Making The Tough Shots

By Aaron Fraser Pass - From DU Magazine Nov/Dec 2004 Edition

Some shots are harder than others. Here are a few hints for taking the difficult ones

(Author’s note: This is a “do as I say, not as I do” column. The author freely admits that a couple of the shooting scenarios covered in this column also give him problems. By definition, tough shots are tough. I hope this advice will boost your percentage of hits.)

I recently contacted several experienced waterfowlers for their opinion on the shots that give them trouble. Fortunately, the answers were diverse enough as to provide sufficient grist for this column.

By analyzing exactly why we miss, we can improve our shooting percentages, even on shots at the most challenging angles.

This makes good sense for two reasons. Usually (there are exceptions, one of which we will cover presently), the bird’s head is pointed the way the bird is going. Thus, shooting for the head is a built-in enhancement of the forward allowance (lead) necessary to hit a moving target. Also, by consciously shooting at the front of the bird, you are also shooting at where its most vital and vulnerable organs are located. Both the odds of hitting and a clean kill are raised.

Simple as it sounds, shooting for the head is not that easy. Our eyes are drawn to movement and, on a flying bird, we naturally tend to look at the flapping wings. This diverts our focus to farther back on the body. Forcing the focus to the head requires discipline and practice.

The 90-degree full-deflection crossing shot gives many shooters fits. Actually, the solution is fairly simple—more lead, don’t stop, good follow through. Failing to lead enough or slowing or stopping the gun is a virtually guaranteed miss. Focusing on the head is a very good idea on this shot. Some time spent on skeet station number four is good practice.

Another “focus on the head” shot is the straight-up blast-off of a thoroughly flared duck. You simply must shoot above and ahead of this target to hit it, and that means passing its head. Most shooters focus on the whole bird and are actually shooting at its rump.

The “high and away” shot looks like duck soup, but often isn’t. The human eye and brain tend to collaborate to render the simplest apparent solution, which may not be entirely correct. Gun writer Jack O’Connor once wrote, “Most straight-aways aren’t.” Waterfowl are often shot at against an open sky, with little other visual reference. Many apparent straight-aways are actually slight angles that, at range, will vector the target out of the line of fire of the “dead-on” shot by the time the pattern gets there. If you can see the bird’s head, that is the way it is going, be it ever so slightly. Shoot for the head and in front.

Now for the exception to the shoot-for-the-head rule: the cupped-and-settling bird. This target is actually coming down, feet first, in the process of landing. Simplistic logic would dictate, “don’t shoot for the head, shoot for the feet.” That works okay—sometimes. The simple “first-glance” perception is that the landing bird is coming straight at you. However, many times there is a slight angle in the bird’s line of descent. Here the shooter’s problem is not range, which is usually short, but the tightness of his shotgun pattern, which doesn’t leave much margin for error. The slightly angling bird that you read as a “straight-down” will simply slide by your shot.

Finally, we come to the “fade away” bird. This is the bird that has almost decoyed but at the last moment decides that it had really rather be someplace else. Here the target is at some significant range, crossing but also turning away, and perhaps also dipping a bit as it loses air speed in its turn. This involves three dimensions and can overload the shooter’s onboard computer.

For me, this is the toughest shot in all of waterfowling, and it defies simple solution. What works for me (sometimes) is to forget all the gobbledygook and angle calculations and treat this target as a pure crossing shot, which it mostly is. This doesn’t work all the time, but on this tough shot, I’m pretty happy with sometimes.

All waterfowlers have the wingshooting equivalent of an Achille’s heel. However, by analyzing exactly why we miss, we can improve our shooting percentages, even on shots at the most challenging angles.