HOW TO GET THE WHEELS BACK ON MID-DRIVE

We’ve all been there. We were shooting perfectly well and then on one drive, we inexplicably have the equivalent of a batting collapse.

If he can do it, why can’t I?

Just as perfectly competent batsmen seem incapable of performing even the most basic functions under increasing pressure and are sent back to the pavilion, so we cannot connect.

Four or five misses in a row may feel like shooting’s equivalent of a collapse but how can we fix it when we only have a short window as more birds are coming?

First, realise that this is probably a mental issue and that any pressure you feel is only coming from within yourself. This is in your power to control. You must make yourself aware that everyone else is trying to focus on what they’ve got to do – not on you. Don't worry what others think - it's none of your business.

Don’t judge your mistakes. Learn what you can from them and then box them off mentally and get yourself ready for the next bird with your newly acquired knowledge. Above all don’t lose your temper. It does nothing except reveal a petulance to those around you and no one enjoys themselves in the company of a petulant child. The release might feel good but it gets you no further down the road to recovery and you don’t have time to waste.

If Roger Feder nets a return of serve he simply walks to the opposite side of the court with only one small shot replay - that’s him quickly debriefing himself; absorbing useful information from an error then and discarding it and preparing for the next return he must make. That is a growth mindest in operation – treating failure as an opportunity to learn. At his level he has about the same amount of time between serves as you do between shots, and he rarely, if ever wastes time swearing. A simple aid to not giving vent to anger is to remind yourself that it beats being in the office.

IT WAS WORKING LAST WEEK

If it was working for you last week or even last drive, and the recipe hasn’t changed then you can cross ‘rubbish cartridges’ off the list of suspects. If you really are under-equipped for the birds you are shooting at then that’s your inexperience and life is a learning curve – take some advice in good grace from your fellow guns and be wiser next time. Remember there isn’t much that cannot be tackled with a 32g 5.

As a competent shot, any technical faults you may be suffering are more than likely to be the result of a lack of mental focus. However, booze, either on the day or the night before, can affect a master eye if it is shifting in middle age anyway, and of course too much is not only irresponsible but will certainly slow your reaction times and coordination.

To salvage a drive that is getting away from you, you have to think clearly in the heat of the moment and rebuild from the ground up.

FOOTWORK

Footwork is particularly important with crossing and quartering birds. The biggest muscle groups in your body largely govern how effective your swing will be and a fluid swing is essential. Get your feet moving. It’s hard to do in heavy plough but that is your environment so deal with it. They didn’t plough the field to make it harder just for you. You must not allow yourself to fall into any sense of victimhood.

GUN MOUNT

A consistent gun mount is crucial. With frustration or fatigue, sloppiness creeps in. We may move our head down to the stock rather than the gun up to the cheek with our head still. Sloppiness can also mean the stock is brought back to the shoulder rather than the shoulder forward to meet the gun to positively lock everything together. These deficiencies can mean we lift our head to compensate. When we do that, we have altered the equivalent of our rear sight without realising it.

COMMON CAUSE

Stopping our swing is one of the most common causes of missing and can be hard to self-diagnose. Watching a lot of Aimcam footage online doesn’t help. You may reinforce unnatural lead pictures and this can result in measuring forward allowance which kills a fluid gun swing. Whether you are shooting traditional game, going for an instinctive shot with good gun speed, or high birds with more of placed shot coming further through the line of the bird, the swing must be smooth and fluid.

It may be that you are leaving the birds too late and your swing is running short of elasticity perhaps because your front arm is too straight, restricting your movement. If you find you are trying to take game past 12 o’clock though you should try to take straighter birds a little earlier. Try blotting it out with a moving gun at 10 o’clock as the angle of incidence will be much more acute and typically less lead is required. As it gets towards the perpendicular above you, your margin for error decreases. This is the same effect as a police car coming the opposite side of the carriageway. It seems much faster as it passes you than when it is coming towards you. Try to kill the bird in front. This does not apply to very high pheasants where at 10 o’clock they may be out of effective range of the shotgun and only killable as they get to 11 and 12 o’clock above you.

GET OPTIMISTIC

Fear, doubt, hesitation are all rungs on the descending spiral ladder of poor performance and these must be checked immediately. Optimism is key and the beauty is, even if you fake optimism, it’s not fake.

FIGHT OR FLIGHT

We as humans have two states of being: ‘fight or flight’ or ‘rest and digest’ and both can influence our shooting. The two states stem from evolutionary biology – once we had caught and cooked our prey we didn’t have to hunt until we got hungry again. We conserved the hard-won nutrients until we needed them, for either ‘fight’ - hunting / territorial defence - or ‘flight’ from predators. 'Flight' we can discount – we're are not running home or back to the gun bus (it’s never that bad) so all that is left is ‘fight’ mode and that is where we operate most effectively.

The best fighters are calm and confident under pressure – this is the state of mind we must look to get back to. Their engagement with their environment is total and their breathing is regular and unhurried. They know how to take a punch and can deal with it without being thrown off balance. We need to allow our Shaolin monk to shine and accept our misses and in so doing reduce our doubtful, fearful self to hiding in the shadows. We need to think clearly in the heat of the moment.

FOOD COMAS

Rest and digest can be an issue for some when we stop for a big lunch. Nowadays we know one of its effects not by its official title: ‘postprandial somnolence’, but by its common names - a ‘food coma’ or the ‘dinner dip’. It is often why for many people the wheels fall off after lunch on a shoot day. This of course can be exacerbated by our alcohol intake, but it is not as most people believe just blood flow being diverted to the stomach and intestines. It is thought to be a drop in our blood sugar caused by our bodies naturally secreting insulin to deal with the increase in blood sugar that the brain anticipates is ‘in the post’ after a heavy meal. The delay in one catching up with the other may cause a mild hypoglycaemia and this may be why we are more clumsy and drowsy than before. Being aware of it means we can take steps to avoid it – less booze at lunch would be one way. Diabetics reading this will be acutely aware of the issues already.

SYSTEM RESET

For me, if all else fails going down to one cartridge can sometimes be a system reset. It’s going back to first principles, simplifying an otherwise complex process to its basic components – it's how I started game shooting. Perhaps it is the tapping of earliest happy memories of time spent in the field with my dad that realigns my priorities and pricks any pompous sense of entitlement.

“If you get it right with the first barrel you won’t need the second.” he would say. A single point on which to focus the mind.

WE DON’T HIT EVERYTHING

Whilst wounding is to be avoided at all costs, missing is part of game shooting, not only that, but a necessary part. What would we get out of it if we shot everything we raised a gun to? We would all like to shoot to the best of our ability every time we pull gun from slip, but in reality, we won’t. Accepting that fact is part of the cure – relax and enjoy all aspects of the shoot day, even missing.