As an Instructor, Coach and published writer, I’ve personally written maybe half a billion words on how I believe we can improve our shooting. I am deeply appreciative of the positive feedback I have received from my students and my readers over the last 3 decades. Rather than selecting another shooting method or gun management topic, I thought today we might turn all this around and look – not from the Instructor’s standpoint – but at ourselves in the mirror as a student. Before we pick up the phone to discuss lessons, what can we do to help ourselves before signing up for instruction?Taking an honest and purposeful look at improving our shooting, one word stands ...

 Rated X – Reader discretion is advised.It’s called the Lead-O-Matic, or LOM. The LOM solves all those pesky “forward allowance” or lead formulas in shotgunning. Developed during a late pub dinner with Tom Fiumarello, Bob Lockett, Peter Harris, myself and a few friends, this very ingenious device attaches over the front bead on your shotgun. Patent pending, the LOM virtually eliminates all the guesswork about correctly leading a target, REGARDLESS of target speed, angle or distance. Easily attached and with all the necessary vertical and horizontal adjustments, the LOM guarantees the X! The LOM only costs a very reasonable $19.95 (plus S&H charges) but will ...

“Only trust what you can see.”First, the small print at the bottom of the page. The vast majority of us do have reasonably good hand-eye coordination, commonly referred to as our instincts. This instinctive move with our shotgun works splendidly on flushing game such as quail, chukar and early season pheasants. In the game fields, point and shoot is typically dependable. On the clay target course? Not so much.Unfortunately, clay targets can be broken using our instinctive, point and shoot method. Why unfortunately? Time has shown it only works sometimes. On clay target presentations at mixed difficulty levels, it is not dependable, nor can it be consistent. Those who disagree ...

For many of us, Sporting Clays – along with all the other clay target disciplines – is about hitting the target. The “not missing” part – that pretty much applies to all the shooting sports. The problems begin when we miss. Too often, and unfortunately, missing ends up being more than just a problem.  A miss becomes a distraction. A distraction that frustrates and usually discourages. All understandable. These emotions can be temporary, or worse, hang around for a while, predictably creating more missing and lowering scores. Years ago, mining my way to becoming an All American, yours truly has been there, done that. More times than I care to ...