Reading Pairs

When you’re looking between the birds of the pair, you’ll understand just how much time you really have to shoot the pair, which will eliminate the hurry on the first bird or the first pair. And eventually will get you more X’s.

Never miss a target because you think you have to hurry. Whenever you think you have to hurry, you’ll always move before you focus. Always. Without exception.

The other thing is, you can get focused on the target easily if you know where it’s first visible to you. So, I’m not as interested in getting sharp focus on the show pair. I’m more interested in their spatial relationships, so that I can plan the breakpoint on the first one to maximize the efficiency of the transition from the first breakpoint to the second target, both with my eyes.

And with the muzzle, if you look at them, you look between them and you know there’s spatial relationships. If you make a bad read on the first breakpoint, it’s a lot easier to change your course, your breakpoints on the first bird to get to the second bird easier if you know more about their relationship when they’re in the air.

If either target is rising, it’s really good to know when it peaks out and stalls, and where that point is. If you can break the other target, so you get to the peaking target at the top, then the second target is fairly easy.

It’s also interesting to look when you’re reading targets that are long incomers. That target’s going to have a subtle rise to it. But eventually it’s going to come down. And the closer you can shoot it coming down, the less deceiving the line will be.

Typically, they’re going to fade right or fade left. But if you can shoot those birds, before they start dropping rapidly, you’ll be fooled less by the line and shoot inside the arc if you can shoot them just as they come out of that arc, even to the point of putting a full choke in and shooting them further out than most people are comfortable with.

Again, that’s another reason to have a gun that shoots flat, and that you know where your gun shoots and how much cheek pressure you got to put on it to make it shoot there. That’s a big deal, especially on long incomers.