Missing is good for you

This summer I learned a valuable lesson. Having had a year’s Covid-enforced hiatus, I was back fishing on the Spey, but was finding that what few fishing skills I had in my arsenal pre-pandemic had more or less abandoned me. My casting was poor, I’d forgotten how to tie my knots, and when it came to playing fish… well, I only won 25% of my battles.

The reason I tell you this is not mere self-pity, but because thrashing the water to a foam, casting damp spaghetti, losing fish, and generally making a pig’s ear of things made me come to an important realisation. In fact, it made me come to three important realisations.

1. It is not actually necessary to be good at something in order to enjoy it.
2. Everyone around you is just as tied up worrying about their own performance to worry about your failures.
3. Every cockup is an opportunity to get better

But how do my piscatorial woes have anything to do with GunsOnPegs, and the title of this article? Allow me to explain.

Set yourself realistic goals

Often, when I come up with an idea for an article, I have a “working title” in my head. Often these are big wordy things that need significant work to make them snappy. Occasionally, however, they are rejected on other grounds. This article falls into the latter camp, and the working title was “It is OK to be shit.” Look, let’s be realistic. We can’t all shoot like George Digweed. We can’t all shoot at 2:1. To do so requires not only great technique (which most of us don’t have), but also the ability to shoot not only regularly, but often. The limitations of wallet, family, work and other commitments mean that this is simply not a realistic prospect for most of us.

Try as we might, very few of us will become "top shots"

Yes, there are a few fortunate souls who shoot 30-odd times a year. According to the Game Shooting Census 2021 by GunsOnPegs and Lycetts, that’s just a tiny fraction of the shooting community, but most guns shoot just a handful of times a year. With the best will in the world, there’s no way you’re going to shoot like a god with that level of practice. So, what can we hope for?

Be safe, and shoot at what you’re confident you can kill cleanly

Look, we all like to challenge ourselves, but when we only shoot a few times a season, there’s no point in blasting away at birds that are well out of range for your level of skill. And this is where my second point comes into play. You may receive the admiring comments of your shooting buddies if you pull down an absolute rocket, but that praise will be dampened significantly if you’ve been pricking birds of a similar height all day, and have finally brought one down.

While you might not get quite the plaudits for shooting consistently and within yourself, but achieving clean kills more often than not, you will earn your fellow guns’ respect for doing so. Rather than aiming to shoot at a particular ratio, as ‘ordinary shooting people’ we should aim, above all, to be safe, and second of all to be ethical, and that, really, is enough. If you’re achieving clean kills, you can be satisfied, even if they’re not ‘skyscrapers’.

You don't have to shoot the highest birds to be proud of your shooting

The fabled ‘bathtub bird’ is a wonderful thing, but here at GunsOnPegs we firmly believe that catching fish, shooting well, or getting a deer for the freezer are only a fraction of the whole. The experience in the round is key: the location, being out in the countryside, the company, the hospitality and the craic and a thousand other things contribute at least as much to our enjoyment of fishing, stalking and shooting as the activities themselves. 

Hit, miss... respond with grace

Many of you will be familiar with the poem “A Father’s Advice” which begins “If a sportsman true you’d be...” that details what it takes to be a safe shot. But there’s another famous poem that I think game shots would do well to keep in mind: Rudyard Kipling’s “If”, and specifically the following lines: 

If you can meet with triumph and disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same

What I'm getting at is that no matter how well (or badly) you shoot should not have a huge impact on how much you enjoy a day out on the peg. To return to my fishing trip briefly, sure, I only landed one out of four fish, and sure, other people on the trip were casting better, catching more fish, and losing fewer, but I still had a wonderful time. Similarly, I have had days where I’ve shot like I’ve been blindfolded but still had a great day out.

Become a better game shot by missing

This is all well and good, very noble sentiments. However there are few among us who, hand on heart, don’t want to be better shots. But here’s the thing: improvement in any area is subject to the law of diminishing returns - the better you are at something, the more effort, time - and often money - it takes to make a small improvement. Conversely, if, like me, you’re not very good, the scope for improvement is far greater. And this is why missing is good for you. 

The author misses again

Allow me, if I may, to use another analogy. Another passion of mine is bouldering, which some of you might have enjoyed watching in the Olympics. Obviously the aim of the game is to get to the top. But falling off is not viewed as a bad thing in climbing, as with every failed attempt one learns more about what does and doesn’t work. Put your foot there and the wall spits you off. So try something different next time. Put your foot there but with your hips like this and you somehow stay on. Not only have you learned a valuable lesson for this particular route, but a lesson that you can apply to future routes.

Learn from your misses

Similarly, with shooting, every missed bird represents a learning opportunity. Not only is this true during a drive - getting a handle on trajectory, line and speed is always a process - but it is also true after a day’s shooting.  The key is to be mindful in your missing - you need to take note of which birds you’re struggling with, so you can then go away to the shooting school or a sim day and iron out the technical flaws that might be causing you to miss.

Dance like no one is watching

Self-concsiousness is a terrible, almost paralysing thing at times, but getting nervous is normal. Just as taking to the dancefloor at a wedding can be a tricky thing, after a few moments you realise that basically no one can dance. Similarly there are far more average shots out there than there are dead-eyes, and unless you move in very exalted circles, the chances are that not only are your fellow guns just as nervy, but they're also not brilliant shots. These two facts combined mean that everyone else in the line is going to be far more worried about their own poor shooting than they are about judging yours, so keep this in mind if your find yourself fretting about what others think of your shooting.

Even the most experienced shots feel nerves on the peg

Even the very best shots miss from time to time, just as Joe Root sometimes gets out for a duck or Roger Federer double faults. The key is to avoid beating yourself up about it, and relax for the next shot. Failing to do so leads to tension of both mind and body, and makes further misses far more likely, and then you enter a circle of dispair, embarrasment and disappointment... but isn't shooting supposed to be fun?

So, when you’re standing on the peg, those early-season nerves jangling around inside you and butterflies doing somersaults in your stomach, I have a new mantra for you which might just help to steady you down. Before the first birds break cover, close your eyes and repeat after me: “Missing is good for me, it’s OK to be shit.”