I had a bit of a shooting wake-up yesterday. I was standing on a far peg, bogged down in mud and a blazing sun in my eyes. The birds that did appear from the stand of tall pines in front of me immediately split hard right (into the sun) or hard left. I was left chasing birds at 40 - 50 m and was hashing it badly. My 30 odd shots left me with not much to show for it. I was over and behind birds, and by the time I was taking them they were well past the prime position. While I was enjoying pulling the trigger (it had been 3 weeks), I wasn't doing much to add to the bag.
After the drive, a gent pulled me aside. He explained that his role was shoot coach, and he wanted to work with me. First of all, he noted that my mount was wonky and the gun was canted slightly, resulting in shooting over birds. We got that worked out, then he helped me with my ready position, bird identified, gun tucked under arm pit, from there to shoot position smoothly. We practiced for a while, and then headed for the next drive. To be fair to everyone, this was the first drive of the day where birds presented themselves to me in the traditional fashion; head-on or there-abouts, high and handsome. I only missed one bird slightly behind, and the coach was stoked. So was I, by adopting his method I had straightened up, cleaned up my posture and bought more time on each bird. At the post shoot round-up we learned that we'd done a season best on that particular (and challenging drive) with 2.85 shots per bird.
Never under-estimate the importance and value of being coached by seasoned players.
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