I recently took a Hunter Prep course at Gunsite Academy, and I can’t recommend this kind of training enough. I’ve been hunting for years and have taken more than half a dozen courses at Gunsite already, so I went in thinking I knew what I was doing. And wow, did I get humbled.
I’m going to outline a few mistakes I made so that you can learn from what I did wrong, but let me just sum up all of my mistakes with a single word: Overconfidence. Although I learned a lot, the class could have been even more productive for me if I’d checked my “I know how to do this” attitude at the door.
Mistake 1: Assuming All Shooting Skills Transfer
I’ve done enough long-range shooting to know that I’m a very competent shot off a bench or prone. I’ve got the basics of rifle shooting down: I know when and how to squeeze the trigger, I know how to follow through and reacquire my sight picture, I can calculate holdover and read the wind, and I’m pretty fast at working a bolt for a second shot.
Silly me thought that meant I’d automatically be good at shooting off-hand (standing up, with no support). And all of those skills DID help, but I vastly underestimated how much different the shooting would be, even at just 50 and 25 yards. The first time the instructors had us try this, my “groups” were measured in feet, not inches. It was humbling and taught me that I still have a lot to learn about field-shooting positions.
Lesson learned: You’re not as good a shot as you think you are if you can’t shoot from all positions.
Mistake 2: Ignoring Gun Fit
This was a media event, so instead of taking my own gun, I selected a gun from the manufacturer sponsoring the hunt. “You sure you don’t want a youth model?” the host asked me when I made my pick. I declined, with the reasoning that it’s part of my job to be able to roll into hunt camp and shoot any off-the-rack gun that’s handed to me. While that’s true, a gun that turned out to be too long for me really did make the Hunter Prep class more difficult than it should have been, and I struggled to run the bolt nearly all week.
What I hadn’t really considered is that while I can easily and quickly run a bolt on a bench or while laying prone, reaching up and out to do so while standing (with or without sticks) is an entirely different ballgame, and I fought that gun all week. Not the gun’s fault—it was mine for arrogantly assuming I was the special snowflake who could overcome a bad fit.
Lesson learned: Gun fit really does matter for function and comfort.
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This student is using proper kneeling technique, but due to her different body shape, the author did not find this position stable or comfortable and initially made the mistake of trying to force it anyway.
Mistake 3: Not Making Adaptations
One of the many things Gunsite does very well is helping students replicate real-world conditions, and that became very evident on day two, when we worked on shooting from a kneeling position. I have never been great at kneeling, so I was eager to learn a better technique.
So when our incredibly competent and also extremely petite instructor, Il Ling New, demonstrated how to wrap a sling around our arms, bend our toes and sit on our rear heel, I thought, “I can do that.”
Guess what—I couldn’t really do that. As a plus-sized woman, my belly and bust were just plain in the way, and sitting on the heel of my rear foot while my toes were bent was really painful. But my mistake was persevering anyway instead of modifying the technique to work for me. As a result, I felt unsteady, I struggled to swing the slide out of the way of my chest, and by the end of the day my ankle was bruised and sore from the pressure of my boot while I was sitting on my heel. I’m no sissy, I thought, so I just kept going.
The next day, I decided it just wasn’t working, and with the guidance of instructor Mario Marchman, I adjusted my position so my foot was flat on the ground instead of digging my toes into the sand. This opened up my whole stance, gave me more stability and allowed me to stay comfortable for much longer so I could concentrate on shooting.
Lesson learned: Observe the basics of solid technique, but if needed, modify to make it work for you.
Mistake 4: Rushing Myself
Some time ago I came to the realization that when I’m under pressure, like on a hunt, I rush myself, and that usually doesn’t end well. I’ve gotten to the point where I trained my brain to stop and say, “deep breath, slow down!” before I pull the trigger on an animal, and this has worked well.
Unfortunately, somehow I forgot all of that and allowed the pressure to get to me during our class, and I rushed myself. The worst part is that the pressure wasn’t even real, but self-imposed: I didn’t want to be the last one to shoot on the line, and when we did a mock hunt with paper animal targets at the end of class, I let the adrenaline get to me as if the event was timed (it wasn’t). As a result, I shot almost all the animal targets farther back than I’d intended. If it had been a real hunt and I had allowed myself to rush like that, most of them would have been wounded.
I was really disappointed in my performance, because I know I can shoot better than that, and I almost always do on game. It really kind of ended the course on a sour note for me, although I did definitely learn—or re-learn—a very important lesson about taking my time.
Lesson learned: Slow down! Take as long as you need to make a good shot, even if it means an animal gets away from you now and then because you took too long.
On the plus side, I did learn a lot of great techniques at the class, and now I’m much more comfortable shooting from a standing, kneeling or improvised shooting position. Even though I’ve done a good bit of big-game hunting in all sorts of terrain and conditions, this class was an eye-opener and a huge help me boosting my skills and my confidence. If you could use a similar boost, I highly recommend a Hunter Prep course at Gunsite Academy, or consider one of their other great classes to fit your needs.
