Hold Point

It never ceases to fascinate me when I watch people shooting clays, they all have their own ideas of where the gun should be pointed when they call for a target. One of my fellow squaddies has the stock against his belt with the barrel somewhere beside his right ear heading towards the nearest cloud, another scrunches the pad into his shouder and cheek so tightly that wherever he looks the gun goes too. The method I learnt years ago called for me to find the first point of visual contact with the clay in flight and then the place I reckoned I could kill it and point the gun between the two. That's a brilliant way to do things in the world of the instinctive shooter and to prove it all you have to do is give a shotgun to someone who's never before shot a clay. Once our newbie has been shown the target it just feels natural for him/her to hold the gun there; a classic example of this in action was one of my newest additions who turned up recently with a semi-auto. On his first outing he had a perfect instinctive, maintained lead style right out of the tin with broken clays everywhere; as usual though, when he started to think about what he was doing the wheel fell off but fortunately for him, he's one of the rare guns I've met who can take advice and act on it immediately - he's could be a spectacular gun one day. Sorry, I digress.
Why do we want to hold the gun there? Well, for our brains to work instinctively we have to help them a bit. By starting the barrels well in front of the clay when we first see it we're giving ourselves time to analyse the direction and speed of the clay. Once we've worked out the trajectory, muscle memory comes into action so we swing and mount the gun still ahead of the clay as we've done thousands of times before. As I've said many times before, instinct comes into play putting the gun the correct distance ahead of the target so when mounting is complete we pull the trigger and break the birdie. It really does come down to trusting yourself to hold the gun far enough ahead of the target so that during the period when the flightline is being worked out subconciously, the target doesn't get itself ahead of the gun.
If you hold the gun too near the trap, you'll end up chasing the clay across the sky, (or ground, it doesn't matter where the clay goes), finding yourself throwing the gun though the clay hoping you are far enough in front to hit it. You're then back to the 'follow through' method which we all need from time to time when we're in a muddle but it's not neccessary to work that hard. Similarly, holding the gun too far along the line of flight could result in a miss in front of the clay - if you are going to get it wrong this is the best mistake, all you need to do is hold the gun a bit nearer to the trap to cut down the lead. Remember that the gun in the hold point must be pointing below the clay's flight line, if you hold above the line it takes time to bring it under and then back up again so the clay gets ahead of the gun leading to a miss behind.
Once you are fairly sure of finding the correct hold point each time you will be able to adjust it, enabling you to shoot earlier or later as required, for instance the first crosser of an 'on report' pair can be taken at leisure but the first bird of an opposing simultaneous pair would need to be taken earlier in order to acquire the second target. Find a good, steady crosser or tower bird and try it - after a bit you'll be able to break it whever you want to!

Case Study

If you've been following all this stuff I've spent hours telling you, some of you may well be asking yourselves, "it's all very well but can you prove it works"? The answer is yes, of course I can. I have spoken before about my squad who seem to take an interest in what I write, only because this is the system I use to try to help them to hit a few. They don't really have a clue how it works but it's surprising how often I am able to show them a way of hitting a target using their inbuilt instinct. Yesterday came a spectacular breakthrough with one of my boys.
This particular gun is a great friend whom I have tried to coach from a complete novice to a low 'A' class shooter. Like the rest of us, he has good days and bad but recently he's been in the doldrums, expecting to do well only to find himself in the low 20's. Our last round together was a revelation to all the squad - this was the culmination of years of hard work when everything came together to produce a Double A beating score. Have a look at his card; at first sight it doesn't look much to be proud of - just you read on bor.....

Now we have to bear in mind it was a cold winter's day with a wind blowing straight through you so the Stand 1 score I'll let pass with only the comments that his car was warm, his fingers were cold and DTL clays are never to his liking. On 2 we had a singles, pair, singles, pair sequence of a fast quartering right hander and an edge on left-hander, dropping and slowing very quickly. Note the first pair were broken; our friend didn't know where they were coming from and instinct took over as soon as each clay came into view. The rest were intermittent as he started thinking too hard about what he was doing.
Stand 3 was the start of something special for me, here was proof that my theories work, here was vindication of everything I've said to all my boys and you lot. Our squaddie stood up to the line, called for the clay, and hadn't got a bloody clue where it was! "Up high", we shouted, pointing to a high, edge on, curling clay at 1o'clock. Dust. Panic set in now - where was the second of the pair? A distant left to right in front - we shouted and pointed - guess what? Blown to bits. From then on the very same each time for all 4 pairs and the first straight he'd had for ages. My hero had absolutely no idea from whence the clays came but eight times we pointed and shouted it out to him, eight times his instinct kicked in, the gun flew across the sky and there was a convincing break every time his subconcious told him to pull the trigger.
You want more proof? OK. Stand 4 was a simultaneous pair of a fairly quick, close left to right and a long, quartering incomer - the leftie was the one to take first to make sure of a mark on the card. So here we go again. First clay is in the bag but where on earth is the second? "Up there, THERE!" Bang... bird dead. The only miss was a bit unfortunate because a hefty gust of wind sent the clay off course and drove it down faster than all the others. Once again instinctive shooting had marked a good card.
5 started with a good pair, trajectory unknown and unseen; the correct hold point at the start counted for these. Thinking then came into the picture again and it went a bit wobbly.
6 was the icing on the cake, a quartering rabbit followed by a vicious right to left rising fast and being driven down even quicker by the wind at treetop height. My exemplory pupil clawed his way through the by now beside themselves with emotion squad, clamouring to see him make a fool of himself. Once again, the hold point was right, the rabbit was hit early and the gun rose, swinging up in front of the bird for a beautiful, blisteringly fast second shot. Each pair was the same and every shot he had to hold his nerve, forcing out of his head the ribald comments and taunts from his mates - he even had to cope with a 'no bird' but he still came back to score. To pile on the agony someone shouted, "well done, good eight!", even though we were on the 10 stand. Another fine rabbit taken and finally the pressure told as the wind played havoc with his last bird of the day.
For me, this round was a vision of instinctive shooting perfection. The poor chap had to cope with the cold, wind, taunts, (support you understand), a newish gun and different cartridges but still the technique I'd tried to instill for donkey's years shone through like a beacon - yes, it works.

Please come back soon to find some articles or ask me about technique.

Copyright of this page belongs to Andy, How to Break Clays.com - the website for the amateur clay shooter, July 2007