Ralph Waldo Emerson once pronounced, “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.” It was, and is, true in the context that he meant it. It’s important to not allow yourself to be confined to “the box.” In this day and time, you’ve got to be able to look at the “other side” of an issue and keep an open mind about what you see. And be willing to change your mind when that’s warranted. That’s how we learn and progress. And how we survive in a constantly changing world.
In a way, it’s true about shotguns. I often have to remind myself that my way isn’t the only way. On the other hand, I’ve got enough experience to know beyond a shadow of doubt that the very heart of “shooting flying” is consistency.
That point was clearly made a couple of years ago on a visit to Pine Hill Plantation near Donaldsonville, Georgia. Pine Hill is one of the premier quail hunting destinations in the country. I was hunting with Doug Coe, the plantation’s owner, and fell into an awful slump. It was the tail end of the season, and I was coming to the end of a long spell of bird hunting that included ruffs, ringnecks, ducks, geese and a good mixed bag of western birds. I was also coming to the end of a season-long bout of gun testing. I had four guns with me, and not one of them was mine.
It was a glorious late winter day—the kind you only see when quail hunting in southern Georgia. The weather was perfect, “cool but warm” with a whisper of a breeze through the pines. Doug was shooting a beautiful little 28-gauge Poli hammer gun that morning. As the outriders spread out ahead following the dogs, I picked one of the test guns from the gun box on the old mule-drawn wagon. It was a semi-auto 20-gauge from a well-known maker, but I hadn’t spent much time with it and felt that it was overdue for a little field time.
Of course, it wasn’t long before we found a big covey hiding in a honeysuckle patch. The birds rose the way they do in your dreams, fanning out across the broom sedge that separated us from a small swamp and I duly emptied the semi in a salute to their passing. The bad news was that absolutely nothing fell. NOTHING! Not a single feather wafted in the breeze on my side of the flush. Dismay and consternation! And then I repeated the performance three more times before we broke for lunch among the long-leafs and lespedeza!
After lunch, I broke out a lovely little 28-gauge over/under that had been working marvelously for me for the past three months. It didn’t help. I suddenly found myself in the depths of one of the worst slumps that I’d ever experienced, and the curse continued unabated the next morning. Doug had left the little hammer gun in the box and gone back to his old faithful Arietta 28-gauge and continued to “wipe my eye” at every opportunity.
I’m not the kind of fella who’s easily embarrassed, but things had reached the ridiculous stage! And the harder I tried to figure out what was wrong, the worse it got. The more conscious I became of what I was doing, the more uncomfortable the whole thing became. And I just struggled more.
Over dinner that night, I realized that I had simply lost my consistency from all the weeks upon weeks gun-swapping. And then I started thinking too much. I had tried to adjust with every covey rise. I had changed guns, loads and worse, the whole way that I approached the process.
And in the process, I had forgotten my own advice that I have generously ladled out over the past half-century. Eliminate all the variables, stop thinking and just shoot! If you do that, old habits will eventually return. Muscle memory will return and, with it, consistency. It’s easy to say, but so hard to do!
The rest of the story is that after dinner, we were looking over Doug’s hammer gun and I gave it a swing, just to see how it felt. In fact, it felt really good! Earlier, I had speculated that it would probably fit me pretty well, since Doug and I are similar in size. When we got out the tape measure, we discovered that it was very close to the same measurements as my own guns safely locked in my gunsafe, 200 miles away. When we were done, Doug graciously offered for me to shoot the hammergun the next morning, and I took him up on the offer.
Daybreak was a near-duplicate of the one before. What was different, though, was my attitude. Before we went out, I preached myself a little sermon, “The gun fits. You know how to do this, keep it simple. Don’t think. Just shoot, and you’ll be fine.” After I had repeated my self-imposed “Hail Marys” about a half-dozen times, we were ready to take on the first covey of the day.
I’d like to be able to say that I shot a clean double, and then killed every bird after that. I’d like to, but I can’t. What I can say, is that I killed one out of the first rise. And one out of the second. And in time, I started to get it back. I could tell that my swing was beginning to feel comfortable again, and that I was regaining some consistency in my mount, swing and follow through.
One of the joys of being the “shotgun guy” is that I get to shoot all kinds of guns, old and new, factory made and bespoke. The downside is that it’s a great way to lose your consistency. If you’re constantly shooting strange guns, you’re constantly adapting to the idiosyncrasies of each of them, and pretty soon you can’t hit an outhouse from the inside.
Truth is, it wasn’t the first time that had happened, and I knew the cure. As soon as I got home, I put away all the test guns. Then I got out my favorite gun and didn’t shoot anything else for about a month. My Todd Ramirez custom side-by fits me perfectly in every way, and all I had to do was shoot until I found my groove again. After a month of work with that lovely gun,
I got my consistency back and all the gremlins had been exorcised, and all was right with the world.