Looking Back on Phoenix Clinic

We’re leaving Phoenix after two days of coaching, and man, has Dan Twitchell done some amazing things with that complex. What a relief to see a real businessman in the shooting business.

A Unique Bunch of SHooters

We had five students on Friday and three on Sunday. There were some unique people in the group. Steve Lockham is 82 years old and has one of the best and most consistent gun mounts of anyone I have ever seen. He’s an X international Skeet shooter and so was his son. He hunts ducks and would hunt them every day if he could. He’s from Canada and spends three months in Phoenix every winter

Steve was a real testimony to the fact that if you have a decent gun mount you can learn new things so much quicker. He caught on quickly on the first day and flew away on the second.

Another shooter wanted to shoot with two eyes but defaulted and closed an eye. But he did see it coming and stabilize the picture.

Muzzle Awareness = Inconsistency

As always, we had two inconsistent shooters, and the real reason for it was muzzle awareness in the setup! Man, what a killer that is. The game is eaten up with people who are so muzzle-aware in the setup. They don’t even know what it is doing to them and their ability to be consistent.

We had a shooter who was shooting an A400 blue gun with an add-on high rib and a Wenig stock with a rolled-over cheek piece and a parallel comb that was too high. Check out the photos of him with his gun and with Gael’s Beretta 692. Man, what a difference.

When I asked him where the original stock was, he said he still had it. I asked him what it looked like when it was on the gun. He said that with slight cheek pressure he was perfect, but his head tilted when his face was on the comb. He thought his eyes should be level, to which I said no and showed him why.

With a parallel comb on most faces, the end of the Monte Carlo is resting on the mandible (where the jaw meets the skull near the ear). This doesn’t even look like it’s comfortable.

Check this out. Wenig stock and standard Beretta 692.

Muzzle Awareness in the Setup -> Muzzle Awareness in the Shot

As always, shooters were both looking down the barrel and they did not even understand the sight picture. The aiming perception, along with trying to look down the gun and aim the gun was killing their consistency. In fact, on the very first stand, I noticed the first shooter was looking at the muzzle in the setup. He missed a real easy incoming crow target at about 35 yards.

I made a point of showing everyone in the group the muzzle awareness in the setup. I positioned the shooter with the gun well below his line of sight and he called for the bird, smoked it, and then smoked it several more times.

Now for the moment of truth. I told him to look at the gun in the setup and call for the target. And he could not even buy the target. He missed it four times then took the gun out of his line of sight and kept him from looking at it in the setup and smoked it again and again.

Could not have planned that sequence any better. What a vivid explaination of how muzzle awareness in the setup assures you of muzzle awareness in the shot.

The rest of the shooters could not keep their eyes off the gun. As they progressed through the day, it became evident that when they looked at the gun they missed. And when they saw the bird behind the gun they hit. All the shooters eventually began to accept the muzzle in the picture. By about 2:30, all were stabilizing the picture.

It’s simply amazing what that does to the consistency of a shooter. It is absolutely lethal.