Paul Bunyan Steel - Some Days You Get The Bear, and Some days...

It's a couple of hours drive  to the Paul Bunyan range in Puyallup with one ferry boat ride included, and it didn't start raining until I was within about ten minutes of the range. It rained on and off (it seemed like if I was on the line shooting it was on, otherwise it was only drizzling.) Fortunately there was enough shelter at the individual stages that we kept reasonably dry.  One well placed drop of water on a red dot sight in just the wrong place at just the wrong time turns the tiny red dot into something that resembles a large ominous red jellyfish. It didn't really matter that much though, because the way I was shooting it was pretty obvious that I couldn't possibly have been using the sight anyway!

Some days you find yourself making shots that you normally wouldn't be able to make. However, to maintain the balance in the universe, every one of those days has an evil twin lurking in the shadows to drive you screaming away from shooting sports and into something else entirely. Sunday was one of those days. The whole day kinda felt like it was just a bit out of sync somehow. Sometimes when a day goes that way it's because you are trying to shoot just a bit faster than you can shoot. If you slow down a bit and your accuracy makes a big improvement and your times actually get better, that's what's going on. On Sunday if I slowed down the accuracy didn't improve I just got slower!  Days like that can be frustrating, but there's also a good lesson to be learned on days like that. Even the very best shooters have days like that too, but they don't let it rattle them, they stick to their game plan, and slog their way through the day, making the best out of it they can. Sometimes their day will pull itself together as the day progresses.The important thing is that they keep doing the things that got them to where they are and stick to it. In short, they give the day a chance to salvage itself. If you get rattled or start making big changes to your technique trying to fix the problem, you are making it impossible for the day to get better, you are only compounding the problem. When you have one of those days, focus on your fundamentals, and hope for the best.

Sunday it was one of those days all day long.............