How to keep on top form

When someone tells me, on a shoot day or shortly afterwards, that “thewheels have fallen off”, I tend to ask myself if their wheels were ever really on. A competent shot should understand what he or she is doing sufficiently well that complete collapse rarely happens.

Those who suffer a dramatic, sudden, fall off in shooting performance are usually those who do not rely on any sort of developed technique (with occasional exception). They don’t really know what they do or what their gun and cartridge are doing together at the terminal end. So, when it all goes wrong they don’t know why or how to proceed to correct it. Being, effectively, clueless may result in panic, making a bad situation worse.

So, my first piece of advice is to be proactive. Go to a shooting school and work out what you actually do when you shoot, what you need to concentrate on to shoot really well and, not least of all, practise alternative ways of shooting other than your habitual one. For example, if you shoot