Markham Newsletter 2021 May by smokinjoe48

Markham Skeet, Trap, and Sporting Clays Volume 12 Issue 5 May 2021

Markham Park hours: Sundays 8:00-6:00 Mondays 1:00-9:00 OPEN AGAIN

Tues., Wed., Thurs. 6:00-9:00

Markham Park Gun Club Youth Program Mondays 6-9 NSSA Skeet Sunday, May 9th ATA Trap Sunday, May 23rd NSCA Sporting Clays Sunday, May 16th Trails Glades ATA Saturday, May 29th

TABLE OF CONTENTS PAGE 4 CLUB NEWS 5 STEVE NORRIS SHOOTING INSTR. 6-13 MAGAZINE REVIEWS 7 TRAP & FIELD 8 ClayShoo&ngUSA 9 TrapShoo&ngUSA 10-11 Shoo&ng Sportsman 12 Delta Waterfowl 12-13 Shotgun Sports 14 North American FITASC 2021 16 Palm Beach Shoo&ng Sports Center 17 Memorial Day Open 19 EVENTS CALENDAR 20-21 CLUB CALENDAR 23 SPORTING CLAYS CALENDAR 24-25 SPORTING CLAYS PROGRAM AND RESULTS 26-27 SKEET PROGRAM AND RESULTS 28 FSA SKEET CALENDAR 30 TRAP PROGRAM 32-33 TRAP RESULTS 34 YOUTH PROGRAM

OFFICERS AND BOARD MEMBERS 2020 OFFICERS 

PRESIDENT—Vacant

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VICE PRESIDENT—Vacant

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TREASURER—Vacant

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SECRETARY— Joe Loitz

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RECORDING SECRETARY—Vacant

DIRECTORS: Greg Ritch Sporting Chair

Contact info: Markham Skeet, Trap, and Sporting Clays 11873 NW 30th Street Coral Springs, FL 33065 954-857-5278 

www.markhamsportingclays.org

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E-mail: jloit@bellsouth.net

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Newsletter: jloit@bellsouth.net

Next General Meeting ON REQUEST FROM SECRETARY

Club News As you can see if you look on page 16 the Palm Beach Shooting Sports Park has a charity sporting clays tournament scheduled for June 19th. I called the reservation desk and asked them about trap and skeet shooting. The guy answering the phone is a volunteer and is totally ignorant about the future dates for anything. All he knew how to do was take a reservation for the rifle and pistol range. He didn’t even know when the sporting tournament was. Really sad. Last word on Trail Glades Trapshooting is the traps have been worked on and everything looks good for a shoot on Saturday, May 29th. We will start shooting at 9:00 so get there before then. Just in case, email me the week before to check. Greg Ritch is doing wonders with the Sporting Program. Joe Pinchin led the 72 shooters at the April shoot

with the only score in the 90’s a 93. Herbert Kanski and Charles Alvarez followed with 86 and 85 for Runner-Up and Masters1. The 5-Stand has some new presentations on it. A little tougher set-up but I liked it. The last trapshoot saw 9 shooters in the Singles event with Dax Demena leading with a 96. Joe Bilecki followed closely with a 95. Tom Jett and Alex Riera led the Doubles with an 88 and 87 respectively. We only had 5 shooters at the last skeet shoot. Joe Loitz led the 12 and 20 with a 47 and 48 respectively. On page 6 I listed the local shooters who won trophies at the Florida State Trapshoot and Sporting Clays Championships. I already reported Reanna’s wins at the Florida State Trapshoot. As you can see, she did well at the Sporting Clays Championships as well! Joe Loitz jloit@bellsouth.net 954-857-5278

STEVE NORRIS SHOTGUN SHOOTING LESSONS

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.

FLORIDA STATE TRAPSHOOT RESULTS: Thursday Preliminary HDCP Thursday Preliminary Doubles Friday Sunshine State Handicap Friday Class Doubles Championship Florida State Singles Championship Florida State Singles Championship Florida State Doubles Championship Florida State Doubles Championship Florida State Doubles Championship Florida State Handicap Championship High All-Around

Runner-Up Class B Champion Champion Class B Champion Class AA Champion Junior Gold Champ Junior Gold Champ Runner-Up Class D Champion Junior Gold Champ Junior Gold Champ

Dax Demena Alex Riera Mike Cieslik Alex Riera Dax Demena Andrew Loitz Andrew Loitz Joe Loitz Bruce Edwards Andrew Loitz Andrew Loitz

FLORIDA STATE SPORTING CLAYS RESULTS: Main Event Main Event Fitasc Fitasc Fitasc 5-Stand 5-Stand 5-Stand 5-Stand Friday Preliminary Friday Preliminary Friday Preliminary Super Spor&ng 20 Gauge 20 Gauge

High Lady High Junior High Lady High Junior Super Veteran Champion High Lady High Junior Lady Third Runner-Up High Lady High Junior Masters1 AA1 Champion Veteran R-Up

Reanna Frauens Reanna Frauens Reanna Frauens Reanna Frauens Brian Du Quesnay Reanna Frauens Reanna Frauens Reanna Frauens Ann LiBle Reanna Frauens Reanna Frauens Reanna Frauens Luis Herrara Ted Gray Ted Gray 6

Magazine Review TRAP & FIELD – April 2021 Bob Palmer gives some practical advice on avoiding fatigue and stamina this month. Basics, don’t get dehydrated, especially during the summer months. Dehydration affects your stamina and will trouble you visually. Dry eyes can sneak up on you without your being aware of it. Best advice I ever heard on hydration was from a doctor. Your body has a wonderful way of telling you to drink more fluids, you get thirsty. Before that happens, drink something, water or sports drinks, at regular intervals. Eat at normal intervals also. Don’t skip breakfast, yet don’t overeat either. Set up a simple fitness routine during the week. Get a 5-10 lb. weight or do pushups to build up and retain strength in your arms and shoulders. Setting a

goal for your exercise is also imperative. Your goal is better shooting and strength training helps. If you find you have fatigue problems or have health issues that limit this, see your doctor or a sports trainer for advice. Finally, take 20 -30 minutes before you shoot to prepare for the event. This is “me” time. Get away from your squadmates and others and prepare yourself for the event. This will help energize yourself before going to the line. Consider it a 30 minute wakeup call! Ian Darroch lays out some basic info on choke tubes this month. The best advice in the article is about proper maintenance. Clean out the plastic with a wire brush, use a wrench to keep them tight, and use grease when you seat them.

Magazine Review ClayShootingUSA – 2021 March/April In my experience as a coach, when someone is riding a target they have serious underlying reasons for doing it. Usually, it means they are looking down the rib at the bead and aiming at the target rather than pointing at it. Bill Elliott doesn’t really address the problem of riding a target yet speaks about it at length. He believes the Mount, Move, and Shoot approach some shooters use make them look like they are riding the target. First this is wrong on so many levels I don’t have enough room to explain it. Perhaps he’s suggesting that new shooters mount the gun, then start to move to the target which may appear to some the shooter is riding a target. Here’s the deal, if your friends are saying you’re riding targets, you need to get help f rom an instructor. Enough on riding the target. Mr. Elliott next advises on dropping targets. I like his advice on inserting in front of a dropping target then using pull-away. I don’t agree with using maintained lead as he suggests. Dropping targets are accelerating as they drop. Pull-ahead is the only method you can use to get a feel for a

dropping target’s speed to gauge the lead. Just my opinion. On crossing targets he has little to say other than watch the target and create a plan. John Shima concentrates on the visual Crossover Phenomenon this month. There are situations where your visual field is conflicted. For a right-handed, right-eyed shooter the barrels interfere with the sight picture when a target comes from left-to-right, especially on an incoming, crossing target. The non-shooting eye picks up the barrels and the shooting eye is somewhat blocked by the barrels. This isn’t such a problem from the low-gun position. It defeats the crossover phenomenon. Even a soft mount where the eye starts above the barrels in a head up position improves your chances of beating the crossover problem. Sifting through all the science and references John uses to support his suggestions, here are some ideas to take home from this article. Between stations or fields visually focus on distant objects. Distance viewing is more relaxing for your eye than focusing on near objects. Before each shot, settle your eyes in expanded soft focus and shift your attention to visually picking up the target. It’s one thing to stare off into soft focus without any conscious effort and totally different to shift to the attentive anticipation of picking up the target. Finally, continual focus on the target prevents our conscious mind from interfering with the shot. Perfect focus on the target prevents peaking at the bead, measuring lead, and a host of other problems you can create for yourself. The more you allow yourself to focus on the target and the task of breaking it the closer you will get to being in the zone and having a true flow experience. Watch the target break. 8

TrapShootingUSA – March/April 2021 Lots of interesting articles this month. One on an indoor trap range in Diamond, Illinois near where I grew up. Believe me, could have used that place in December and January! The article on Loral I. Delaney by Karla Harrison is a good read. I remember going to the Sportsman Show in Chicago as a kid and watching Loral I. perform with her trained Labradors. I knew her from seeing her at the Grand American back in the 70’s. Last time I saw her she was at Markham Park, but that was over ten years ago. Nice lady and great outdoors Lady and shooter. Sean Hawley reviews two books I haven’t read: The Complete Shot by Shane Bisgood and a golfing book, 7 STROKES IN 7 DAYS by Dawn Grant. If someone has read these books let me know if they were helpful to your shooting. You might not know it but finding books on shooting is an expensive enterprise these days. Most books are out of print and are only available used. Their prices are exorbi-

tant. I purchased most of my books used over five years ago and have added only a few in recent years. Most of them were less than $10 each back then. The same books run $50 or more now!

Magazine Review Shooting Sportsman – March/April 2021 Chris Batha gives a short treatise this month on the eyes and their importance to hitting a moving target. After you’ve established the fundamentals of a pre-shot routine of stance, posture, head position, and a consistent mount we next build the skill required to de-

termine angle, speed, and distance of a target in flight. Angle, speed, and distance establishes our foot position in relation to where we decide on the insertion point and break point. It’s the eyes that are the next important issue. Focus on the target to the exclusion of all else. If our fundamentals are wellestablished there should be no conscious regard to them. The target is all we are conscious of. Chris likens this to tunnel vision on the target, being in the zone or concentrated focus on the task at hand. If our fundamentals are good our move to the target will be smooth and consistent regardless of the presentation. The longer you focus on the target the “smoother and more effortless” will be the move to the break point. As a side note, Chris reminds us to use proper glasses with the correct lens tint. The trade-off on tint, more light that enters the eye the better the definition of the target. Proper shooting glasses allow for the forward tilt of our head to the gun and are designed to accommodate the lens position to our eyes correctly. Use proper shooting glasses to get the best affect for your eyes. 10

Tom Roster dives into the myth of the perfect 30” pattern this month. Everyone has probably gone to a patterning board at least once in their life and patterned their gun. It’s not something I do very often. I had a new Beretta 682 once and immediately realized I had a problem with the top barrel. Turns out it shot 100% low. Beretta was nice enough

about it. They gave me a new set of barrels. This article is about that perfect 30” pattern with no holes for the target to fly through. According to Tom, this perfect pattern doesn’t exist and he details why. The cloud of shotgun pellets that leave your barrel do not fan out and arrive at the patterning board all at one time. They form a string or cloud in the same way a comet and its tail appear in the night sky. Some pellets are going to arrive later than others. This means the target flies through a cloud of pellets. Some

targets are hit by the head of the cloud, some are hit by the tail. There aren’t really holes that can be accurately determined by a two-dimensional pattern on a sheet of paper. The shot cloud will always have holes between pellets where a target can pass

through unharmed. The speed of the pellets and the cloud make it unlikely a target will pass unscathed through your pattern. There may not be any pellets passing through the space where your target is at the exact moment it meets the cloud, but trailing pellets are bound to hit the target before it leaves the three-dimensional space the cloud occupies. Don’t pattern for the perfect shot distribution, pattern to see where your gun is shooting. Perfect patterns simply don’t exist. 11

Magazine Review Delta Waterfowl – 2021 Spring Do you want to add distance to your waterfowl shooting? Brad Fitzpatrick presents ideas to help increase the range of your shotgun. First, use chokes specifically designed for the type of shot you are using. Use ones designed for the non-toxic shot used in waterfowling. Second, some non-toxic shot is up to 56% denser than lead. This means the individual pellets in non-toxic shot are heavier than their lead equivalent. This allows you

to use a smaller shot size with non-toxic shells which gives you more pellets in the pattern. Smaller shot size means less resistance and deeper penetration leading to more kills, fewer cripples, and better patterns at longer distance. Shotgun Sports – April 2021 Background can be a problem at some clubs. Bill Henery provides solutions to handling background problems this month. First don’t change hold points, look points, or rhythm in anticipation of the background. More important is going into Quiet Eye mode and letting your peripheral vision carry the day. For dark backgrounds Bill suggests using lighter tinted lenses. Oddly, purple lenses are known as filters for a background with trees. Not exactly lighter tinted lenses. Bill’s best advice is focusing on the target to the exclusion of all else. This takes practice, but it truly is the key to good concentration and good shooting. “Look” for the target to emerge and concentrate on that one precept. Bill advises that changing hold points will affect your timing for the shot. It’s your rhythm that’s affected. Timing should never be a word using in shooting. Bill also suggests focusing on the leading edge of the target. In trap I can honestly say I have never done this. Skeet, hunting, and sporting yes, not trap. If you can then do it. 12

Michael J. Keyes, M.D. gives us advice from the squirrels in his friend’s backyard this month. I won’t highlight the squirrels’ part in this, but the point of the article is about training. Build your skill set around good fundamentals first before heading into more difficult presentations. Without good fundamentals you won’t be able to develop new skill sets properly. What are good fundamentals? Being able to shoot basic targets without conscious thinking.

continuing to practice on those days. Familiarity with the tournament environment by participating in them makes them less nerveracking. Your scores will improve simply through the process of being inured to tournament pressure. Eliminate the novelty. Tournament shooting will teach you more about your mental game than practice ever could. Note what you learn in a log and build from it.

Learn how to break right to left and left to right crossing targets before working on difficult true pairs that incorporate one or both of these targets. This works whether we’re talking about sporting, skeet, trap, or wingshooting. If you can’t break a left to right target consistently, how can you expect to break a pair of them or any pair where one of the targets is a basic target you never learned properly. On top of that, many people never learn how to transition between shots properly. Another basic skill neglected and never learned correctly. Once basic skills are ingrained, learning the transition process between targets is simple to master.

To really improve, shoot more tournaments, read articles, hire coaches, then use that to target your practice sessions. Deliberate practice is the key. The object is to be able to build a solid set of fundamentals which will help carry you through novel situations. The game is all about shooting without too much conscious effort. Watch the target break as John Shima says. Let the shot come naturally.

Strengthen the skills you have then work on your weaknesses. Without a strong skill set on your easy to master targets how do you expect to strengthen targets where you have weakness? When it comes to fixing your weaknesses, failure tells us what we’re trying isn’t working. What do I need to do to fix it? If you can’t figure out what the problem is, seek guidance from a coach. Finally, if you only shoot one competitive event every month and can’t seem to improve, maybe consider participating in two or more a month rather than

10704 Wiles Road, Coral Springs, FL 33076 954-846-2336

Everything you need to get that relaxed driving that brings consistency only comes with practice. ~ John Surtees

Registered Shooting and Events in South Florida Gun Shows Natl. Guard Armory Miramar May. 8-9th

Skeet Markham So. Florida Port Malabar

May 13th May 23th May 28-30th

Trap So. Florida Trail Glades Markham

May 15th May 29th May 23rd

Sporting Clays Vero Beach South Florida Quail Creek OK Corral Markham Vero Beach

May 1st May 2nd May 8th May 22nd May 23rd May 29th

Consistency is what counts. You have to do things over and over again. ~ Hank Aaron

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