 30 feet in front of him. Well, it would have if Colin hadn’t somehow managed to readjust his aim from where the skeet was supposed to go, and popped it just a few feet off the ground. I, in turn, discovered my calling as a clay pigeon thrower. The ‘automatic’ one we had was horrible, so we were using the hand-thrown device, and despite it being built for a right-hander, I developed a modified two-handed hurl that had excellent results, and I was nominated pigeon thrower for the second half of the morning. There’s a great quote from Neil Stephenson for just this sort of situation, but I’m too lazy to dig it up. Suffice it to say, I’m not the gunslinger we’d all like to imagine ourselves, but at least I have a future as a skeet slinger.
The key to clay pigeon shooting (and anything else that is moving across your field of view, for that matter) is not to focus on where you think it should be, but rather to find a point in the flight path that the object _must_ cross and start following it from there. Pretty easy, with a clay pigeon, because it’s arriving from the same point each time.
Find a point in space, maybe ten or fifteen feet from the launcher (which, I suppose, would be you :), and wait for the pigeon to cross that point. When it does, track it up and, just before pulling the trigger, out-accelerate it so that the barrel of your shotgun is perhaps (from your perspective) an inch or two in front of the pigeon (depending on how long you waited to do this, the distance varies). Pull the trigger and you should start hitting it consistently.
See, ROTC was good for something.
Left by John on July 19th, 2003
If John’s suggestion is helping make sure that you are right eye dominant. I had a difficult time shooting for a long time — until someone I was shooting did a simple test and told me to hold the gun in my left hand.
This made ‘the gunslinger I had imagined myself as’ much happier, because I realized I could now shoot something while doing something else with my dominant hand. (A trait that has yet to be of any use.)
Left by David M on July 22nd, 2003
Though I wouldn’t recommend trying to shoot a shotgun one-handed. As cool as it might seem in the movies, it will probably just hurt you.
Left by John on July 22nd, 2003
lol… true. I was thinking of a handgun in that instance.
Left by David M on July 23rd, 2003