The Problem with Well-Meaning Shooting Advice

When you’re shooting with someone better than you, quite often when you have a trouble with a certain target, they might want to help you by telling you what they perceive when shooting the same target. And what they tell you is real to them based on the amount of shooting they have done.

The problem with integrating their “perceptions” into your own shooting is that if you do not have the same or similar target inventory stored in your long-term memory, your success (if you even have any) will be short-lived.

How many times have you been shooting, and someone gives you a tip or a positive sound-alike and it works immediately? But when you come back to the same target three days later, it doesn’t work? Or, as the late Ed Hefty would say, you get “$10 worth of free advice” from someone.

It does not happen to work. The advice they gave you was what they really perceive when they shoot that target. But that perception is an evolution of what they see now versus what they saw when they were less experienced.

The free advice is genuine and the intent is noble. But unless you have as much experience as the advisor, that advice will seldom work for you in the long term.

There is no shortcut to the skill-building process. You can’t skip the deliberate repetitions it takes for your brain to recognize the sequence of what you’re doing. By your reaction, understand that the desired effect is to build what you are doing into an automatized circuit in your long-term memory.

The reason most shooters are looking for the quick magic fix is that it fits their narrative or their perceptions that if they just knew what the last club champion saw, they too could become the next club champion.

News flash! There is no pixie dust, magic bullet, secret handshake, or special equation to figure the lead on all targets but in the minds of most aspiring shooters they think there is.