Stan it may just be that you notice things that others dont. If you are an average shooter you are kind of happy with average results. Those are the shooters who shoot anything from 60-80 at Sporting Clays and seem happy. After you reach the point where 80 is a bad day you start to notice things more. Youve shot so well for so long you are just aware what does not work well for you. Straight grip with heavy shells are not your thing. It might be the shape of the grip or just the way your wrist is bent when shooting a straight grip gun. A small palm swell could have made you gun much more under control with heavy loads. A oval or diamond shaped straight grip gives you a lot of the same effects of a palm swell.
Like me, you try to analyze why things happen. I call it reading the birds. I spend a lot of time trying different adjustments to see what outcomes they bring. On Sporting Clays I dont need to smoke every bird but if I just chop a bird in half it makes me wonder why I was so close to a miss. Was it just a poor mount, a poor swing(effort), did I miss read the bird or lazy attempt. The problem I have with Sporting Clays is that repeating birds gets boring for me and some courses are all easy targets for newer shooters. Hard to get better when you are shooting station 7 birds all the time. So I shoot a lot of .410 at Sporting Clays if they are gimme courses. Also it pisses off the kids when that little .410 makes them work for a win.
Years ago I was shooting a .410 on high five. Wayne Mayse was talking me through several different adjustments to try. By changing my hold point I got different breaks with the same lead, different leads, different foot positions all were tried. Shot a full box, all hits, with vastly different breaks. By the last four shells I had tried so many different things I could walk the bird into different parts of the pattern such that I cut the first third off with the first shell, centered with the second, was on the back half with the third and just cut the tail off with the last shell. It was dialed in as we use to say. Never missed a high five for months after that. Just to humble me Wayne proceeded to shoot a box on high five and he started cutting just the very nose off the bird. Shell after shell he took more off until he started hitting the back half of the bird. Last shell he just knocked off the tail. That man was an artist with a .410 as his record of 100 .410 100 straights in competition showed.
