doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Vision, Focus on the target.

i have found that a strip of red and white checkered cloth, soaked in chicken blood, and then tied to the trigger guard sometimes helps, depending on the phase of the moon...

Flight of ideas for sure......your diagnosis of schizophrenia is solidly/firmly established Ed. No worries, Ed. We all know you are very sick.

Vision and shooting is a very complicated subject and unfortunately not all instructors understand it that well, or at least not all use terminology that avoids confusion. My experience with Chris Batha is that he understands it better than most.

If you really want to dig into the topic, read up on the Quiet Eye approach. This is a good introduction:
Quiet Eye

Just like gunmount, visual concentration is something you can practice and improve if are willing to put the time in. Or if time and circumstances permit, you can wingshoot 100 days a year . . . .

Bro. Buzz - I'm always apprehensive of long distance diagnoses, but extreme grandiosity with delusions of cleverness certainly suggests Ed has lost touch with reality. It appears that inhalation of enough acetylene can kill off brain cells so possibly his actions are beyond his control
http://toxnet.nlm.nih.gov/cgi-bin/sis/search/a?dbs+hsdb:@term+@DOCNO+166

btstst IS an eye doctor, and I appreciate his comments

Fitting makes the gun fit you and point at what you focus, or concentrate on. So how is lead established? If you move the muzzles ahead of the target then the gun is no longer pointing what you are looking at, or you are not looking at it bt at the sky ahead of the target.

Could it be that the situation is not so much hard focus on the target but more an awareness of relationships between muzzles and target? Neither one being in super hard focus?

The quiet eyes methods seem to be pointing that way, though they were not evolved with shotguns in mind.

Funny though that hitting a moving target with a rifle type sighting setup involves focusing on the front sight, as in stationary shooting, yet manages to work just fine.

Buzz,

It is a DVD available through Sunrise Productions (Bruce Scott) at this web address:

http://www.sunrisevideo.com/sportingclays.asp

Check your p.m. board before you order it.

This issue of how to see lead has been argued and worn out for years, and we will never settle it here, but I CAN tell you how I see it. They say you cannot focus on something ahead of the bird that is not there, probably true, but I can tell you exactly how far ahead of the bird I was every time my gun goes off. I "see the gap" between my muzzle and the bird. I translate that gap into feet of lead AT THE BIRD, not inches at the muzzle, like most women see it. I never think feet while swinging on the bird, my subconscious handles that from it's 55 year old wingshooting memory bank, but I can tell you what it was after the shot is triggered. How do I know how far my muzzle is in front of the bird when I'm focused on the bird and not the muzzle? The muzzle is clearly in my peripheral vision, out of sharp focus of course, but plenty clear enough that I know what the gap is. Just the same as it is when I shoot directly at an incoming dove's head. I am focused on his head, but my muzzle/bead is very obvious to me.

SRH

I see the gap between barrels and bird as well Stan.
I also know that shooting is like training retrievers. If you don't extend the range, you'll never be effective at the longer ranges.

I have read that most of the instinctive methods peter out at about 35 yards, because of where vagaries in swing speed, and pattern degradation effects begin to increase.

Realistically, I just do what continues to work at the ranges that I like to shoot birds at. And I don't waste shells on some shots. And over time, I think Clay target practice with low gun erases many of the common small errors that compound to prevent good shooting.

I try to find the target and shoot.

As long as the gun is a good fit it works.

The less thinking the better.

I agree CZ. You learn to shoot long birds by shooting long birds. Most people cannot comprehend what 10 feet of lead looks like until they do it repeatedly and see that pinhead out there break repeatedly.

I shoot premounted clays, and I shoot low gun hunting. I know with all that is in me that I shoot higher scores premounted than I can low gun. I also know that it doesn't hurt my low gun hunting shots at birds. Just the same way that I can shoot a single trigger gun for weeks, then pick up my double triggered ones and never give it a thought.

SRH

I couldn't tell if my gun has a bead on it. I do of course have a muzzle awareness in every shot as Stan has described. As for technique I use Move, Mount and Shoot from a low gun position most of the time. I will soft mount at times on hot targets.