Match Practice

[Pete van Meurs]

Hi All,

There has been much theorising on the forum of late about (what I consider to be trivial) detail. One cannot expect to front up for their first 500 Fly and mix it with the established shooters. Sure, there have been a few upsets in the results over the years but little consistency.
You have to start somewhere. may as well be at the bottom as then the only way is UP!
Simply come and have a go to get the spirit of the event.

Pete

[Peter Merriman]

Hi Peter

While i completely agree that there is no substitute fr experience or better place to learn then at the range competing in the FLY I also believe that if I had to wait for each FLY shoot until I was able to ask experienced shooters about the sport I would not have learned enough to have improved between FLY Shoots.
Reading of other shooters experiences and getting more of an understanding about the psychology and theory of shooting has been a good foundation from which to learn.
To be able to turn up at the range and understand a bit about what it is  I am looking at and not just a field of pretty green and orange tape has help my confidence no end.
There is one thing i ave learned from the books and theory is that i should stop worrying about what the conditions might be at my next shoot and as long as i have a basic understanding of what to look for at the range I will be ok.

Theory will never beat experience but as I have not had the experience of the shooters filling the top places at the FLY shoots reading about the sport and asking questions in between FLY shoots it's what I have to work with.

Reading about what a projectile should do when shot at 2900 feet per second over a distance of 500 meters and then going to the range and seeing that in fact what should have happend didn't as driven me to want to understand more about how the wind works and in particular how a 60 degree wind shift over 500 will effect my next shot.

Experience is king but theory has its place.

Peter

[Les Fraser]

Hi Peter
This forum is hopefully assisting you in your shooting endeavours you can ask what ever shooting question that comes to mind the intention of people on this forum is to share information and hopefully learn from it. There are no substitute for range time but the why's what if's and so on are what we like to share.

The forums intent from the start was to give people who visit the fly site the opportunity to learn.

I will share a comment that I heard from a shooter who joined the fly shooting matches he said

" Les I am 60 years old I don't have time to do the long apprenticeship to shoot a top ten place score in a fly match"

I thought about what he had said and it struck me that if we all just helped each other out with some of the mysteries you learn from experience then the level of shooting scores across the spectrum of Fly shooters would increase.

Believing in sharing your experience and knowledge doesn't mean that you are teaching someone to beat you it means that you will go on a venture of improvement yourself by lifting their abilities as well.

There will always be the debate about information sharing I am an advocate of putting what I know out there for others to read if they agree or disagree that's fine either way plausible argument even better if it is evidence based is always going to be better than just talking about the shot that got away or the target that just took you from the rooster to the feather duster.

Learn what you can read lots of books about theories and ask what resource material shooters use. I will try and list the books I have read when I get the chance and put them up on here. Hopefully you can pick something you like to invest some time and effort into learning.

keep asking and learning from those who beat you.......

Les