Shooting Times & Country Magazine
Hooked on clays
New Shot Jim Old is bitten by the shooting bug after his very first clay lesson, but not everyone in the family is thrilled about it
Okay, I want you to miss deliberately in front,” said John, “so I can see where the shot is going, in relation to the target.”
Taking this instruction and its explanation at face value, I called for the clay and released the contents of the Beretta’s bottom barrel at it, or rather at the airspace well ahead of it. Pellets and target came together above me in what ordinarily would have been a very satisfying manner. As shards of shattered clay tinkled on to the browning leaves and dying bracken around us, I turned to John and apologised for hitting it.
“Never gets old that one,” he said, laughing. “It’s a trick I use to show that sometimes you need more lead than your brain is telling you. Try it again.”
Feeling a bit daft, I reloaded and returned to my previous form of consistently missing this high-thrown driven clay. Fool me once, said my brain. “We’ll move on,” said John.
Muscle memory
If John was to be believed, my first clay shooting lesson was going well. He’d started by asking me what shotgun experience I had. I’d revealed I’d done a bit of shooting while growing up and that I’d shot a few clays while working in the Channel Islands in my twenties. That was it. I hadn’t had a shotgun in my hands for over two decades.
“That’s your muscle memory kicking in,” John had said a few minutes later, as my first few shots connected with some introductory decoys. “It’s coming back to you.”
I was sceptical about this. If my brain couldn’t recall whose guns I’d been shooting in my youth, or even if they were side-by-sides or overand-unders, why on earth should my muscles remember anything?
We tried half a dozen Sporting stands and I hit about 80% of what was thrown at me. I began to feel very good about myself. Perhaps I had a hidden talent? Maybe soon they’d be writing articles about my almostsupernatural shooting abilities, discovered just in time for the Paris Olympic Games.
High tower
“Let’s try something a bit more grown-up,” said John, interrupting this little daydream. As we walked through the wooded shooting