Clay shooting isn't a physical sport. Right?

We walk miles when we’re shooting. Stand to stand, around the ground snouting out the tricky targets ahead of getting into the cage on stand 1, the practice rounds before the comps. It’s all physical work.

And that’s just the lower body.

From the waist up, we do take a pounding putting shell after shell up in the air. Your shoulder takes the brunt but the forearms, triceps and biceps also soak some of the recoil too. Not to mention the 2kg+ gun you’re holding arms outstretched for hours on end.

So it’s is definitely more of a “pure physical sport” whether you’re in a competitive shoot or just out smoking clays with the crew.

But there’s more to it than just the physical aspect.

To really push to the upper end of your own performance you not only need gear that performs and a mount that can handle all the energy an angry 12 gauge can throw back at you. You also need mental capacity and control.

And that’s the hardest part to master.

I took up clay shooting about 6 years ago and have been shooting week in and week out ever since.

Put aside lock-down and a shoulder operation back in 2022 that benched me for 4 months, you’ll find me shooting every week except Christmas.

So it’s no real surprise that my shooting has got better as the years have progressed.

When I shot my first competition, I scored 33/100 and was so happy to have put 1/3 of the targets to bed. From there, my scores steadily started to climb – mainly due to the fact that I’m in a squad with great lads who were way better than me back then and all know how to shoot – not just talk the game, properly play the game. Some of them have 20+ years under their belt so they know their stuff.

They always gave me pointers, tips, tricks, tactics and most importantly, put me right when I was doing something wrong.

You can’t buy ongoing coaching like that.

Fast forward to now, my shooting average is less than 1 percentage point below the level required to enter the AA category in the UK. Only last month I shot a perfect 50/50 at my local club Normanton Shooting Ground and also shot a 95/100 in a registered competition to win the shoot as high gun.

But before you think I’m just boasting, it’s important to remember that context. These successes show that I’ve learned a lot from my squad (which I thank them for) and the endless Friday afternoon practice rounds; I can now shoot pretty well and I’ll proudly admit it.

So why is it that the wheels came off in such spectacular fashion on two other very recent shoots? And I’m mean really came off.

If I’m straighting my local club’s layout, as only a handful have ever done over the decades, and putting in scores to grab high gun at comps, surely I’ve got this clay shooting sport nailed?

Absolutely not…

I’ll pick the latest of the two dreadful shoots to illustrate the point because the same “issue” undid me on both.

Firstly, Cadman Sporting – a great ground with lovely staff and they always put on a decent registered shoot. They do put a good deal of fizzy stuff 4-8ft off the deck but that’s due to their ground dynamics. And anyway, I see it as good practice – you’ve gotta be able to shoot ‘em all no matter where they are in the sky, or not.

My scorecard went like this:

Straighted the first stand, always a good start.

Stand 2, dropped 1 target. No big deal, plenty more stands to go.

Stand 3, some would say a pair of score builders. Read one target wrong and dropped 3. Damn.

By now I was feeling pretty frustrated as that should’ve been an 8 straight.

Stand 4, tricky 3 pair but I only hit 2 of them. Got a bit erratic with the targets maybe? Grrr.

Or maybe it was due to the heat. It was over 33deg on the day.

Walking to stand 5 deep in my own thoughts I said to myself “this is going to be a shit score today, you’ve missed so many already”.

And that’s where the wheels flew off in to the distance…

By the time it was my turn on stand 5, I couldn’t even remember what the targets were as I’d mentally checked out. I just reminded myself again “your score’s going to be shit so forget about it, just have fun”.

Shooting quickly off the arm, leaving stuff late, trying to powder targets right in the middle, it was quite enjoyable but at the total sacrifice of my final score. But it was going to be a bad round anyway – I’d already told myself that twice having missed so much already.

So I stopped protecting my score.

On the drive home I spent an hour sitting in the car by myself feeling annoyed that I shot 76/100 when I was in such a rich vein of form. Why was today so different?

And then it dawned on me. I was mentally focused on protecting my score and my defences had taken a hit.

If I’d been in the correct mindset of building my score, as I’ve been told in the past, I’d have realised going into stand 5 that I was only 8 away – straight the rest of the stands and I could shoot a 92.

That’s 8 targets above my average so in reality I still had an 8 target buffer zone.

In truth I probably wouldn’t have aced every stand but with the buffer zone in hand, I’d maybe finish with a score I’d be really happy with given the heat and the plethora of fizzy targets.

But I was just focusing on the missed targets, my protection was gone and that’s what I told myself at stand 5.

If only I’d have done a bit more maths and subtracting the misses – which I can do nothing about – from the total available to me, which I can directly impact, maybe it would’ve been a different result?

Count the misses, but don’t stop there. Do the full equation:

Total targets available – targets missed = score potential.

Focus on what’s coming up not what’s gone before. You can’t change history but you can direct the future.

My squad mates, the majority of whom are better shooters than me, have always counted their misses. I always thought this was a fool’s game – why would you want to know how many you’ve missed while you go round? Wouldn’t that just piss you off?

It would have a few years back when I was trying to hit 50-60 targets – I’d lose count after 5 or 6 stands.

But knowing what you have in front of you, the targets available to chalk PAIR DEAD on the score card, gives you the focus to build a score.

If you’re protecting a score, you have to have a defence. If you’re building one, you build an attack plan.

And as England found out in the World Cup, nobody wins by defending. You have to attack.