I’m constantly reminding students that they should make every shot count – in competition, certainly, but also during training sessions.

Let’s first define what I mean by practice and training, because I don’t think you can understand the concept of making every shot count unless you understand that.  In training, you take something you know and use that knowledge to build your skills.  

To do this, we need repetition. We’re going to pick a target and work on the technique or skills needed to break it.  We make a plan, and we try to kill the bird repeatedly while evaluating whether the plan was correct.  You can miss the target while with good technique, and you can hit it with awful technique.  The difference is that good technique will let you hit the clay repeatedly.  If you didn’t use good technique, then you got lucky and you didn’t build skill.  It needs to feel correct and repeatable. 

Start by shooting singles and then advance to shooting the pair.  Just remember that we’re going to progress from easier to harder shots, and that we’re trying to build confidence in the process.  If you can take knowledge and work to turn it into a skill and then work until you can do it subconsciously, you’re on your way.

You can’t just go out and shoot a 100-bird round and call it good.  You might have had fun, but did you really become more skilled at a certain technique or target? No. You haven’t worked enough to build skill.  Practice isn’t about learning how to shoot all the targets – it’s about mastering the targets that you know.  You’d be better off shooting 100 rounds at two or three stations and more repetition.   

If you kill six out of eight, then work until you can kill the same bird six times in a row, minimum. Then put a pair together and repeat that. You’ll rarely leave a station before shooting at least a box of shells. Too often, a shooter leaves the station after breaking a difficult pair once.  They think they have it licked, but they don’t.  It’s an old saying, but it’s true: Amateurs practice until they hit it, and professionals practice until they can’t miss it.  Don’t move on until you know you’re going to hit the clay.

Volume matters because that’s where we get the necessary repetition.  But make every shot count! At times in my shooting career, I’d go out and shoot two flats of shells.  I worked hard to ensure that the majority were very good shots, and that’s difficult to do. Most of the time now I’m at about 250 to 350 shells during a practice session. But I’m very disciplined, and working on specific things.

One limiting factor is time. Most of us can’t get out as often as we like. To me, that’s all the more reason to make sure that every shot counts.  I have students who can practice only once every two weeks, but then they have the entire day.

If that applies to you, you’re going to have to shoot quite a bit that day.  But pace yourself.  At the beginning of the season, you might be worn out after a case of shells.  Stop! You can’t be productive after that point.  I’d rather see you shoot 200 targets thoughtfully and with good technique than shoot 500 when only half of them are quality shots. The rest were wasted.

A lot of people think they should go out on the course and cover all the different targets that they might see in the next competition. They wind up shooting them all, but they don’t have 100 percent proficiency on any of them.  Then they don’t get the results they wanted.  

Remember, your goal should be to kill every target you’re supposed to while hitting your fair share of the harder ones. Over time, the percentage of targets you’re supposed to kill will grow, and success should follow.