Thanks, Coach! The Real Secret to Better Shotgunning

by Mark Roberts

The point was perfect. Hard and frozen like a rock, my young Brittany had investigated a small clump of brush in the middle of a plowed field and now had been seriously rewarded. I stepped in for the flush and saw a gargantuan pheasant blow out from under my feet. As he turned for the wind, my shotgun found my shoulder and rapidly fired. The pheasant flew, unhindered, to the next county. I can still see him jetting away while Ranger looked at me with an expression best translated as, “Doh! Why am I hunting with a guy who can’t hit anything?”

Most wingshooters can tell that same story. Such sorry episodes make us ask, “What am I doing so that never happens again?” Misses cause blame to be placed on everything from chokes to shells to the wind, but in our hearts we know we failed, we did not make the shot. Unfortunately, even having admitted that, I still did not know what I had done wrong. Thus, I continued being a miserably inconsistent shotgunner. All the quick fix articles promising “Three Ways to Be a Better Wingshot” were not changing that, and the advice of my hunting buddies (who also missed regularly) wasn’t any real help either. It was time to swallow my pride and admit I didn’t shoot like I wanted to. I needed a shotgun coach.

Pete Blakely says I am not alone. Pete is the club professional at the Dallas Gun Club. He sees hundreds of shooters every week at one of the busiest clubs in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. “Shooting isn’t magic and it isn’t a gimmick or trick. It is simple math and physics but most guys don’t take the time to ever learn that.” Does that sound like anybody you know? Of course, immediately we think of objections to being coached. “Sure — that might be great, but who has the time and money for shotgun lessons?” Let me explain why you can’t afford not to find yourself a top flight shotgun coach before the next season starts, and how to find the coach that will make a difference in your wingshooting.

Why You Need a Coach

Anyone who is not a consistent quality shot with a shotgun needs a coach. Why? Because you are spending hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars on guns, shells, dogs, vet bills, special trips to far away places to hunt and much more. All of that is done quite willingly because we want to get birds. That is what hunting is about: the prey. It may not all be about bagging birds, but when we get done with all our talk about just working the dogs and how great it is to be outdoors and all that other blather, we want birds. We are hunting and that means we want to see targets and we want to hit targets. Therefore, everything turns on your shooting. The ducks come in, the pheasant piles out, the covey rises and now the success or failure of the hunt rides on you and your shooting skills. If you cannot execute at that critical moment, then writing the day down as a great hunting day will be very difficult. Further, it is one thing not to see anything at all (then we talk up the great outdoors and how the dogs worked). It is an entirely different circumstance to see birds and miss many of them, or worse, to have only one or two shots all day and miss that one shot that would have made the day a success.

What am I asking is, “Why do we spend all this money, travel so far, and train our dogs so diligently, if the one key factor in the hunt is going to go neglected and send us home unhappy?” Tell the truth: we live with those missed birds. They never go away. An all day walk to find one covey can be a great day if you double, but if you miss a make-able shot it is just misery, isn’t it? That doesn’t even take into account the ribbing you get from your buddies when you flail, or that pained expression on your dog’s face when you miss. Don’t tell the wife, but hunting is very expensive. To get the payoff you want from those massive expenses you must shoot well. If you can’t do that you are wasting your time and your money and inviting the dark cloud of depression to live permanently on your shoulder.

Shooting lessons can make the difference between a beautiful point with game in the bag and a beautiful point without.
Photo by: R. Michael DiLullo
Think of shotgun coaching as a lifetime investment. If you come to understand the how and why of shooting you may get rusty again but you can head back to the range and get polished up. You will know what to do and how to do it. What you learn from a good coach will never leave you and will help you from then on. How many shells will it save you? How many more birds will you take? How much more respect from your peers will you gain? Won’t it feel good when your dog stays with you instead of running off to hunt with someone who can drop birds? Shooting lessons make the difference - a difference that keeps on paying and profiting you. When you think about it, you can’t afford not to get good at this. You are planning to do it for the rest of your life, right? Why not learn to do it well?

Finding Your Coach

Once convinced you could use a few lessons, how do you go about finding the right coach? Let me offer some ideas. Obviously, word of mouth is everything. If someone you know is recommending an instructor start there. Perhaps a good hunting buddy has mysteriously become a much better shot. What is the reason for that? Ask! If you have no hot trail to start on, get the Yellow Pages and call the local gun clubs and gun ranges and inquire about lessons. Once you have some names and numbers the real work begins.

First, ask the pro if he hunts. Don’t shoot with someone who doesn’t know and understand hunting. Skeet are fun to shoot but they don’t flush wild and they don’t fly erratically (or taste good). Skeet and sporting clays are great ways to improve your shooting but learning to shoot competition skeet is very different from learning to wingshoot. Make it clear you wingshoot, could not care less about tournaments, and have even less interest in breaking clay pigeons unless it will directly help your wingshooting.

I found my coach with this question. Pete Blakely immediately responded to my question about being a better dove hunter by regaling me with a dove hunting story of his own and then discussing which stations on his sporting clay range he uses to simulate dove shots. I have shot a couple cases of shells under Pete’s watchful eye and never yet had him mention anything about skeet tournaments or proper form. For me, Pete speaks constantly in terms of “these are incoming mallards” and “hold your gun like this as you walk so you will be ready when a pheasant comes up.” Pete hunts and he understands hunters. Your coach must do the same.

Second, you need to find a guy who can teach. Lots of people shoot very well but they have no clue how to teach you to do the same. At my first lesson Pete had a long piece of yellow painted lumber. He set it down out on the skeet field midway between the high and low house. “That,” he announced, “is the distance you need to lead the target. Put your gun on one end of that board and let your eye see the span.” I did and could not believe it. It was too far to lead anything. “Looks too far, doesn’t it? Try it though,” Pete said. The high house threw, I led the target by Pete’s distance represented visually by that board (way too far, of course) and powdered the bird. I cannot make that shot. I have missed zillions of doves flying that angle at that speed. I just made it, and more importantly, now I knew why I had missed before: not nearly enough lead. No one had ever shown me lead like that before. Now I understood lead, how much was required and I could do it. Within a few minutes I was consistently making many shots I wouldn’t normally make, because Pete knew how to show, to explain, and to teach good shooting.

Coaching is as much art as science. Shooting does involve a lot of technical considerations. Your coach has to be able to make the technical understandable. He must explain the math and physics of shooting without putting you to sleep. Doing that can be as simple as Pete’s clay pigeon pointer: a button he glued to the end of a car radio antenna so he can lay it alongside the barrel and show your eye exactly what the sight picture should be. Or it could be diagrams drawn in the dirt, or a trip to the far end of the skeet range to watch how birds rise and drop, but your coach must coach.

That brings me to my third point: one lesson should give you complete confidence that you are in the right place with the right coach. That doesn’t mean you become Annie Oakley but one lesson ought to give you a feel that this guy knows his stuff and can help you. If you don’t leave thinking, “By the time the season starts, look out!” then find someone else.

This confidence issue has two implications. First, to get that kind of confidence means I do the shooting, not the instructor. Watching him break targets with the gun behind his back or blindfolded is very impressive, but how does it help me shoot better? What made me believe in Pete is when I broke targets, not watching someone else do it. Second, finding the right guy means doing what he says — every time. You aren’t spending this kind of money because you are such a brilliant shot and know everything about wingshooting. What you know and what you have been doing got you on the shotgun range with a coach, didn’t it? Check your ego at the door and do what your coach says. If he says you aren’t mounting your gun correctly fix it, and go ahead and do that homework he suggests of fifty gun mounts before bed each night. If he says, you aren’t leading enough lead more. If you do not believe in him enough to follow his suggestions, you do not have the right guy. Find the fellow who could tell you painting your gun bright purple would improve your shooting and your reaction would be “Crazy, but I will try it.” That is your coach.

Finally, time your lessons. Taking lessons in April and May seems like a good idea since we can’t hunt then anyway. However, by September’s dove season you may be out of practice. Take lessons in July and August. Yes, it will be warm on the skeet range but you will be rewarded when you are primed and ready opening morning. Incidentally, with better instructors (the ones you want) that may take some scheduling ahead of time. If you can call a coach in the middle of August and get right in doesn’t that say something about him? Find your coach now and get on his schedule now or you may experience yet another season of on again off again shooting misery.

Last season’s miss haunted me for a year. Opening weekend found me in Kansas again, watching Ranger lock down hard on a pheasant. Out came the rooster. Without panic or fluster I smoothly mounted, led and fired. Once. The bird dropped, felled from a long way out by a single shot. It turned out to be a tough morning that did not deliver many pheasants, but I had one in my bag. What a feeling! That one rooster made it all worthwhile. Yet a lifetime of good shooting is ahead of me now. What is that worth? Thanks, coach!