A Hunting Visit to The 74 Ranch

Doves and Quail at the 74 Ranch

We found ourselves at the 74 Ranch for quail hunting this past weekend with sponsors. It was exciting and fun, and man, is it a pleasure to watch the dogs work.

We decided to hunt doves on the last morning of our hunt since the winter season opened on Friday. It was a great fun hunt. Two of us got our limit. And me? Well, let’s just say my time was spent keeping the birds moving by jump shoot them in the goat weeds.

I killed seven birds with my Parcour choked full and full. Those little Rio Elite 7/8 oz 7 1/2s did the number on the flushing doves. What a great thing to have a gun that really fits.

The doves were anything but predictable and I found myself looking out over the gun barrels a couple of times. This always puts you behind the bird. When i realized it, I committed to looking in a certain direction and began to anticipate the birds on a couple of shots. Man, what a difference.

Learning to Compete and Win

We’re looking forward to the Advance Classes at 74 this next year and it looks like we will be teaching for four weeks straight next year. We always look forward to these sessions because we are surrounded by so many shooters looking for changes in their attitudes, techniques, and fundamentals. We hope to hear what helped them the most from last year and getting feedback on how they improved.

It’s a common thing for shooters to FINALLY realize that learning to compete and learning to win is also a circuit in the brain. And you can only depend on the circuit after you have fired the circuit, failed, and learned from it. There’s no automatic deal with respect to competing and winning. It’s something that you must experience and learn from.

That is a hard lesson to learn, especially for kids (regardless of their age). To think like a champion, you must experience what a champion experiences and fail and learn what you must do to evolve into it.

You can’t find this stuff in a book. You can’t simply just change the way you think and all of a sudden become a champion. The way you think is a result of all the thoughts you have had in the past that make you react the way you do. It’s only when you begin to look at how you react to those thoughts and situations that change can occur. It’s a gradual evolution that does not come without failure and true self-evaluation and being honest with yourself.

So in the new year, I hope you find it easier to be honest with yourself. The evolution of who you’ll become will be short and to the point.

Cheers. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!