How an Empty Shell Box Can Help Improve Your Clays Scores

[Browningfan369]

How an Empty Shell Box Can Help Improve Your Clays Scores
Written by Stephen Biello
As an NSCA Level II instructor I’m always engaged in onging education to keep sharp and learn new skills. This was ingrained in me as my training in my law enforcement career where continued education can be a life and death difference.
In May 2009, I took a three-day sporting clay clinic with Mike McAlpine. Mike is a legend in the world of competitive shooting. He is the former chief instructor of the National Sporting Clays Association and has been a successful tournament competitor for nearly 40 years in just about every clays game on the planet. 
While it certainly takes an incredible amount of mental and physical expertise to match Mike’s achievements, sometimes it all boils down to the little tricks we pick up along the way. And one of them involves an empty shell box – preferably a 12 gauge. This method is simple and effective and anyone can do it, as Mike had proven to me.
Here’s how it works. Take an empty 12-gauge box and tear off all the flaps.  Hold the empty box to your eyes, slightly away from your face. With the box up to your eyes, look to the hold point of the target then call pull. When the target is released, follow it by looking through the box.
You’ll be surprised at what happens next.
The empty box allows you to focus solely on the target by eliminating the surrounding interference and lets you focus entirely on the bird.
When one of my students does this they turn around say they never noticed a target acting like that before. You stop being flooded with ambient distractions such as trees, the sky and target debris, and pay 100 percent of your attention on the target line and the target’s performance. For example, there may be a slight breeze that you would normally dismiss until you actually see, through the box, that it’s causing the bird to fly more erratically than you originally anticipated.
On quartering targets, the box trick could really help you better identify the lead and breakpoint. Maybe the reason you kept missing that bird is because of too much lead. Isolate the bird through the box and suddenly you see the correct way to shoot it. With the box you’re solely focusing on the target.
I would have to say that focus is probably the most important fundamental in the game of sporting clays. You can make up for a bad hold point, bad focal point, even bad foot position. If you’re having a bad day shooting, chances are that focus can still make up for other omissions to keep you in the game.
Focus is much more than vision. It’s a combination of mental concentration and visual acuity. The mental concentration part of it can take some time to master depending on the individual shooter. But the visual can be master faster by starting with this box method.
When I teach students, I always carry with me one of each type target that we may be shooting that day.  This gives them an opportunity to talk about the intricacies of each target and the visual recognition part of focus – the ability to understand what the bird looks like up close.
I teach to strive for seeing every little dimple and ring on the bird when my student calls pull. Toward that end, I find that the box tip really helps my students focus on the target itself without any other external distractions.
And they are amazed with what they see through the box. It lets those little nuances come out – it’s like a beam of light is turned onto the target that brings out the smallest subtleties.  After this exercise, we find that it’s much easier for the student to focus on the target and get back on track to breaking it.
So when a student consistently misses a target, I’ll take out the box. And then we look at the target very closely and the student more often than not realizes that they have not been applying full visual focus on the target.
So when you’re out on the sporting clays course, on a station that you just can’t figure out what that target is doing, the good way to get back on track is to tear the flaps off a box and…well, you know the drill from here.

Stephen Biello is an NSCA Level II instructor with more than 10 years experience teaching the shotgun sports. Please visit his web site at http://www.claysnwings.com.