Shooting Segmentation, it’s not all the same..

In my professional life, I have situations that arise where there is not a one size fits all solution to every problem.  When interacting and leading people, they are each unique in their life experience from how they grew up, religious beliefs, race, gender, age, etc.  Every single person has a story and it is important to understand their perspective before you are able to effectively communicate and address situations as they surface.  As my good friend and colleague often says, “where would the fun be if everyone was the same.”

Shooting is very similar; rarely do we find two targets, which are the same on the gun range when shooting Steel Challenge.  Every shot has its own timing, its own sight picture, and its own trap when going fast.  There is a phenomenon, which happens where a shooter tries to shoot all targets the same way.  Batching is the process where you shoot all of the targets at the same exact speed regardless of distance, size, or overall difficulty and/or apply the same speed increase to all targets instead of one in an array.  As an instructor, we see this happen when people focus on practicing a first shot in Steel Challenge, Rimfire Challenge or SASP.  There is a lot of focus on the first shot and we often times see a speed increase of 10-20% on this one target.  Then, if we start the student on the full array the Batching process happens and they start missing other targets because they are applying the same assertive speed to the other targets.  We must remember each shot has its own sight picture and requires a different amount of focus. Shooting Segmentation is the process of treating each target differently with its own sight picture and speed.

Another example of Batching is shooting Trap.  Early on, my mentor, said I had the “Pull/Bang” issue.  It took me a bit to figure out exactly what he was saying.  If I am standing at station #3 in Trap and I have a straight away bird it is a pretty fast shot and it is fun to see the pigeon disintegrate as close to the Trap house as possible.  If I am standing at station #5 and I have a hard right angle bird, this is one of the toughest shots in Trap and it takes approximately 3x-4x the amount of time to swing the gun to the right to get out in front of the bird to get an acceptable break. As a shooter Shooting Segmentation is key, each clay pigeon has its own sight picture and unique time to move the gun to pull the trigger.

The next time you are on the range, break down your array in which targets require more time than others.

See you out on the range soon!

Steve