In part two of his series, Matt Hance describes how to read a target and make a plan for how you’ll break it
This month we are going to look at how you can develop yourself into a more consistent shooter. That means making a plan for how you’re going to shoot every target – not just stepping up to the stand calling ‘Pull!’ and thinking that instinct or natural ability will see you through. For me the plan involves five simple steps. That might sound like a lot, but it will not just make you more confident when you walk into the stand, it will also make you much more consistent in executing the shot.
A mistake that I often come across with new shooters is they walk into the stand not having paid much attention to the targets – so they can’t possibly create a plan detailed enough to enable them to break the target consistently. You need to put in the extra effort to make sure that you know that clay inside out.
Having a plan, executing it well and hitting the target puts you in a much better position to repeat the shot. Believe me, champions around the world follow these same steps that I am going to teach you here – and the benefits are demonstrated by the trophies and titles they have won.
Learning to read
You’ve probably heard people talking about ‘reading’ targets. What shooters mean by this is being able to notice the finer details or variables which we need to take account of in our plan. Take the left-to-right crosser in diagram 1 for example. It looks straightforward enough, but there will be a point where the clay is travelling at its fastest and another time where it will be travelling much slower, affecting the need for gun speed and perceived lead.
To ensure that you are noticing everything that the clay does, a lot of clay shooters find it helpful to track the clay along its flight with their finger. What I find best, and most repeatable, is to zoom out and choose landmarks in the background which can be used as reference points. Initially I’ll try to find three.
On the crossing target in diagram 2, there’s a fir tree where the target first appears, a line of trees in the background and then a tree to the right. Watch the clay, thinking about its flight in three separate parts. You might find that in section one the clay appears in line with a branch of the conifer; in section two it peaks over the top of a certain tree in the distance, and then falls away behind the tree on the right.
If I ask you how the clay flies, you would be able to draw
