Shooting Times & Country Magazine
Instructor of the month
For Mark Heath, confidence and consistency are key
The best Shots invariably seem to have all the time in the world. But how do we reach that hallowed state, when we’re shooting, of what appears to be fluid effortlessness?
Mark Heath is the head instructor at West London Shooting School (WLSS) in Northolt. Recently, as he traversed the fells of Northumberland, southbound after a day among the heather, we discussed what it takes to achieve such proficiency.
According to Mark, the importance of truly understanding how to resolve the reasons for missing a target is often overlooked. “Being told that you’re behind a target, or that you’re off line or that you need to move faster, is of little value if you haven’t a firm grasp of the technique required to put that right,” he explained.
The emphasis at WLSS is to teach people the necessary techniques so their shooting is improved for the long term — “so they know why they are stopping the gun, what they need to do to improve their timing, and how to do things like build lead using the body rather than the arms”. These techniques can then be taken away and practised until they feel completely natural. The result: consistency.
According to Mark, consistency goes hand in hand with confidence — and confidence is central to smooth and relaxed shooting. It’s all linked. But there is a tendency, he reckons, to mistake an aggressive approach — where the person shooting is trying to make everything
Will Pocklington speaks to some of our leading shooting instructors happen by speed — with a confident one. “Shooting should feel like a work of art, not a drama,” Mark said. “When you have broken the process down, refined each element of it, and have real trust in that process as a whole, you will not rush — and yet you will find yourself with more time than you ever had when trying to do everything at a hundred miles an hour.”
I was keen to pin down a few of the most common mistakes Mark sees being made, both at the shooting school and in the field. Poor gun mount and looking at the bead were the first two that came to his mind. Unsurprisingly, Mark linked both to the points he’d just raised. “Poor gun mount is generally a symptom of rushing or an inconsistent approach.
It’s quite common to see people jarring the comb of the stock hard into their cheek before it finds the shoulder, or mounting the gun differently each time a shot is taken. Even with everything else refined, if you are not placing the gun in the same pocket of the shoulder and face each and every time you shoot, your performance will suffer and any steps like having your gun fitted will be undermined.”
Similarly, looking at the bead on the rib of the gun rather than the bird or target is, Mark suggested, indicative of not trusting the process. “If you move your front hand and focus intently on the target at the same time, without any premeditated thought, you should match the speed of the target naturally, and as the gun comes up to cheek and shoulder you should be in time with the target. Without that trust, you might overthink the shot and try to measure it. When this happens, the focus switches from the target to the bead of the gun and it becomes very difficult to judge the line and speed of the former.”
Mark’s final point was not related to technical problems, but it is hard to argue with and perhaps speaks most to those who are well versed in the issues above, but are yet to do anything about them.
“If you’re going to spend money on shooting, especially game shooting, then why not invest properly in lessons to ensure that you are going to really enjoy it by shooting well?
“I have a client who always allocates a percentage of his shooting budget each year to lessons — it makes perfect sense, but how many others do it?”
“Poor gun mount is a symptom of rushing or an inconsistent approach”
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