A Shotgunner Looks Ahead to the New Year
Bill Miller 12.29.14
Shotgunners of every persuasion share a common passion to improve their games, expand their skills, and better their scores. With the calendar turning to a new year, everyone’s about making resolutions to help us enjoy better health, more prosperity, and happy living in the year ahead. Shotgunners ought to do the same to get more enjoyment out of their pursuits.
Here are some ideas.
More practice
Shotgunning should be a year-round pursuit. What better way to celebrate the New Year and get out to the gun club and shoot a round or two of your favorite game? If the seasons are still open where you live, get out there and go bird hunting, or even a trip to the game farm. Maybe you can find a club that’s putting on a driven shoot. Going back to my own 13 seasons on ESPN (in the good ol’ days when they used to cover hunting and shooting), make your resolution to “…shoot more and shoot more often,” all year long.
Try something different
If you feel like you’ve mastered some particular aspect of shotgunning, then go find a new challenge in the year ahead. Sporting clays takes on a whole new perspective when shot with sub-gauges. Find a place to shoot try helice shooting—or just learn what helice is. Start shooting your American skeet from low gun position. Find a turkey shoot in your neck of the woods and give that game a try—it could be your next shotgunning passion.
Visualization
If you’d like to practice shooting even when you’re not at the range or out on the back forty, then visualization is for you! It allows you to shoot your game no matter where you are or what you’re doing. Visualization is the best way to develop and improve your mental game. If you’ve ever seen an Olympic skier at the top of the course on his/her skis looking as though they are skiing in place, you’ve seen visualization. That highly-trained athlete is running the course mentally, imagining every detail so performance becomes instinctive. That’s what you need to do so you see every target breaking before you pull the trigger. That’s a winning strategy.
Upgrade your gear
Whether you’re a hunter or a competitive shotgunner, the most important aspect of gear is reliability. If you can’t count on your gun and ammo to perform flawlessly on every shot, you’ll start thinking about it. As we learned in last week’s post, if you think, you miss. If you encountered any gear in the last year that leaves you with doubts about its reliability, then resolve to replace it with equipment you can count on.
Make your shotgunning New Year’s resolutions, commit to them, and work on them. You’ll enjoy the results.
Tip of the Week
Make the resolution to give yourself the very best support gear, too. Whether in the woods turkey hunting, on the sporting clays range, or at the trap club a ThermaCELL mosquito repellant unit will have your back. You’ll never have to think about the mosquitos bothering you again.
These insights brought to you by Federal Premium Ammunition, ThermaCELL, Camp Chef, and the Quebec Outfitters Federation.
Bill Miller’s least favorite question is, “What is your favorite kind of hunting?”
He dislikes it so much because any answer may hint he’s willing to give up one or more of the lesser favorites. But if you press him really hard, his answer will be, “I really like anything I can hunt with a shotgun and over good dogs.”
At an early age, Bill became shotgunning addicted. Instead of an allowance in cash money, Bill earned shotgun shells for his chores around the family home. Then on Sunday afternoon’s he would haul an old Trius Trap out to the field behind the house on to the make shift “trap range” he’d mowed into the tall grass with the push mower. Then his dad would join him to supervise the shooting of the shells earned during the week.
About the same time, at age 11, Bill figured out he wanted to make his living experiencing outdoor adventures and sharing them with others. He wanted to be an outdoor writer. In the decades since, he has lived and continues living his dream.
He travels widely enjoying adventures close to home as well as on five continents. He shared his adventures on national networks hosing and producing shows for NBC Sports, Versus, Outdoor Channel, Wild TV, Sportsman Channel and others. He appeared on ESPN for 13 season on "Shoot More, Shoot More Often." During the production of “The Shooting Sports” for ESPN, Bill was honored to shoot frequently in the company of members and coaches of the USA Shooting Shotgun Team.
In 2012, participated in the Armed Forces Entertainment Outdoor Legends Tour to Afghanistan to entertain men and women serving in the military -- in his words, "...it was the greatest honor in my career and a life changing experience. His latest venture is a new book, "Reflections Under the Big Pine" he co-authored and published with K.J. Houtman.
