By Jim Johnson
Crosshairs for Christ, jim@crosshairsforchrist.org

Jim patiently waits for the early flight during the 2006 opening day of the 2006 dove season.

A couple of weeks ago, my dad and I loaded up the clay pigeon thrower, my Remington 870, a box of ‘blue-rock,’ and we went out for a bit of practice. We took turns throwing for each other, and I was doing pretty well. After shooting singles for awhile, we up-ed the ante, and start throwing a few doubles. I was having a good day and began hitting doubles consistently. So my dad said, “Let’s try something different.” He directed me to walk about 40 yards to the left of the thrower beyond an embankment. He then turned the thrower toward me, and began throwing clays again off to my right. I couldn’t hit anything! No matter what I did, the clays kept hitting the ground intact. After we ran out of clays, he explained my problem.

First of all, as a target moves laterally, you must lead it in order to hit it. Speed and distance affect how much you must lead. When leading a rising target, you actually put the barrel directly on the clay, as strange as this might seem. Another difficulty is the direction you must rotate your body to lead the target. In this case, the target was moving left to right, the more difficult shot for a right hand shooter. The opposite would be true for a lefty. It’s kind of like a quarterback trying to throw a pass across his body as he’s running in a direction opposite of his throw. Also, as the clay approaches, the pattern of shot meeting the clay is getting smaller. This requires more accuracy the longer you wait to fire. It made perfect sense, once explained, but I had never attempted to shoot clays moving toward me before. The typical behavior, is to position yourself for the easiest shot, without thinking about how the birds are actually flying.

OPENING DAY

So opening day finally arrived, and I was ready. I had done pretty well with the clays, except for that one curve my dad threw me. My friends and I positioned ourselves where we remembered a lot of the action was the previous year. We weren’t disappointed. The doves started flying in a few at a time around 8 am, heading through the trees toward the pond. The first one I hit was flying low and fast about 30 yards out. He was coming across us from left to right. The three of us each took about 3 shots each (with little puffs of dust following where we lagged) before I finally lead enough on my last shot to bring him to the ground.

After that, the adrenaline started getting the best of us, and as more doves filtered in, the air started filling with lead. I realized I wasn’t shooting so well. What had changed that made my aim so poor compared to shooting the clays?

I moved to a different spot, behind a tree where the birds had been flying around, in hopes of getting some better shots. Sure enough, I could see the birds coming in through the sparse juniper branches, and by the time they saw me and veered to my left, it was too late. Groups of five or six at a time were coming in hard now. A few minutes later, I was almost shooting in self-defense as a whole flock of about 20 doves came straight at me! You would think that it would be difficult to miss that many birds, but somehow I managed.

We later speculated that it was difficult to pick a particular bird to aim at, and firing into the bunch of them should do the trick. After thinking about it, I realized they were very close to me when I fired, making it almost as difficult as if I was shooting a rifle instead the 20 gauge shotgun I was using. A half a box of shells later, and I had 4 birds to show for my efforts. I was seeing lots of birds, flying directly at me, just like my dad had set up the clay thrower 2 weeks prior. I couldn’t hit any of them. What was worse, I realized the ones that were veering to my right were even harder to hit as they crossed me.

AN AWAKENING

Suddenly the light bulb turned on, I decided to try something different. I reasoned that if I could hit outbound clays swinging to the left, I could hit birds the same way. If I let the birds pass me, veering to my left, I could shoot them after they passed, exactly like I had practiced two weeks earlier. Sure enough, after I started exercising a little patience, waiting until the birds were in an easier position to shoot, they started falling out of the sky with that satisfying little cloud of feathers lingering in the air after the shot.

I noticed though, the ones that veered the other direction, were still not falling. I eventually, let those birds pass without taking a shot, knowing I was running out of ammo, and having a low probability of hitting them from that direction anyway. In the end, I got my limit and used less shells than the previous year (which I only had 7 birds to show for.)

A NEW RESOLUTION

What was I doing wrong? I know when I start practicing for next year; I’ll be approaching it much differently. Here are some things I’ll be working on:

1. Shooting targets from both sides of the thrower, leading left to right, and right to left.
2. Shooting targets coming to me and going away. (This was probably where the majority of my missed shots came from.)
3. Setting the thrower at a high angle, shooting the targets almost straight up in the air. It’s bizarre how doves will react when they do see you sometimes. If there’s a breeze blowing, this can work even better by throwing them into the wind, they’ll actually drift backward a little and move at a slower speed.
4. Adjusting the spring tension on the thrower will allow targets to be thrown slowly, to simulate those birds meandering along when they have no clue what dove season is. Or, tightening the spring to throw targets fast for those birds that have been shot at 3 or 4 times already by your buddies just over the next hill.
5. Knowing what shots you can reliably make, and practicing the ones you’re weaker at.
6. Discover your reasonable range. Practice shooting with the thrower at different distances until you know how far away you can take a shot.
7. When opening day comes, look for a position that will allow you to take shots that you’ve practiced, and are confident in taking. You’ll need less than that typical case of ammo this year if you’ve been practicing.
8. Practice more than once before opening day. I usually try to get out 3 or 4 times in August when possible.

The practical joke my dad played on me taught me something I won’t soon forget. If you practice the shots you have trouble with, you’ll have a much better chance at harvesting more birds when opening day comes. One of my friends commented that he had more luck hitting live birds than clays. I imagine, someone was throwing him some difficult patterns that didn’t reflect the way the birds were actually flying. I recognize I can always hit the birds that fly in patterns I have previously practiced. I had my best dove season ever this year. Next year should be even better.