You're probably not as a good a shot as you think you are

There are some questions that one simply doesn’t ask: it is terribly poor form to ask about a lady’s age, anyone’s income, or a gentleman’s waist size. Add to that list: asking a game shot if they’re any good. However, I’m a nosy bugger, and not above posing an awkward question in the name of generating interesting copy. Journalism is all about asking the questions people would prefer you not to ask.

That’s why, in this year’s Game Shooting Census, carried out by GunsOnPegs and sponsored by Lycetts, we included the following question: How would you describe your skill as a game shot? Respondents were asked to rate their abilities with a shotgun as one of the following:

• Very good
• Good
• Average
• Poor
• Very poor

And let me tell you, it was worth risking becoming a social leper and being looked upon as a bounder, because the results were, well, not entirely surprising, but definitely interesting. Here they are:

Overestimating abilities

So, what we learn is that a staggering 96.19% of game shots reckon that they are an average shot, or better, and that only 3.81% say their shooting is below average. You don’t need to be a statistician to know that something is amiss. 

However, it might be helpful, at this point to ask what an accurate graph might have looked like. For example, one way we could look at it is that were there equal numbers of people in each category, then we would see 20% in each category - a flat line. However, in general, skills in any activity are not evenly distributed in a population, it tends to be a bell-curve, with most of the participants grouped in the middle, and just a few in each of the extremes, like this:

This would suggest that a significant proportion of people have over-estimated their abilities. But, is the picture as bad as all that? One of the significant influences on skill level is the length of time you have been doing a thing, so if we take into account the fact that respondents to The Game Shooting Census have been shooting for an average of 36 years, we can perhaps move the graph a bit to the right, like this:

It is interesting to note that when we look exclusively at those respondents who have been shooting for five years or fewer, we end up with a much more balanced curve, but, of course, given the relative lack of experience we probably ought to expect a bias toward the less-skilled end of the scale.

What do we mean by 'good'?

Nevertheless we must still conclude that game shots as a group wildly overestimate their skills. Why should that be so? One factor is that there’s no really good impirical measure of skill - are we talking about cartridge:bird ratio here? Or are we talking the range at which the gun feels confident in killing a bird?

If we’re using the former, then what qualifies as a ‘good’ ratio? 3:1? 4:1? 2:1? Simon Reinhold has suggested a target ratio of 1.618:1 - the so-called Golden Ratio. How many of us can claim to consistently shoot at even 3:1?

A good ratio in Norfolk is likely to be significantly different to a good ratio in Wales, so is ratio a terribly useful measure. If, then, we opt for the latter measure, then we have another perception problem to tackle - the inability of many game shots to accurately judge distance, and the fact that they rarely underestimate that distance!

How high is high?

In the 2016 Game Shooting Census we asked respondents to look at a picture of a tower and estimate its height. Less than 1% of respondents got it correct (41 yards), and the average guess was a full 7 yards too high, an overestimate of around 15%, while only a quarter of people guessed within five yards of the correct height. Nearly 10% guessed a figure that was 20 yards greater, and 6% were out by 30 yards.

This tower as high as you think!

Judging distance, especially height, is hard. A while back I was on a sim day where the traps were positioned on lifts at a height of 40m - when the first clays crossed the line I was forced to confront the fact that I have rarely, if ever, shot at a 40 yard bird. For a chap brought up shooting the very average pheasants and hedge-hopping partridges of Hampshire, they were really far away.

Peer-review

The reality is that most respondents to the survey are probably judging themselves against their peers - the lads on the syndicate - not against the rest of the shooting population. Very few of us are likely to be fortunate enough to share the field with the very best shots, so we haven’t really got a good idea of what a great shot is capable of. You might be one of the better shots on your syndicate, but where does your syndicate sit on the skills spectrum?

The 2022 Game Shooting Census revealed another fact that may be worth mentioning here: in the last 12 months, only a quarter of all game shots have had a shooting lesson. The average number of lessons per gun was just 0.6. But then, if we all think we’re above average, why would we get a lesson? Interestingly, the people who had ten or more lessons last year rank themselves somewhat less generously than the wider shooting public - are these the most self-aware group of game shots out there?

The Dunning-Kruger effect

We should not, perhaps, be all that surprised by these results. This could be an example of the Dunning-Kruger effect in action. This is the name given to the phenomenon which sees people with low ability, expertise or experience tend to overestimate their ability or knowledge. The theory is based on the idea that poor performers don’t yet know that they are poor: they’re not good enough yet to know how bad they are, if you see what I mean - not only do they lack skill, but they are ignorant of the fact that they lack skill. The effect can be seen in a wide range of activities, from estimates of IQ to skill as a driver.

Credit: 忍者猫, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons

Listeners to The GunsOnPegs Podcast - or, for that matter, those who have had the misfortune to shoot in the same team as me - will know that I am fairly down on my own abilities as a game shot. Having been shooting for close on 30 years, having shot with some very good shots indeed, and having two younger brothers against whom to compare myself (usually unfavourably), I am keenly aware of my own shortcomings, which largely come down to inconsistency; I can kill a belter before missing the next two or three comparatively easy birds. Being conscious of this not only allows me to make sure I’m not over-reaching myself, but also gives me something to focus on improving when I head out on a sim day or to the clay ground.

It really is vital that we are honest about our own abilities with a shotgun, not only from the perspective of ethics - we have to shoot only at those birds that we are confident of killing cleanly - but also from a perspective of, well, manners. No one likes a braggart, and it really isn’t the done thing to drone on about how great a shot you are, even in the privacy of your own head - to do so breeds overconfidence, and then more pricked birds, something we should be doing our best to avoid.