Confidence tricks

A surefire way to improve your shooting technique is with down-the-line, says David Turner How to shoot DTL

In my recent articles I have talked of practising in order to improve and progress. This holds true for almost every sport we choose to participate in. However, how you practise is important and new shooters often don’t get very much help or advice on what to do in this regard.

Skeet is great for crossing targets, offering us variations of angles and helping us to learn the different lead values or forward allowances in order to hit targets consistently. We can use different techniques such as the follow through, maintained lead or the pull-away methods.

Down-the-line (DTL) can also offer us a valuable technique that will help us default to a more intuitive response process at faster “going away” targets. I call this technique “see it, shoot it”. If we hesitate or aim we will often miss as the target gets more difficult as it’s getting further away.

Trapshooting originated in England in the late 18th century when sportsmen shot at live pigeons released from cages or box traps to improve their shooting skills. The birds were soon to be replaced by glass balls and a specially designed device to throw them, referred to as a “trap”, was invented by Captain Adam Bogardus in 1877.

Great skill was required to do it well. Terms like “pull”, “trap”, and “no bird” all stem from box-trap pigeon shooting.

For practice

To practice, I like to shoot on my own or with a friend who can offer some help

In competition

Shooting DTL in competition brings a new aspect to mix – shooting in a squad with four others. Shooting in sequence with each shooter taking their turn, until five targets have been shot from each stand and the referee asks the squad to move to the next stand.

One of the benefits of this is the rhythm and the rest between shots, enabling time to compose oneself, which is often not the case when practising on your own.

Technique

“See it, shoot it” is my way of describing a technique that helps us default to our handeye co-ordinated response to a fast target. We need to get onto it and shoot positively from the moment we see it, without conscious thought about our actions.

Five acoustic releases

To start we are going to pre-mount pointing at the down-range edge to the trap house. From stand 1 – the left corner, stand 3 – the middle, stand 5 – the right corner, and stands

“it will help us default to a more intuitive response”