Getting some practice in

Shot Saturday and Sunday, it was around 28 to 30 degrees and a litte windy but the sun was out. I shot 2 yard sliders where you start at 16 and go back to 25 yards on each post. Shot post 1 and post 5 sliders, shot some handicap and singles. Shot corner drills.

Within all that, some good shooting and some bad shooting. Hoping that the bad shooting will work out as the weather warms up.

You can't hit what you can't see

The clay target shooting books that I read at the end of last year talked a lot about eye exercises, both to improve the ability to focus and refocus over the course of shooting at a tournament (endurance) and to be able to quickly focus on and track a moving target.

I've been watching a 20 minute DVD everyday for a month which exercises the two ways primates track objects of interest. The first is saccades which allows the eye to quickly pick up a moving object. The second is smooth pursuit which allows the eyes to track a moving object. Both obviously important for clay target shooting.

On the DVD, you follow a dot with your eyes which moves at different speeds and in different patterns. It also flashes dots and series of letters on the screen to teach you to focus quickly.

I found this iPhone app which breaks the eye exercises into four categoires: analysis, reactivity, memory, and attention.

Our Wii has a target shooting game that I think also develops eye-hand coordination, focus, concentration, timing, etc...

Grand American Handicap, 1926

Look at this group of snappy dressers from 1958

Making plans to go to the Grand American Handicap this summer

Making plans to go to the Grand American this summer for the first time, have the RV rented, Dad and Cal are going. Mr F. E. Rogers of St. Louis MO won the Grand American Handicap with an LC Smith in 1906, the year this poster came out. He broke a 94 out of 100 in a "gale force" wind. That was just a few years after 1902 which was the last year they used live birds. 1900 was the last time live birds were shot at the Olympics. The first ATA Grand American was held in 1893. The Kentucky Derby has been around since 1853.

The Importance Of A Shooting Diary

I really struggled through my first 300 trap targets this year, really struggled. Shooting 20s from the 16 yard line kind of struggle. I was questioning my gun choice, the eye exercises I've been doing, whether I needed new glasses, if I jarred the rib or comb setting on my gun, etc...

I found some old notes yesterday I had kept from last year and I saw multiple times, "hold the gun high over the house, look down below the barrel for the target." What have I been doing? Holding high over the trap house and looking even higher. Targets were getting a huge jump on me and I was chasing after them, never getting a good look, constantly being surprised.

Went back out today and shot a 24 and a 23 from 16 yards.

Without those notes from last year when I was shooting well, how long would I have struggled? Needless to say, I am keeping an even better diary now. So simple and so easy to fix. Now I can go back to the more important work of trying to pick up that extra one or two targets, with confidence in my overall approach.

E A Hicken Sr.

Elwood Hicken, my grandmother's brother was a trap shooter. According to the ATA's website, he shot his first registered targets in 1953. He shot 750 singles that year for an average of 76.27%. He only shot 50 handicap targets that year and broke 76% of those. He shot pretty consistently for the next 40 years, shooting his last registered targets in 1993 at the age of 81 (I think). His high singles average was 94% in 1963. He ended his ATA career at 21.5 yards but I am not sure how far back he made it in his prime. All together, he shot 76,325 singles targets and 23,150 handicap targets. Thats a nice long career, I hope I am that lucky.

I mentioned his name on another website and found some people that knew him. He shot at Delaware County Sportsmen's Association in Media, PA, a club founded in 1915. Apparently he has been still calling the clubhouse from Florida every other week or so to touch base.

A few years back, he came up from Florida and insisted my parents take him to see the gun club. My parents remember going to see him shoot at Shawnee on the Delaware (a Pocono Mountains resort) in the early 1960s while they were in college.

Another poster related that Elwood was a past High Chief of the Atlantic Indians and while he didn't know much about his shooting career, he remembered him as a real gentleman. Indians are an informal social trapshooting club, in Illinois, we have the Illini Indians.

He's still paying his ATA membership dues, 98 years old now. Maybe he is a life member.