RobertBeard
Moderator
Those who were at the Growler will probably remember that my son Philip won the masterclass that Coleys put up as the main draw prize. As Philip was a raw beginner Phil Coley suggested that a masterclass would not be really suitable so Philip opted for lessons from Phil. He has now had 2 sessions of about 2 hours duration, 6 weeks apart and Phil has been excellent. He does not put a fixed time on his lessons/coaching and only takes 2 bookings a day and sometimes 3 on long summer days.
He has spent time helping Philip choose a gun that fits and he has been using the Browning 725 demonstrator with 30" barrels. Eye dominance was obviously checked out first. The first lesson was spent focussing on stance and selecting kill and hold points and applying these to various targets whilst minimising gun movement. As has always been stressed on here Phil was at pains to explain why targets were being missed and not just because the shot was over, under, behind or in front!
The second session introduced shooting pairs whilst making Philip assess each target and commit to hold and kill points and the importance of getting to the second hold point quickly. SAD is good to remember how to assess targets and stands for Speed and whether the clay is fast or slow, A is for the angle of travel of the clay and D is for distance. The importance of picking physical features in trees etc. was stressed to identify where the clay appears, where to hold and where to kill and where the clay is to disappear to get the line of flight.
Each session starts with coffee and a discussion on what has happened in the period between lessons and what is to be tackled in the day's session. Half way through the second lesson we adjourned for a coffee and made notes and diagrams about the pairs on the three stands that we had tackled to help commit what we had covered to memory otherwise it tends to get forgotten. We were advised to do this for all our shooting and to build up a library of notes about targets tackled as these would help us in the future. This can all now be uploaded into Phil's software system, just launched, along with the scores per stand for registered shoots. Clearly reg'd shoot stands will need at best a photo and description of the targets, direction, hold and kill points with a diagram so that over time it will become obvious from the scores that for example there might be a weakness with teals or rabbits for example. Obviously learners should take a little notebook with them to use around the stands as memory won't recall it all later!
We then had a short post mortem with Phil after the reg'd comp which we shot "birds only". Only practice can improve things in the next 6 weeks or so which Phil thinks is a good amount of time to leave between lessons for practice and consolidating learning. I have been lucky enough to share the lessons and they have been excellent. I have now done 3 registered shoots at Ian Coleys and the first was 32, the second, 40 and yesterday 49 so a very useful improvement. The targets are not easy and I think yesterday was won with an 84 and comprised 12 stands, mostly 4 pairs per stand but 2 with 5 pairs. Stand one was a simo pair and there were 2 rabbits on the course. The back 3 stands were a bit affected by sun and we were asked to wait for cloud but even so Philip suffered from bright sunshine on one stand and could not see the birds losing him the points that he probably would have gained over his previous comp as he scored 39 first time and 37 yesterday. I took a photo of the refs score sheet to use to input into Phil's software system. We shot with the Harts, father (83) and son (80), Julian who scored the winning 84 and O Jones who is just getting back into shooting after being busy with triplets for the last three years and scored 77. A great day and a shame that it was the last of the summer Wednesday fortnightly registered shoots.
He has spent time helping Philip choose a gun that fits and he has been using the Browning 725 demonstrator with 30" barrels. Eye dominance was obviously checked out first. The first lesson was spent focussing on stance and selecting kill and hold points and applying these to various targets whilst minimising gun movement. As has always been stressed on here Phil was at pains to explain why targets were being missed and not just because the shot was over, under, behind or in front!
The second session introduced shooting pairs whilst making Philip assess each target and commit to hold and kill points and the importance of getting to the second hold point quickly. SAD is good to remember how to assess targets and stands for Speed and whether the clay is fast or slow, A is for the angle of travel of the clay and D is for distance. The importance of picking physical features in trees etc. was stressed to identify where the clay appears, where to hold and where to kill and where the clay is to disappear to get the line of flight.
Each session starts with coffee and a discussion on what has happened in the period between lessons and what is to be tackled in the day's session. Half way through the second lesson we adjourned for a coffee and made notes and diagrams about the pairs on the three stands that we had tackled to help commit what we had covered to memory otherwise it tends to get forgotten. We were advised to do this for all our shooting and to build up a library of notes about targets tackled as these would help us in the future. This can all now be uploaded into Phil's software system, just launched, along with the scores per stand for registered shoots. Clearly reg'd shoot stands will need at best a photo and description of the targets, direction, hold and kill points with a diagram so that over time it will become obvious from the scores that for example there might be a weakness with teals or rabbits for example. Obviously learners should take a little notebook with them to use around the stands as memory won't recall it all later!
We then had a short post mortem with Phil after the reg'd comp which we shot "birds only". Only practice can improve things in the next 6 weeks or so which Phil thinks is a good amount of time to leave between lessons for practice and consolidating learning. I have been lucky enough to share the lessons and they have been excellent. I have now done 3 registered shoots at Ian Coleys and the first was 32, the second, 40 and yesterday 49 so a very useful improvement. The targets are not easy and I think yesterday was won with an 84 and comprised 12 stands, mostly 4 pairs per stand but 2 with 5 pairs. Stand one was a simo pair and there were 2 rabbits on the course. The back 3 stands were a bit affected by sun and we were asked to wait for cloud but even so Philip suffered from bright sunshine on one stand and could not see the birds losing him the points that he probably would have gained over his previous comp as he scored 39 first time and 37 yesterday. I took a photo of the refs score sheet to use to input into Phil's software system. We shot with the Harts, father (83) and son (80), Julian who scored the winning 84 and O Jones who is just getting back into shooting after being busy with triplets for the last three years and scored 77. A great day and a shame that it was the last of the summer Wednesday fortnightly registered shoots.
