September 2023
Markham Park Gun Club
Youth Program
Mondays 6-9
NSSA Skeet Saturday, October 7th
ATA Trap Sunday, September 24th
NSCA Sporting Clays Saturday, September 9th
SATURDAY, September 16th
I want to give a shout out to Dax Demena who ran over 400 targets during the Grand American week in Sparta Illinois. He tied for the North American Clay Target Championship and went two rounds in the shoot-off. He left after 50 targets in a shoot-off that will eventually be decided after 800. He made it to the shoot-off, something very few people can count as an accomplishment. Congrats Dax!
The Youth program has never been disrupted so many times like it has this summer. We have never cancelled so many Youth nights in the whole 16 years of the program as we have just this year for rain and lightning. What a year! Not to mention the heat. Hopefully we will get some relief now that we are in September.
I still want to recognize some of the people that make Markham so special. Rich Nilsen and the South Florida Chapter of Safari Club International have been great supporters of our Youth Program. Rich was a coach for several years. Several of guns in our program were obtained through a gift from Safari Club International. Thanks goes out to both Rich and SCI.
with John and Joyce Feldman with the Big Kids Program for several Charity Shoots. They have promoted our club and programs and have piggybacked their events with ours to make the events stronger. Thanks again goes out to them for their efforts and support.
Lastly, I want to thank Dr. Barry Frauens and Reanna for their support over the years. They’ve brought many Youth shooters to the program through their recommendations. Just this week I was at SAM’s and bumped into a family that had once participated in the program. They were friends of Barry. Several weeks ago a group of archery shooters joined the program, they too knew the Frauens family and were encouraged to join us because of their association with us.
I am reminded of the old African proverb, “It takes a village to raise a child.” I like to think our club is part of that village, teaching our villages’ children gun safety, respect for firearms, and the joy of shooting. The coaches don’t do this alone. We get help from all the people who have worked with the club in the past and all the people who continue to support the club and its goals. All I can say is, Thanks to all of you!
The Big Kids Program and John Marley have also been supporters of the Youth Program over the years. Our club has been involved
See you at the club.
Joe Loitzjloit@bellsouth.net
954-857-5278
With over 30 years of experience Steve Norris has established his reputation as one of the premier shotgun instructors in South Florida. Whether he is guiding a beginning shooter through their first shots or perfecting an advanced shooter’s game, Steve is the go to coach at Markham Park. He has worked with over 1,000 Youth
shooters in Markham’s Youth Program and has helped guide six of them to national championships. Steve is available for lessons in Trap, Skeet, and Sporting Clays. At $200 for three hours of instruction, targets included, Steve is by far the best shotgun instruction your money can buy!
Call him at: 754-264-9584.
Tournament event preparation is the topic of Todd Bender’s article this month. If you didn’t know already, Todd is an advocate of Olympic Gold Medalist, Lanny Bassham’s philosophy on mental training. Lanny advocates positive thinking and takes a psychological approach to mental training. I’m more of a philosophical mental training advocate, emphasizing concentration on the process of shooting. Combining both approaches is probably the best way to go.
Anyway, Lanny Bassham advocates Presets, routines that funnel your attention automatically into a competitive mode. One of those presets involves finding a quiet place, one to two hours ahead of the event to visualize the competition and rehearse the whole event in your mind. This includes the emotional states you will go through as you visualize breaking targets. Imagine being confident, focused, and unaffected by distractions while enjoying the event. These presets continue to come into play as you arrive at the club, prepare your gear, and move to your assigned field. Todd goes through as checklist of routines as he prepares: what color lens are the best for the conditions and background, is all of the equipment ready to go – towel, ammo, gun, spare parts in
your bag, correct chokes or tubes in the barrel, safety off, trigger selector set cor-
rectly, and do you need rain gear or warm weather gear?
Finally watch the targets thrown for the squad you’re following. Are they consistent, high, low, wide, and how is the weather affecting them? Watching targets prepares you visually, activating your vision into target mode. You might also want to stretch like you would for any other athletic event. All good advice you will hear from other mental gurus such as Bob Palmer.
Last month Michael J. Keyes, M.D. discussed the importance of relaxation when dealing with match stress. The next set of tools he wants to pass on are planning and analysis. Planning is predicting what will happen as you step into the station or post and analysis is what to do once you are there. Remember, these are all strategies to relieve match stress. Stepping into a station or post without planning what is going to happen, what needs to happen, and what to do if things don’t go as planned is a sure way to have stress hit you in the face. Leaving yourself open to match stress leaking into your thoughts is not a good plan. Planning gives you something shooting related to think about and wards off match stress.
Once match stress seeps into our consciousness, the tools to prevent it, relaxation, selftalk, and visualization are negated by the anxiety bubbling up. Match stress takes you out of the moment and out of the process of shooting. Coming back into the moment is much more difficult than preventing your thoughts from leaving the moment in the first place.
Michael suggests mimicking match stress in your practice sessions as a means of preparing for it then practice the tools you are trying to develop to deal with it. Learn from every stressful experience by thinking through how match stress bubbled up then build strategies to defeat it in its infancy. Oddly, analyzing match stress requires logic
to deal with a non-logical situation. Take the tools you have and combine them into a super-set of solutions, dealing with match stress. See what works and what doesn’t and learn how to deal with it like you would a new target presentation.
Point of focus and depth of focus are two different concepts and are the subjects of John D. Shima’s article this month. John believes there are two types of lead perception determined by depth of focus. First, Blended Focus means the shooter’s point of focus is somewhere between the target and the muzzle. Blended focus allows a shooter to see both the target and the barrel simultaneously. When the target is seen distinctly, the depth of focus is primarily on the target and the barrel is secondary. The second kind
of focus is Absolute Focus where the depth of focus is entirely on the target and the barrel isn’t seen. Which one a shooter prefers is irrelevant in John’s opinion. Developing consistency in managing depth of focus is what’s important. Keeping our focus on the target allows us to avoid visual deceptions which lead to inconsistent lead pictures. Our depth of focus needs to be on the target as it enters the soft focus of our look point. Point of focus consists of two focusing zones, primary and secondary. Anything in the primary zone is clearly in focus. Objects in the secondary zone are blurry and out of focus. The target should be in our primary zone in hard focus, the muzzle in the secondary zone is something you are aware of but is not in sharp focus. Absolute Focus would not have a secondary focal zone, Blended Focus has both zones. The Point of Focus determines the Depth of Focus.
That’s all nice to know but the real story is simple. Watching the target and keeping it the Point of Focus until it breaks builds the consistency we want. Whether you are able to shoot as an Absolute Focus shooter or are a Blended Focus shooter isn’t important. What is, is the ability to keep your Point of Focus primarily on the target throughout the shot.
John Shima continues with his visual perception theme in his second article. “The desire to break the target must be replaced by the intention to watch the target.” Why do we want to replace the desire to break the target with the intention to watch it? Intention keeps your conscious mind, your ego, and any other psychological problems from entering the picture. It places you back in process mode. Concentrate on the process of breaking the target and match stress issues won’t have room to enter your thoughts.
John says, “The primary purpose of the mental game is to manage self-talk”. Placing your
attention on the intention of watching the target short circuits any extraneous selftalk. Just as ToddBender’s article talks about “Presets”, John’s emphasizes how adhering to a disciplined and consistent application of pre-station and pre-shot routines are the foundation of an effective mental game. Attention to pre-station and pre-shot routines keeps your conscious mind occupied and away from negative thoughts.
After using the “Presets”, to keep your mind occupied until you call for the target, stay with a simple mental game, place total concentration on watching the target. The ”watching reflex” John espouses has four components: Awareness, Looking, Seeing, and Focusing. Awareness is about your readiness and patience, looking with curiosity for the target to appear. Looking is settling your eyes into the soft focus of your look point beyond the target path. This quiets your mind and allows you to see the target clearly as it emerges into your visual field. Seeing, detects, acquires, and tracks the target. Focusing consciously directs the depth of focus and point of focus to watching the target continuously.
Watching the target continuously and committing to breaking the target at the intended break point accomplishes two objectives: the intention to continuously watch the target and the elimination of the anxiety of execution in the target acquisition zone. This all works to kill any uncertainty about execution of the shot. Concentration on the process and not the result, watch the target till it breaks.
Gil andVicki Ash are inveterate sustainedlead coaches and believe you should never chase a target from behind. This, however, is not the core of their article this month. Planning and setting up the second target in a pair is the true story of their article. As always, they advise practicing on single targets before working on pairs. They aren’t wrong. Practice a single target presentation, planning out the hold, look, and break point, visualizing it, then executing your plan. Adjust if necessary, then practice breaking the target. Next, change the plan, breaking the target earlier and later. Learn the target till you own it and can break it at several points in its flight path. This allows a shooter to plan out a pair, setting up the best break point in the first target’s flight path to make a good transition to the second target. Yes, that’s the easy solution. That doesn’t teach the transition from the first shot to the second. I’ve watched too many lousy trap and skeet transitions on doubles targets to believe that’s the whole story.
I was a hunter before I was trap or skeet
shooter. Learning how to transition between the first and second shot at a duck or dove is something you learn quickly if you want to be successful. Many hunters will tell you some of their best shots occur on the second shot. That’s a whole nuther can of worms, but they learned quickly how to
transition into that second shot. You can’t get a double or triple on doves or ducks if you don’t know how to transition quickly, efficiently, and correctly and you can’t recover from a bad first shot without learning how to transition effectively.
Effective transitioning has to do with the rhythm you develop moving your eyes, then
the barrel over to the second shot. See the target, move the gun to the target, shoot the target. You can’t throw your eyes over to the second target and you can’t throw your gun over at it either. It has to be a controlled movement. I’ve watched too many shooters throw the gun at a second target with no control over where the gun is in their secondary focus (thank you, John Shima). You should only move the gun at a speed so you can keep track of it in your secondary focus.
Transitioning is a skill you develop and few people really learn how to do it correctly. Wobble is a great venue to learn and practice it. A skeet field is also great for this. Shoot the doubles on stations 1, 2, 6, and 7 until you know you’re breaking each target as an individual target and not as a reflex. Once you master those, try it on station 3, 4, and 5. Not as easy to master, but once you have, you’ll be able to transition to any target on a skeet, trap, or sporting clays field. Controlled movement of the eyes with a controlled movement of the barrels to the second target. Good luck!
How do you practice this? I like to believe one of the reasons my son Andrew became a state and national champion at doubles trap is because he and Dave Kessell shot so many wobble trap where a second shot is allowed at the target and at any pieces left in the air. Shooting pieces teaches you how to transition, altering speed and direction, to make an effective shot. I remember one Saturday Andrew and Dave held their own little competition. They told the puller to keep track of not only the targets broken out of 25, but also the pieces they hit. Andrew hit 42 targets and pieces, Dave hit 41.
How do you raise a champion? This is the subject of Alan Clemons’ article this month. The usual stuff here, don’t criticize your child for underachieving, don’t push them, remind them not to give up on a round, stick with one core coach, don’t make this the whole focus of their lives, and don’t expect it to happen. I’ve seen all of these traps happen to kids Andrew and I have known during our shooting careers. All good advice and I don’t have a lot to add.
One of the biggest mistakes I’ve seen is getting their child the wrong gun at the wrong time. Always get a gun that fits. The damage done by making your child shoot a gun that doesn’t fit can cause irreversible stance and mount problems as they adjust themselves to fit the gun. Get expert advice before getting a gun for the child. Cut down the stock or buy an extra stock you can cut down then add spacers to it as they need them. Trapshooting Hall of Famer, Britt Robinson, shot the same Ljutic monogun his entire career. By the time he was an adult he had added over four inches of spacers to the stock.
Secondly, find your child a group of good, advanced shooters to shoot with. I had three All-American trapshooters
within 25 miles of my dad’s club. Two of them were friends of my father and I shot with them on a consistent basis. The other I observed assiduously. Have your child shoot with good shooters and have them observe the top shooters in your area. This is a great learning experience and teaches them good gun club etiquette at the same time.
On page 13 are examples of the Modern Stance I mentioned last month. Lead leg is slightly bent, feet are approximately shoulder length apart. Approximately 60% of the shooters body weight is on the front leg. The shoulder where the gun is mounted is in front of the trailing foot. Feet are at approximately 1:00 and 3:00.. Elbows are at approximately 45 degree angles to the body. Head is level.
The whole idea behind this stance is its athletic nature. The swing to the target is from the ankles up. Unlike the Churchill method the whole body swings the gun, not the forearm hand.
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Royal Sporting Arms
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Gun Shows
Miramar National Guard Armory September 23-24th
Skeet Trap
Markham October 7th
So. Florida October 28th
Trail Glades November 18th
PBS Complex September 9th
Trail Glades September 16th
Markham September 24th
Sporting Clays
Quail Creek October 1st
Markham September 9th
South Florida September 10th
Vero Beach September 17th
OK Corral September 30th
Saturday - Aug 12 Summers End Open
Saturday - Sept 9 Markham Fall Fest Shoot
Sunday - Oct 15 Pumpkin Blast
Saturday - Nov 5 Richard Merritt Memorial
Saturday - Dec 17 Bud Wolfe Classic
January 2024 Snow Bird Open
February 2024 Honest Abe's Birthday Bash
March 2024 St. Patrick's Day Open
April 2024 Gerry Stumm Memorial
May 2024 Memorial Day Open
June 2024 23rd Annual Sunshine State Classic
July 2024 Super Sizzle Open
SATURDAY SEPTEMBER 9TH
Registration: Opens 8:00 a.m. and will close at 10:00 a.m.
All scorecards must be turned in by 1:00 p.m. in order to be posted.
Entry Fee: $60 N.S.C.A., $60 Hunter, $40.00 SubJunior, Junior
No Scorers or Trappers will be provided.
Shooters will be asked to squad themselves into groups of at least 3 and designate a field judge to verify scores for the squad.
Lunch will not be served.
COURSERULES: All shooters andspectators are required to wear ear and eye protectionon thecourse.
MAXIMUM LOADS PERMITTED: 12GA, 3 DR EQ, 1 1/8 oz. Shot 7 1/2. For additional information contact: Jon Roberts (786)-210-9448
email: jonroberts45@gmail.com
Please Preregister using: scorechaser.com
Price per 50 targets includes $5/100 NSSA/FSA Fee
.410 gauge 50 Targets $21.00
28 gauge 50 Targets $21.00
20 gauge 50 Targets $21.00
12 gauge 50 Targets $21.00
Doubles 50 Targets $21.00
Shoots usually held the first Saturday of every month. Gauges may be shot out of sequence with the permission of management. More than one 50 target program may be shot in the same gauge as a preliminary event.
Break a 50, 75, or 100 Straight and get one of these guaranteed awards!
50 Straight Kennedy Half Dollar
75 Straight Eisenhower Dollar
100 Straight Morgan Silver Dollar
50 Straight Doubles Liberty Silver Half
'Pressure' is a word that is misused in our vocabulary. When you start thinking of pressure, it's because you've started to think of failure.
Tommy Lasorda
“You are never really playing an opponent. You are playing yourself, your own highest standards, and when you reach your limits, that is real joy.” —ArthurAshe
SPECIALNOTICE
Trap Tournaments are usually the fourth Sunday of the month.
Trap Program: 100 target 16 Yd, Hdcp and Doubles events.
First 100 targets.
SCHEDULE 2023-2024
June 25th
July23rd
August 27th
September 24th
October 22nd
November 26th
December 17th
January 28th
February 25th
March10th
April 28th
May 26th
$40.00
(Includes ATA and FTA daily fees)
Additional 100 target events.
$34.00
See Joe Loitz for details: 954-857-5278
WEDNESDAY NIGHT SHOOTING IS STILL POPULAR WITH THE SHOOTERS. SIGN UP WITH STEVE NORRIS AND THE REST OF THE REGULARS AND TRY YOUR SKILL AND LUCK AT ALL THE GAMES.
Come out and join the fun!
$18
