Keep Your Head Down and Save Your Face
A lesson I apparently needed to learn the hard way
There are a few things in shotgun shooting that sound easy until you are the one trying to do them. Keep the gun moving. Don’t stop your swing. Look at the bird. Don’t aim. Follow through.
It all sounds simple enough until you get out on a sporting clays course and start proving otherwise.
For me, the one that has always caused the most trouble is peeking.
I know better, at least in theory. I have been told enough times to keep my head down that I should probably have it embroidered on a shooting vest. Even so, every now and then, I still want to look. I break the shot and some part of my brain decides I need to lift my head just a little to see what happened.
That is how I earned the reputation of being a peeker. It wasn’t a mystery. Nobody needed slow-motion video to diagnose the problem. I simply have a bad habit of wanting to check my work before the work is finished.
And after one round of 100 sporting clays, I paid for it.
Somewhere along the way, I started lifting my head off the stock. Maybe it was on a true pair. Maybe it was a bird I really wanted to watch break. I don’t remember the station nearly as well as I remember the reminder.
I pulled the trigger, picked my head up, and the gun came back exactly like it was supposed to.
My face, unfortunately, was not where it was supposed to be.
By the end of the round, I had a giant bruise on my face. It wasn’t subtle. It was the kind of bruise that probably deserved an explanation, although mine was pretty simple.
I peeked. The shotgun corrected me.
There is a reason instructors keep telling us to keep our heads down. What they are really telling us is to stay in the gun.
Your cheek needs to stay on the stock through the shot and while the gun finishes moving. Your eye is essentially the rear sight of a shotgun, and when your head comes off the stock, that relationship changes.
A little peek doesn’t feel like much, which is probably why it is such an easy habit to develop. You aren’t intentionally making some huge movement. You just want to see if you broke the target.
But that little movement can pull your face away from the stock, change your eye position, interrupt your swing, and give recoil a nice soft place to teach you a lesson.
That is the part I am still working on.
I don’t have to go looking for the answer.
The bird will tell me.
If it turns into dust, I’ll know. If it keeps flying like nothing happened, I’ll know that too. Lifting my head early has never made a target break. It has only helped me miss in a slightly more educated way.
The hard part is trusting the shot long enough to let it finish.
Keep your cheek on the stock. Keep the gun moving. Stay with the bird. Finish the shot.
Then you can look. Not before.
I don’t know that I am completely cured. I would like to think I’m better, and there is definitely a difference. But every time I feel myself starting to come out of the gun early, I can remember that bruise and what it had to say.
Keep your head down. Finish the shot.
And let the clay tell you what happened.