DNR Training in Iowa

We’re on our way home from doing two DNR trainings. One was in Florida which had 186 volunteers that we introduced to the OSP System. The other was in Des Moines, Iowa at the International Hunters Education Convention, where we gave two lectures then had a range day.

Being Open-Minded Leads to Change

Change is oftentimes a big barrier to learning. But each of the volunteers came with an open mind.

After watching the animations, all they wanted to do was go shoot. They all found out that even though it was quite different from what they have been teaching, the system was quite easy to adapt to.

It took a little time of course, but it became easier the more they did it. They said it would be easy to introduce and teach because you could reproduce it. You knew exactly where you missed or hit so it was easier to make corrections.

I had several trainers come to me and say it was the way they shot in the field when they were shooting well. And when they weren’t shooting well, they were very aware of the barrel and couldn’t hit anything…sound familiar?

Barrel Awareness = Bad Shooting

The big takeaway was that the more aware of the barrel they were, the worse they shot. Hmmm… but no one had ever really told them not to look at the barrel.

In fact, everyone told them to put that white bead three feet in front of a bird and shoot. If they did that and there were two birds and they were aiming at the first one and the second one fell dead, they had some information. But they had never considered that the bead was getting in the way until now.

We noticed that most of the guns people were using didn’t fit them. They were either too short or too long. Mostly the guns were too short.

These guys were all scrunched up, so out came the slip-on boots to make the stocks longer. The eyes then lined up with the barrel and it made all the difference in the world for their success of hitting targets.

And of course, they also learned that they needed to practice their gun mount to be consistent. That seems to be a constant theme from us: practice your gun mount!

We had a great time and meet a lot of great new friends. We’re looking forward to hearing of their success with the kids in Hunters Education in the next year.