Shooting

Eyes can play tricks, both with what they see and what they don't.

Optical illusions can be wonderfully entertaining. A deft illusionist practicing his prestidigitations and clever distractions can hold me rapt, and so, for that matter, can a good street hustler playing a shell game or three-card monte. Flat art-painting, drawing and the like-is an illusion; it tricks our eyes into seeing a third dimension that isn't really there. There's even a school of art dedicated to tromp-oliel, meant literally to fool the eyes in even more elaborate illusions.

In shooting, on the other hand, optical illusions can be a monumental pain in the butt. The current crop of clays-course designers are extremely clever at using backgrounds and topography to make you think a target is rising when it's actually falling, and vice versa. But there's more to it than tricky presentations. In shooting there is sometimes a difference between what our eyes should see and what they need to see.

My friend Gary Cappelletti brought this up not long ago. Gary is a Californian who practices dentistry to support a pretty serious duck-hunting habit. He's an extremely good shot, as I've witnessed with my own lyin' eyes, and he's inclined to think about things that a lot of shooters overlook. The story he told me from his own experience prompted me to take a slightly different slant on an endlessly recurring theme.

Visual focus is an essential element in shooting, and in our Fieldsport Wingshooting Schools Bryan Bilinski and I pound it like a steel drum: You can't hit what you can't see, and the most important thing to see is the target. And not just an orange disc or flailing wings but rather leading edges, the terraced ridges of a target's dome, a gamebird's head, whatever part is leading the flight. We generally aren't accustomed to focusing that acutely, but with some practice, it's not hard to learn. But it's an ability that anyone who wants to be successful at an exercise of eye-hand coordination needs absolutely. What do you suppose a PGA Tour golfer sees when he sets up to strike a ball? Not some amorphous white sphere, you can be sure. Usually, the focal spot is a single dimple that's right where the player wants to make contact. "Keep your eye on the ball" is the coach's mantra in every sport that uses a ball.

We all know, or should know, what happens when a shooter takes his eyes off the target and focuses on the gun instead. Hello, Miss Behind. (No doubt you remember her from high school.) Shifting focus from target to gun, even momentarily, makes you stop your swing or slow it so drastically that you fling a lot of pellets where the target was instead of where it's going to be.

The physical explanation for this is simple: Our eyes cannot focus in two planes at the same time. It's impossible, given the way our vision is organized. If you consistently shoot behind your clays or birds-which is where most missed shots end up-you're aiming, trying to be too precise with a shot swarm that may be three feet across. Being loose and a little sloppy isn't so good in most sports, but it's just the ticket in shooting. Swinging through a target and out to thin air in front is an act of faith-and getting some shooters to do it can be like pulling teeth-but it's the necessary thing to do.

Now I started with Cappelletti's revelation, and I'm still on that track, so please bear with me; all this is interrelated.

I said earlier that there are some things we should see and some that we need to see. The should in this equation is the target, and the need is the gun. I know it sounds as if I'm contradicting myself, but I'm not. That our eyes can't focus in two planes at once doesn't mean we can't see in more than one plane at a time. In fact, being unable to see anything except the object of primary focus is an ocular defect known as tunnel vision. Most of us mercifully don't suffer that problem. We possess the gift of peripheral vision, the ability to see a wide field all around whatever specific thing we're focused upon. Nothing in that field is sharply resolved, but we can see everything nonetheless.

We use our peripheral vision all the time, whenever our eyes are open. Imagine trying to walk or eat or drive or enjoy a movie without it. Tunnel vision has to be better than no vision at all, but I feel for those who have it. I would be most unhappy to find peripheral darkness closing in.
Peripheral vision is where the gun belongs. In school we talk of shooting the hard target with the fuzzy gun and caution that trying it the other way around just won't work. Fact is, though, we need to see the gun in order to establish the proper relationship between it and the target. Some very good, highly experienced shots swear they never see their guns. I know what they're saying, but I don't believe it literally. Of course they see their guns; they're just not aware of seeing them. The difference is significant. Being sharply aware means focusing consciously. Being unaware means the gun is relegated to peripheral vision and the subconscious mind-and that's where the gun should be.

Cappelletti's story told me how important this is. Last year he decided to re-camouflage his favorite scatter-matic duck gun and covered every external square inch with camo tape. He'd shot this piece quite well for a long time, but suddenly found himself unable to hit anything. In searching for the culprit he decided to cut a narrow strip of tape from the top of the barrel, breech to muzzle. And the problem went away. Just that thin path of blued steel running through the visual jumble of the camo pattern was enough to direct his eye along the barrel and out to where it belonged. He didn't start looking at the gun, having crossed that hurdle years ago, but he was left to conclude that some visual guide was perhaps more useful than he'd previously thought. Listening to the story and thinking it over, I came to much the same conclusion.

So we shouldn't look at the gun, but it appears that we need to see it, at least at some level. I've shot lots of guns with various types of ribs and some with matted strips down the tops of the barrels. My first over/under, an old Savage Model 420 12-bore, had a matted top barrel, and I shot a lot of birds with it in my college and graduate-school days. I dismissed the matting as a frippery at the time, but now I have to wonder. I since have come to prefer some sort of rib on an O/U or single-barrel. Solid or ventilated doesn't matter, and I still don't buy the fabled marketing blather about a "single sighting plane." But maybe there's something more to a rib or a matte stripe than just aesthetics. If so, I can't think of anything that makes more sense than a subtle tug at the master eye.

If not for Cappelletti, I might not have thought of it at all. Just goes to show: The more you think you know, the more likely some new angle is likely to crop up and tickle you into rethinking some things.