REAPING THE REWARDS OF FAILURE

I hate to miss a shot. It bothers me far more than it should. There is a saying “a miss by an inch is a miss by a mile”. Over my years as a hunter, I have imbibed this as a core shooting philosophy, and so perhaps this is where my uncompromising attitude comes from.

However, as a youngster terrorising tin cans with a cheap springer, I would often remark on a flyer, on how close it had been. As I out-grew Tin Can Alley and ventured out into the field on early hunting forays, I carried with me that sense that a near miss was somehow almost as good as a hit.

That is until I got tired of seeing quarry scamper away unscathed and evermore wary. Gradually I began to understand how