I am getting really frustrated with my shooting. Shot the NY State Shoot a couple weeks ago and on 17 stations got nine stations where I missed one (usually in the last pair), five where I missed two, and one where I missed three (all the same bird of the pair). I ran two stations the whole day.

The three I get because I must not have read the target correctly.

But nine 5s?

I'm not sure what to do. Obviously I know how to break the target.

Pre-shot routine? More practice? I had a high level of confidence going in, maybe over confident?

Gotta be the chokes

In my 23 years of competitive shooting I have been frustrated to the point of wanting to quit many times. It's a difficult discipline you are going to be frustrated from time to time.

The misses you describe come from being either careful or careless. Potentially both types of misses within the same round. Most of my misses are "careful" misses. Being over confident can cause careless misses. It's a fine balance.

Routine is very important to correcting both types of misses. Routine being defined as : mentally doing the exact same thing each pair and following the same steps.

All of the above in one way or another causes a visual miss. Or when I was a kid and learning my coach would say "keep your f*cking eyes on the clay when the gun goes off".

Practice never hurts too.

Jeff, I got you beat. At the Nebraska state shoot I had 10 stations (out of 15) where I shot 9/10. Lost 1st place in my class by 1 target.

I feel your frustration.

Anthony's assessment about keeping eyes on the clay is spot on for me. I need to stay in the gun and watch it break.

Anthony, your highly successful student, and now coach/instuctor to many Canadian sporting clays shooters, Shawn Stitt, said something similar to me a couple of weeks ago that your coach said to you as kid. It sounds sweeter in French but the point was clear.

regarde le putain d'oiseau! ?

Oh, you don't even know the worst part of it, but I'll leave that for another day.

That's funny because I could tell there were times when I would find myself measuring on the last pair to make sure I got the same picture. The next station I would would tell myself not to do that and do it all naturally. I didn't want to say I found myself measuring because that wasn't all that was going on .

I'm going to pay attention to that next time I shoot. This game is exhausting sometimes.