circleshooter
Ultimate Member
I've seen this a few places and it always makes me laugh. I recognize quite a few of them from my own shooting. Oh...and it applies to all clay shooting - not just skeet.
Manifesto of Skeet by Rick Carver
1. If you really want to get better at skeet shooting, go back and take it up at a much earlier age.
2. Skeet is 90% mental and 10% mental.
3. Since bad shots come in groups of three, a fourth bad shot is actually the beginning of a whole new group of three.
4. When you pick up your head and it causes a miss, you will always look back at the end of your barrel at just the right time so you not only shoot over the target but behind it as well.
5. Any change in technique works for a maximum of 100 targets and a minimum of not at all.
6. No matter how poorly you are shooting it is always possible to shoot worse.
7. Never try to keep more than 300 separate thoughts in your mind when calling for a target.
8. You can’t hit what you can’t see. (Corollary: you can’t hit what you’re not looking at).
9. The less experienced a shooter is the more likely he is to offer advice.
10. Your score will vary inversely with the importance of the event.
11. The inevitable result of any shooting clinic is the elimination of the one critical unconscious motion that allowed you to compensate for all your other errors.
12. If it ain’t broke, change guns.
13. When you find a method that doesn’t work, stick with it.
14. Every shooter’s best score happened when nobody who is here today was around.
15. A skeet shoot is a test of your skill against every other contestants luck.
16. The target moves in two directions in the wind, away from a perfectly executed shot and into the worst move you’ve made all day.
17. Every time you run a round with the .410, there are three sub-20 rounds in your future. One of them is probably in the same event.
18. There are three things you can learn by looking at the end of your gun: if your front site is still in place, if the glove on your off hand has a hole in it, and how fast you can lose sight of the target and stop your swing.
19. That reload with the short powder load always shows up when you are straight on Station 6 for the first time in the last six months.
20. Some targets are broken despite what the shooter did—not because of what they did.
21. If you beat your buddy by one target it’s a sound thrashing, if he beats you by one target, he just squeaked by.
22. Never bet with the low guy on the squad based on the last round.
23. Don’t worry about your bad move to the target. The flinch coming up will more than make up for it.
24. There is a little known physical miracle in clay target shooting: occasionally all the pieces of a well broken target will fly together in formation and actually appear to be an unbroken target.
25. An adult shooter cannot win a shoot-off against a Junior or Sub-Junior, a male shooter cannot win a shoot-off with a female shooter.
26. Don’t worry about the effect of your poor shooting on the squad. The other members of your squad are just glad it ain’t them.
27. If that new $10,000 gun you convinced your spouse you had to have doesn’t shoot better scores, go back to Old Reliable. You know he/she will understand.
28. There is a 99% chance that you will miss a bird, subsequent to correcting the scorer on a squadmate’s chip.
29. The "let's see one" target will always be a floating straight away that looks about the size of a pizza, your target will be a screaming diver about the size of a dime.
30. Just when the puller realizes you are the only one left on the squad who is straight in this event, he/she will fast/slow pull one whether he/she means to or not.
Manifesto of Skeet by Rick Carver
1. If you really want to get better at skeet shooting, go back and take it up at a much earlier age.
2. Skeet is 90% mental and 10% mental.
3. Since bad shots come in groups of three, a fourth bad shot is actually the beginning of a whole new group of three.
4. When you pick up your head and it causes a miss, you will always look back at the end of your barrel at just the right time so you not only shoot over the target but behind it as well.
5. Any change in technique works for a maximum of 100 targets and a minimum of not at all.
6. No matter how poorly you are shooting it is always possible to shoot worse.
7. Never try to keep more than 300 separate thoughts in your mind when calling for a target.
8. You can’t hit what you can’t see. (Corollary: you can’t hit what you’re not looking at).
9. The less experienced a shooter is the more likely he is to offer advice.
10. Your score will vary inversely with the importance of the event.
11. The inevitable result of any shooting clinic is the elimination of the one critical unconscious motion that allowed you to compensate for all your other errors.
12. If it ain’t broke, change guns.
13. When you find a method that doesn’t work, stick with it.
14. Every shooter’s best score happened when nobody who is here today was around.
15. A skeet shoot is a test of your skill against every other contestants luck.
16. The target moves in two directions in the wind, away from a perfectly executed shot and into the worst move you’ve made all day.
17. Every time you run a round with the .410, there are three sub-20 rounds in your future. One of them is probably in the same event.
18. There are three things you can learn by looking at the end of your gun: if your front site is still in place, if the glove on your off hand has a hole in it, and how fast you can lose sight of the target and stop your swing.
19. That reload with the short powder load always shows up when you are straight on Station 6 for the first time in the last six months.
20. Some targets are broken despite what the shooter did—not because of what they did.
21. If you beat your buddy by one target it’s a sound thrashing, if he beats you by one target, he just squeaked by.
22. Never bet with the low guy on the squad based on the last round.
23. Don’t worry about your bad move to the target. The flinch coming up will more than make up for it.
24. There is a little known physical miracle in clay target shooting: occasionally all the pieces of a well broken target will fly together in formation and actually appear to be an unbroken target.
25. An adult shooter cannot win a shoot-off against a Junior or Sub-Junior, a male shooter cannot win a shoot-off with a female shooter.
26. Don’t worry about the effect of your poor shooting on the squad. The other members of your squad are just glad it ain’t them.
27. If that new $10,000 gun you convinced your spouse you had to have doesn’t shoot better scores, go back to Old Reliable. You know he/she will understand.
28. There is a 99% chance that you will miss a bird, subsequent to correcting the scorer on a squadmate’s chip.
29. The "let's see one" target will always be a floating straight away that looks about the size of a pizza, your target will be a screaming diver about the size of a dime.
30. Just when the puller realizes you are the only one left on the squad who is straight in this event, he/she will fast/slow pull one whether he/she means to or not.
