Shooting

So what’s up for the summer? Some golf, a bit of tennis, fishing, graduations, weddings, vacations —lots to do. In the midst of it all, please don’t neglect your shooting. It’s easy to do, surrounded by so many distractions, but it won’t make you happy come fall. I meet lots of shooters who let their guns gather dust in the vault all summer and then spend the first month of the bird season frustrated because they can’t hit anything—just as I’ve been around hunters who let their dogs languish in the kennel all summer and then get pissed off because Rover doesn’t perform like gangbusters on opening day.
    Shooting is an athletic act, even though we don’t usually think of it as such. Any athletic act needs to be kept honed or its sharpness will fade from neglect. It will come back, but bird seasons are too far apart, too short and too precious to waste any time relearning how to shoot. Think of your dog the same way; after six or seven months lounging in a kennel, he’ll be out of gas by lunchtime on opening day and his feet will be sore. Not a good combination.
    So what can you do to stave off the summertime blues? One thing is simply to handle your gun, to keep your muscle memory accustomed to its weight and balance. If you shoot more than one gun, handle them all and give them equal time. Doesn’t have to be much, perhaps a few minutes two or three times a week. Anything you do that will keep the kinetic memory tuned will help.
    You can practice shooting outdoors or in any room of your house, all without firing a shot. Shooting is an exercise in geometry. Everything that moves, either on the ground or in the air, follows a line. The line may be simple or complex, but it’s a line nevertheless, and you’ll be ahead of the learning curve if you can train your mind and eyes to visualize the line you’re seeing. It takes some practice and close observation and some imagination, but it can be done. My mentor, the late Jack Mitchell, was adamant about this. I don’t know how many times I heard him say, “Shooting is a matter of following lines.” I believe he was right.
    If you look for them, you’ll see lines everywhere—in every room and all around outdoors. They may be roof lines, power lines and poles, fences, trees, whatever; something will present as a line. There’s your practice point. (If you do this outdoors, you might want to tip your neighbors ahead of time. Otherwise, the local gendarmes might interrupt your session for a long, boring discussion about why you’re in the backyard waving a gun. I offer this as advice gleaned from experience.)
My favorite place for this kind of practice is indoors, using the readily visible line where a wall meets the ceiling. Imagine that a bird will appear from one corner and follow that flight line toward another.
    It’s important to practice all the elements of good technique. Pick a spot where you intend to take the bird, and set your stance accordingly, with your leading foot pointed right at that place. (Your leading foot is the left one if you shoot off of your right shoulder, with the right foot slightly behind and cocked to about a 45-degree angle). Then assume good shooter’s posture, bending forward slightly at the waist, just enough to put your weight onto the balls of your feet, something like a good boxer’s stance, never with your weight on your heels.
    Drop your head slightly so your chin is level with the floor. This opens the way to bring the gunstock right up to your cheekbone ledge (zygomatic arch for you medical types). Never think of mounting a gun first to your shoulder. This turns what should be a smooth, one-piece move into three, two of which won’t help you a bit.
    Find a comfortable ready position, with just the end of the gun butt tucked under your armpit, your shoulders relaxed and your elbows at about 45 degrees. Swing the gun back from the kill point you’ve chosen and visualize the bird appearing.
Once the bird has passed your muzzles, make your move. Your leading hand—the one that’s controlling the barrels—needs to set everything in motion, and everything else should follow. Keeping your visual focus solidly on the flight line, mount the gun firmly to your cheek, swing past and pull the trigger. Say, “Bang,” if that helps, or put in snap caps and literally pull the trigger. Whatever seems most authentic.
    Practice this swinging both left to right and right to left. You can change the angle by changing where you stand in the room. Use the corners where walls meet to swing up and down. The more you do this sort of exercise, the better shot you’ll become.
    If you shoot more than one type of gun, I certainly would recommend practicing with the safeties. Ideally, for the well-being of your companions and whatever dogs might be out in front, clicking off the safety should become part of your swing-and-mount sequence. But different guns have different types of safeties located in different places, and if you switch from one to another, you would do well to keep those muscle memories well tuned. It’s one thing to miss a chance at a bird because you fumbled the safety, quite another to fire an errant shot that might hurt somebody.
    The most complete form of off-season practice, of course, is to shoot. Do it as often as you can. For a bird hunter, a skeet field is about as good a place as you can find—that or a clays course that offers truly birdlike targets. Silly targets won’t do you any good, nor will falling into the trap of shooting with a pre-mounted gun, so shoot as you would in the field, and the comments of your companions be damned.
    The one thing you don’t want is to stand on the threshold of another bird season unprepared. As I said, they come too seldom and don’t last long enough.

Michael McIntosh is the author of such books as A.H. Fox, Wild Things, Best Guns, Shotguns and Shooting and More Shotguns and Shooting. His new book, Shotguns and Shooting Three, is available for $25 (plus shipping) from 800-685-7962; www.shootingsportsman.com.