Lesson 2.........Part 1

Its truly incredible just how much you can forget about shooting from one week to the next. I begin by trying to remember how to stand. It is still too early to have established routine, but I seem to realise the importance of getting the basics right.

In simple terms, I need to look at a clay in the air, decide where I am going to kill it and then point my feet and body in that direction. Then I need to look back to where I will first get sight of the clay. After that it is important to keep my weight on my front foot, gun butt firmly into my shoulder and cheek firmly onto the stock. All that remains is to pick up the clay, follow it, move through it and pull the trigger........ easy.......... not!

Teaching your body to do all of these things reliably is not easy, but I know it'll come if I stick with it.

Fletch offers me a refresher course of what we covered in the first lesson. I am already more fond of some types of birds than others. My natural stubborness leads me to want to practice the ones that I dislike the most. In my mind it is often the way that by doing this I will get better at these harder birds and as a consequence dislike them less.

I seem to spend the day missing the birds I could kill last week, and killing some that I struggled with before. I suppose that is often the way. Permanent frustration for most of the lesson as the information that I thought I had already learnt turns out to be somewhat flawed.

It is one thing to shot when you have a pro stood behind your shoulder guiding you onto the clay. The finite skill the way I see it is to read a clay and to know where you need to be in terms of lead etc. I found the instruction very useful and as I said, with Fletch guiding me my kill rate was more than acceptable. I was looking forward to having a walk round on my own to see how I got on......... I was expecting to take a backward step if truth be told.