EP 571. Straight Shooting for Hunters

Ramsey Russell: Welcome back to MOJO’s Duck Season Somewhere podcast where today I’ve got two absolutely legends in the hunting and shotgunning world. Joining us to talk about their new book, Straight Shooting for Hunters: A Champion’s Guide to Using Shotguns in the Field, this book is packed with practical nonsense advice that will help hunters at any level, including myself, shoot skills and become more effective ethical hunters. Joining us today is Mr. Will Primos, a pioneer in the hunting industry, founder of Primos Hunting, a brand that shaped modern game calling and hunting gear, decades of experience in the field. He taught myself and countless hunters how to get closer to game and hunt more effectively and Anthony Matarese Jr, a world champion Sporting Clay shooter. One of the top shotgun instructors in the country, also the youngest inductee in the NSCA Hall of Fame. He brings unmatched expertise in shotgun fundamentals and field application. Guys, how the heck are you? Welcome to the show.

Will Primos: We’re doing great. Look, Russell, I got to stop you now because you said Straight Shooting for Hunters: A Champion’s Guide. Okay.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah.

Will Primos: That champion is Anthony. It ain’t me.

Ramsey Russell: Well, I’m going to tell you what as somebody that hunts as much as I do, I can miss with the absolute best of them and I’m proud to have you all on to delve into this topic002C and I do got some questions about missing with the best of them for both of you. But first off, what inspired you all to collaborate on Straight Shooting for Hunters?

Will Primos: I’ll let you to have it, Anthony.

Anthony Matarese Jr: So, long story short, I had written a book already before this book, a Sporting Clay book, basically teaching people how to shoot sporting clays or any clay targets for that matter, and the fundamentals in there would help you in the field, but it’s a clay target shooting book. And Will had bought my book, and I ran into him at a shooting competition because he kind of went from – took up sporting clays to be a better hunter and then he got into sporting clays a little further and further and wound up at a competition. So he told me the story and he had bought my book, he wanted me to sign it. So that’s how I actually met him, I’ve known of Will Primos, but never met him. And long story short, I signed his book and he told me his story that he was doing clay targets because he was frustrated in the field and he said I had been shooting in the field for 50 years and I was bound to get better because he was just missing shots that he felt like he should be able to shoot with his shotgun, whether he was – dove hunting or duck hunting, and he had got in the clays and ended up with my book on clays, learning more about the game and how to be a better shooter. His story of him shooting a shotgun for 50 years and being kind of an icon in the outdoor space and hunting space just kind of got me thinking, like, well, if this guy is a hunter and I’ve seen him on TV when I was a kid, hunting and he’s learning about, more about shooting a shotgun, I’m sure there’s a lot of other hunters that could be better with their shotgun out in the field and what better person to deliver kind of the message than Will Primos and myself? So that’s kind of how it inspired it. And I called him up the next week and said, hey, will you write a book with me on hunting? And he goes, well, he goes, I guess so, I guess that’d be, if you think it’s a good idea? I said, I think it’s a great idea, he goes, well, I don’t know how to write a book, and I said, well, I do. So, I already wrote one, so let’s think about it, he said, well, let’s do it, so that’s kind of my – that’s the story that I have.

Will Primos: Getting to know Anthony because that Anthony’s a world champion, I mean, several times over. And for me, I got into the Sporting Clay game wanting to be a better shot in the field, but I fell in love with the game. And so Anthony was one of my heroes. I mean, I think he was 37 when I met him. You’re 40 now, Anthony?

Anthony Matarese Jr: Yep. I’ll be 41 this summer.

Will Primos: Yeah. And I’m 73. But man, with Anthony, I saw Anthony, I went, oh my gosh, I started shaking, that’s Anthony. You know because he’s a master at it. And in his book, I never could understand what made it different. A dove would come by me flying 20 miles an hour, another dove would come by me flying 60 miles an hour. And so, somebody told me to shoot in front of them. You got to shoot in front of them. So, I’d put the gun out there in front and every once in a while, dove would run into it. But it would take me 4 boxes of shells to kill 10 doves. And in Anthony’s book, he talks about matching speeds with the target. The target being the dove, the duck, the clay and once you mount in a certain way, either behind it, in front of it, on it and you match speeds with it and then straight your brain, they’ll tell you what to do. And I was looking at my gun, I wasn’t looking at the bird. And Anthony says, don’t look at the bird, look at the ring on that pheasant’s neck, look at the bill, look at the head of that dove and so it focuses you so you know where you’re pointing your shotgun. So, I mean, bells just went off. And the first time I shot a 50 yard crosser that was traveling 60 miles an hour, I started doing backflips and then I tried to do it perfect the next time and I couldn’t do it. So, then Anthony had to teach me how to trust myself. I remember I took a lesson with Anthony, writing the book, we’re writing the book and so he gave me a lesson as part of writing the book. And then he sat me down with a piece of paper and he writes, Will does not trust himself. The next time we sat down, Will really doesn’t trust himself. So, Anthony, I’ve been working on it, I’m getting much better.

Anthony Matarese Jr: Good deal.

Ramsey Russell: Guys, who is this book most written for? What gap in shotgunning does this book feel and who is it tailored for? Beginners, experienced hunters, everyone in between?

Will Primos: Anthony?

Anthony Matarese Jr: So I mean, we tried to write the book from the perspective that every single person you know is going to gain something from the book, right? So, if you’re a novice hunter and getting into it or you’re a kid and your parents are getting you into it, there’s something in there for you and very important fundamentals to get you started and kind of guide you all the way through that experience. But there’s things in there for the most experienced hunter and we try to write the book from the perspective of being relatable, right? We don’t want to come across as this is what you have to do and this is right and wrong, right. So, we’re trying to guide you and get you to see and understand the big picture maybe a little bit better. And we going into different species and different things, so different things you might – different birds you might be hunting for. We even go into deer and turkey because there are people out using their shotgun for that and it’s a little different than if you’re shooting a duck or dove flying by and what you’re going to do. So we tried to write it for a big audience, right? I want the most experienced person to pick that book up and go, I actually learned something from that book. And we try to write it in a way that, it told some stories and it was enjoyable and the field craft section, where the field craft section basically is saying, if you’re already a really good shot, there’s some things that Will and I have learned over years and years in the field that can help you, if you’re not a great hunter or not a great shot yet, it’s teaching you how to be a better hunter, right? And some of those things can help you be more successful in the field, even if you’re shotgunning proficiency hasn’t gotten up to par yet by being smarter and making decisions. And it be like if you related to a sport – you’re playing the game a little bit better, right? You’re taking all the angles and the strategy to capitalize on the opportunities that you do have.

Will Primos: Yeah, let me add to that. So, another big part of it is most hunters at the end of the season, the season just ended, you got turkey season starting, but that’s not wing shooting. And they put their shotgun up and they don’t get it out again until the next dove season. And so, if you’re a quail hunter, you’re going to shoot birds that dogs are pointing and they’re rising, understanding that you don’t get to practice that and so you in the field and you’re trying to do your best. So, Sporting Clays gives you that opportunity to practice those shots. We talk about how to use your eyes, we talk about eye dominance, which is a big issue if somebody’s right eye dominant, but they’re left-handed or vice versa. And putting all these things together, the bells can begin to go off in your head and you would be surprised how much more consistent and how many more hits you can make, and that’s fun. So, if people can read the book and pick up a few things and have more fun while they’re in the field, we’ve really reached our goal.

Ramsey Russell: Well, I learned a shotgun, same as, I guess, most folks I knew. My granddaddy stuck me out in the dove field at a safe distance where if the gun went off on accident, nobody got hurt, told me to load one shell and advised me to shoot where the dove was going, not where he’d been. Patted me on the back, said, have fun, kid. I think a lot of people – and the more I shot at dove, the better I got. But I think most of us assume that we can shoot well just because we’ve been hunting forever. What do you all think some of the biggest misconceptions about shotgun shooting are?

“Some of that comes with experience, but also some of that comes with if the fundamentals are correct and we learn to watch the target, we were going to see lead, lead is something that everyone will see when they hit the target, but we don’t want to measure lead, so there’s a big difference between looking at the lead and watching the lead versus looking at the bird, so the best analogy that I give that’s very relatable is anyone has done any amount of hunting’s made that great shot of the day, when everybody says, there you go and he throws the gun up and shoots that duck or that dove and it was a tough shot, right? And it’s like, man, how did I hit that? That was the hardest shot of the day. And it was reactionary and instinctive and they use their hands and their eyes.”

Anthony Matarese Jr: So, I mean, you would be kind of a classic example. You kind of learn through trial and error and you get out there and you miss and you shoot more and you learn how to get in front of the bird by just missing enough times that you try something different. I think that the biggest misconception in shooting a shotgun for the average hunter is that they’re trying to think about how they lead a target and that the difference between hitting a 30 yard crossing duck or a dove and hitting it, and shooting a 30 yard crossing duck or dove and missing it is that they had the wrong lead, okay, so their gun’s in the wrong spot. I think there is a massive disconnect with the average hunter in regards to just all the fundamentals from the way you should ideally be standing, the way you should ideally be mounting the gun, what proper mount looks like, how to practice your gun mount so that you can bring the gun up efficiently in the field upon surprise and have the gun in line with your eye without looking at the barrel. Most hunt too much at the end of their gun and try to get the position. And if they’ve done that enough times, they can become pretty good at it. But you know what is pretty good at it, right? So, we want you to be as successful as possible and if you can hit a few more birds because you understand different fundamentals. So I think that the big picture answer is that there’s just a lack of understanding of some of the little details and that the sum of all those together are really important, what your foot position is, how good your gun mount is, practicing your gun mount – when you have a good gun mount, the gun gets in line with your eye and your brain knows where it’s going. So now you can work on looking at the target that you’re shooting, whether it’s a duck or a dove or a clay target. And you have the – the gun barrel should be like the hood of your car. You see it, it’s in front of you, you know where it is, but you don’t have to watch it. You don’t look at it when you drive down the road. Now, some of that comes with experience, but also some of that comes with if the fundamentals are correct and we learn to watch the target, we were going to see lead, lead is something that everyone will see when they hit the target, but we don’t want to measure lead, so there’s a big difference between looking at the lead and watching the lead versus looking at the bird, so the best analogy that I give that’s very relatable is anyone has done any amount of hunting’s made that great shot of the day, when everybody says, there you go and he throws the gun up and shoots that duck or that dove and it was a tough shot, right? And it’s like, man, how did I hit that? That was the hardest shot of the day. And it was reactionary and instinctive and they use their hands and their eyes, but anyone who’s hunted enough can also remember the time where your buddy said, all right, this is going to be – You take this one, coming in drake, pintail, coming in on your side, okay and I see him, yeah. Plenty of time, stand up, shoot 2 shots, 3 shots and birds keeps flying or your buddy – You missed it once or twice and your buddy shot it on, because he was tired of waiting for you. And we go, how in the hell do we miss that? So that’s something, that’s the shot that was killed that you were surprised, you used your hands and your eyes a lot better. And the shot that you missed and you’re also surprised that you missed it. Something is going wrong, either fundamentally or you’re watching the gun way too much. You’re looking at the barrel and you had time to make the perfect shot and you’re not really focused on the target or the duck, you’re focused on the end of the gun and the lead, and measuring lead is extremely difficult. If you can get the fundamentals correct and the gun speed and the bird speed match together and the guns mounted correctly, it becomes more like catching a baseball and throwing a baseball. And, yeah, if you’ve passed the football to the guy running down the field and he’s 20 yards, you don’t throw it as far in front of him as you pass it to him, he’s running down the field at 30 yards. So that football analogy is very equivalent and that’s ultimately what we want our shotgun to end up being like, there’s just not many people that really shoot their shotgun that way. Partly, a lot of people learn, they go out, start with a 22 or BB gun in the backyard. They line up those sights, they shoot at that target, they kind of learn to look down that gun and get that alignment, and then they do that same thing as they get to shooting a shotgun. You can do it. you’re shooting a shotgun, you have a pattern, okay. You can do it incorrectly and hit a few birds or hit or be pretty good. So our goal is to get someone to read the book and if it’s the guy that’s really struggling, we want this book to change his shooting. If it’s the guy that’s pretty good and he’s already doing okay, we want you to read it and be like, you can do better probably than you are. We want you to be – there’s a misconception, sometimes I take someone out for a shooting lesson, I give a lot of shooting instruction and say, tell me about your shooting. Well, I shot clays once or twice a year, maybe once, but I hunt a lot, I do really well hunting. So yeah, but what does that mean, right? I’m not sure what doing really well hunting means, right? If you got your limited ducks, that’s great, but if the limit’s 6 and you shot, I’m not sure how good that is –

Ramsey Russell: Right.

Anthony Matarese Jr: Way to quantify it.

Ramsey Russell: Well, how much of shotgun and is skill versus instinct?

Anthony Matarese Jr: Great question. Really good question. So really what we do when we learn to shoot a shotgun correctly is we marry those 2 things together. So, you start off with knowledge of your fundamentals that the book outlines. So you then you work through those fundamentals and you build a skill set. So as you build that skill set, you then be able to do that a little bit more naturally, okay or a little bit more instinctively. There is a natural ability to point at anything like if I said, point at the door, right? Your finger goes to the door. So really what we’re doing is when we’re doing it correctly at your best possible level, whatever the best for you is. Whether that’s hitting a bunch of clays or hitting more ducks on duck season. When we’re doing it correctly, we’re marrying fundamentals, which kind of start off as knowledge, maybe you’re not doing some of those things correctly. So it’s just knowledge based, but then you could practice your stance and practice your gun mount and do a lot of that right at your house, okay, to make sure that it’s correct. And then there is a part of shooting that gun when you pull the trigger, you want to be looking at the target and then that’s very instinctive. So, when you killed that difficult shot in the field, it’s 100 instinctive, that’s why it’s kind of even hard to explain how you hit that one and then miss the easier one sometimes. So you use your instincts and your abilities that you had and whatever skill sets that you already developed, however strong they are. When we really put everything together, we’re taking that instinctive trust your hands and your eyes and reaction and look at the same way if someone tossed the ball to you, you would just grab it. We’re taking that instinct and marrying that with good fundamentals, knowledge, understanding what type of approach to use for different styles of shots, so most people don’t necessarily really have a good basis of understanding how they even generate lead. So do you swing through the bird? You start in front of the bird? You pull away from the bird and then how does that relate to the gun speed? So I think the answer to your question is, we really want kind of both, what I see, put both together. What I see in hunters is there are some people that are very instinctive and they just shoot real naturally, right? The guy’s quick and he’s pretty good, okay. But he has some limitation on that instinct, right? You can’t survive solely on that reaction and instinct. Then you have some other hunters that are very calculated and they’re aiming and they’re looking down the barrel, they’re trying to – it’s the guy that’s with you and he’s always shoots too slow, you go, all right, it’s your turn, get ready. Take them, take them and by the time he shoots the, he missed the sweet spot. So that guy’s aiming, right? He’s not using his instinct at all. So, we’re really trying to learn how all this kind of works together.

Ramsey Russell: Yep.

“Generate the lead so that you learn the fundamentals based on the angle”

Will Primos: Talk about generating lead and also Anthony goes and talks about fundamentals. So what are those fundamentals? Your stance, how you stand, your mount and then, how do you generate the lead so that you learn the fundamentals based on the angle, the distance and the speed of the bird. And once you understand angle, distance and speed, because there’s so many of that, it can change so quickly. And if your fundamentals are sound and you’re looking at the target, for instance, Anthony was giving me lessons up there in New Jersey, we stepped up to the station he said, okay, shoot that. I looked over there, target was on my right, kind of behind the bush and it came screaming out behind the bush and so I didn’t really know what I was doing and I got ready and I shot and I just blew it up. And Anthony said, how far did you lead it? I went, I have no idea, he said, good answer –

Ramsey Russell: Good answer.

Will Primos: Because I was generating with my eyes and my hands matching what I needed to do to put the gun where it needed to go, so the BBs would run into the target. And each target is different based on the angle, the distance and the speed. So your mounts, when we’re hunting in the field, when you’re hunting your shooting Sporting Clays, there are different mounts you can use. You can totally pre mount the gun for something that’s really close and fast and you don’t have time to mount the gun. And then there’s a cheap mount, so you’ve got the gun away from your face and then there’s a low gun. And then there’s what’s known as fit task, which is invented by the French, which is a gun, they put a mark on your vest and you can’t get that gun above that mark until you see the bird. And all those is mimicking how you shoot in the field, so when we’re in the field, that gun is always low. So, we’re using our eyes to look for the object we’re going to shoot and then we take our gun and mount it correctly and move it to where we think it needs to be, to pull from behind the bird, on the bird, mount to the lead. If your time’s very limited and the bird’s far away and it’s quick, then more than likely you’re going to amount to the lead. But experience will tell you what that is supposed to look like. But like Anthony says, if you go measuring lead, it ain’t going to work, it ain’t going to be very pretty.

Ramsey Russell: It’s a blend of both, that’s a takeaway. What are some of the most common mistakes hunters make in the field? And I bet we’re going to get into some of the stuff you’ve already mentioned, Anthony. But what are some of the most common mistakes hunters make while shooting in the field? Mine personally, as a right-hand shooter, my absolute weakest spot is to my right. And I don’t dance, I don’t have any footwork and almost always I know I should have moved my foot, I should have changed the perspective by moving my feet and it changes it completely. But when I’m standing facing front and I try to shoot off my right, I might as well just take my shotgun shells out and throw it at the target to try to hit it, that’s one of my biggest mistakes. And another mistake, I find that I shoot a lot better if I see something coming in and I just give myself a one Mississippi count to watch that duck, watch that dove, watch that pigeon, just one Mississippi. And my brain will do the rest a lot of times, it’ll tell me what his flight is and I can do the trigonometry or whatever, instinctively. But what are some of the most common mistakes hunters make or shooters make when shotgunning?

Anthony Matarese Jr: You want to start it, Will?

Will Primos: No, sir. I’m going to let the champion start it.

Anthony Matarese Jr: So, one thing you just said there is like foot – He just said there is like foot position, right? So you have to be able to move. So obviously in the field, that’s a little bit trickier than if you’re on the clay range because you don’t know exactly, always where that foot position is. But like, I’ll give you an example in a duck blind, so I like to, hunch down, get off my seat, okay, and be kind of near my gun and kind of ready. And I’m going to feel like, if we got some birds that are like working us and they’re not really – I don’t know exactly what’s going to happen and maybe our opportunities are a little bit limited, I’m trying to figure out. I’m always orienting myself, I’m orienting my feet and turning kind of – even though I’m hunched down, to be ready that direction that I think where I’m going to get that shot. So foot position to where – if you line your back heel to your front toe, back heel to your front toe, so if you’re right handed, the heel of your right foot to the toe of your left foot towards where you’re shooting, you got a massive advantage for movement to be able to swing the gun. If you can’t move the gun, then the idea of being able to move with it and lead it doesn’t even – you can’t even get there, you can’t even get to where you want to go, so foot position is huge. And it’s kind of a – it’s a challenge in the field, if you’re shooting upland birds, you always feel like when the bird flushes, I step towards it. So I stepped towards the bird, so my front foot’s pointed that direction, so I think that’s big. I think that gun mount is massive and you can do all of that at the house and you have to do that at the house before you get to the field to where you can bring that gun to your shoulder, it should hit your shoulder in your face at the same time, the hands should be moving together. Most people mount the gun in their shoulder, then they put their head on the stock, the gun should hit your shoulder and your face at the same time, and your hands are moving together, the front hand and the backhand are together with your front hand, kind of being your leader to get that gun barrel going towards the direction that that bird’s going backhand in your gun mount, the barrel goes down, shot you just brought the barrel under it, now you got to get back up onto the line of the bird. So, I mean, I think if you can get your stance in your gun mount correct at the house and understand, imagine I’m shooting there, imagine I’m shooting there and work a few of those fundamentals. I think those are the 2 things that you have direct, easy control of that are massive common mistakes. I don’t think the average hunter can mount their gun well enough, quick enough. So you have more time to mount it than you think, but it’s got to be a kind of a learned thing of practice in that mount to where then it actually feels like it’s going slow, but you feel like you don’t have enough time if your mount’s inefficient, so then it generally gets worse. So I think that if the average hunter can mount the gun much better to where I said – here you’re in a ready position, I have mount right to the corner of the picture frame there quickly and the gun be dead on that, and you could do that with your head on the stock without looking down the barrel, now you’re ready when you get out in the field. But to a point that will said earlier, if you put your gun down in the end of duck season, the end of January and you don’t pick it up till October, now you got a coat on and you get out in a duck blind, the chances that you have a really good gun mount, I don’t care if you’ve been hunting for 20 years, the chances that you have a really good efficient gun mount is unlikely, okay? It can be good enough to get your limited ducks. But that doesn’t mean that you had a really good gun mount, that can be one of the reasons why we miss a few shots that we could have hit. And then for the guy that’s really just learning and he’s going on some hunting trips for the first time, you can practice that gun mount and understand how that stance works before you ever get to the duck blind. I use my father in law as an example, he hunted when he was in high school and in his early 20s and got out of it and then, 15 or 16, 17 years ago when my wife and I met, I started taking him duck hunting. And I would take him twice a year and he’s not a bad shot, he’s average, right? But he’s average for the guy that hunted for a little bit, then goes out and goes a couple of times a year. He misses all the correct opportunities, especially if it’s the day where everything’s not going right and the wind’s just off a little bit, he’s not efficient enough to mount his gun to, I can say, all right, take them, take them and then I shoot because, they’re going to be too – I know they’re going to be too far away for me to even kill it. So, I was letting him shoot and he shot after his effective range is what happened. But he’s trying to get ready and mounted and get his eye in line with the barrel and make sure it’s in his shoulder, and the ducks ain’t waiting for that, okay.

Will Primos: Yeah. Ramsey, when I started shooting Sporting Clays, I’ve asked Anthony and others what’s the number one thing that I can do to improve my ability in the field and in the Sporting Clays and the answer straight from Anthony was practice your mount, and it has made a huge difference. I discovered that when I shot a pattern board, just make sure my gun was shooting right that I would take the time and I would make sure and I’d press my cheek so hard on that stock, I’d make sure I was lined up and then I’d do it again and I was always dead on the pattern board. And then when I started practicing my mount every day I come down, I’d mount it and mount it and mount it, then I check it by cloak by squinting my left eye to see where my alignment is, just after I would do it a few times. And I noticed that about 5 or 6 out of 10 times I was looking to the left, I was looking down the left side of the rib and I started thinking why is that and why it was? I finally figured it out that I was not taking the time to press harder into the gun. And so, I moved my comb, have an adjustable comb, so I moved it over, because when I’m shooting fit task or when I’m shooting a low gun and I’m mounting the gun, I’m not just turning my cheek white with the pressure of my stock, I’m touching my nose and my cheek and I need to do that consistently every time. But when I don’t take the time to bury my head, I wasn’t looking down the rib. So, what does that do? Well, that gives me the wrong lead, left to right and right to left. If you’re not mounting your gun correctly and naturally looking, you’re looking at the bird and so you’re not pointing at what you’re shooting at because your gun doesn’t, you’re not mounting it correctly, your consistency and your number of hits are going to be way off.

Anthony Matarese Jr: The best analogy that I give people related to gun mount that they can kind of really understand in their mind and quantify it would be like if you bought the cheapest rifle that you could possibly get, okay – And you went out and shot it on paper, 22 or whatever it is, whatever rifle doesn’t matter and you shot it on paper and you can’t get the thing no matter what bullet you put in there and you got a good scope on there, but you can’t get the thing to shoot any more than like an 8 or 10 inch group, okay, and it shoots that 8 or 10 inch group. So you can make a good shot and still be off target. So that’s what happens when your gun mount is not correct, that’s the center of the pattern is not going to the same spot every time, you get away with it because you have a pattern, you’re not shooting a bullet. But you’re not really putting the bird in the middle of the pattern as often as you should if your gun mounts not correct. That’s the best analogy that I can give you, it’s like you could actually make a good shot with the rifle and squeeze the trigger perfectly, but the paper out there says that you got a 10 inch group. Well, that 10 inch group is the barrel. In our shotgun, that 10 inch group is our gun mount, meaning that the gun – the eye didn’t get in the same spot each time.

Will Primos: Yeah. So, it’s absolutely magical. And when I was shooting with Anthony, this target was kind of buffalo and me, it was 2 of them, it was a pair. And I said, well, you shoot him. Well, he didn’t have his gun with him, so he took my gun and when you watch Anthony shoot, it’s like you’re watching somebody in slow motion, whereas I always feel hurry. But he knew where to start and he knew where he was going to break the target. He wasn’t going to break it somewhere. He knew exactly where he was going to break it. So, he takes a gun he’s never shot before, that doesn’t necessarily fit him well, but he knows how to point a shotgun and how to look at the target. So he goes, bam, bam and I mean, it’s like, holy crap, how does he do that? Because he understands how important the feet position is, how important the mount is and how important his eyes are to be looking at what he’s shooting. And when he talks about coming from behind a target or mountain on the target and moving, he gives this great analogy. I’ll let you tell it, Anthony, about merging into traffic on a highway.

“You have to move the gun as you mount the gun in a way that brings the muzzle and the bird together to where the synchronization happens”

Anthony Matarese Jr: Yeah. So if you’re mounting your gun, so in any moving target that you’re shooting, a duck, a dove, a pheasant, a clay target is – a skeet target, whatever, the gun and the bird have to come together. So when that happens correctly, the gun speed and the bird speed synchronize. So, if you’re shooting a duck that’s crossing or not quite, going to decoy and is passing by or a dove in the dove field, a lot of shots in the dove field, similar. You have to move the gun as you mount the gun in a way that brings the muzzle and the bird together to where the synchronization happens. So when you merge your car in traffic and you come down the on ramp to get into the highway, the first thing that happens when you come down is you’re evaluating where you’re going to go. But where you’re going to go requires you to be synchronized with those other cars for a moment so that then you can move ahead or slide back, because so you’re adjusting your – their speed’s not changing, so your speed’s changing. So even the gun mount as you bring the – We need to accomplish that. We need to feel like you can’t just mount the gun and get it in your shoulder, in your face and then go after the bird, you have to mount the gun with the bird. So that, I’m never mounting my gun for the purpose of mounting, I’m mounting my gun for the purpose of merging the gun and the bird together. So that’s why the gun mounts got to be automatic, because the last thing I need to be worrying about is if my eyes in line with the barrel in the middle of that shot, because I’m going to miss my opportunity to merge. I have to be able to bring the gun up with the target so that when that gun comes up into my shoulder and my face simultaneously, I’ve also positioned the muzzle at the same time. So we should never mount our gun, then go after the bird, we need to mount the gun as we’re going after the bird and that’s the definition of being connected to it, in sync with it. So it’s like merging your car on the highway –

Will Primos: Yeah. And when you’re merging that car on the highway, the cars may be coming by at 70 miles an hour and they look fast. But if you’re merging and you’re doing 68, because you’re going to pull behind one or you want to do a little faster to the pull in front one, depending on where your opportunity is, all of a sudden, you feel slow, you look over and the car’s just sitting there. And so it’s kind of the same thing, right, Anthony?

Ramsey Russell: Sure is.

Anthony Matarese Jr: Yes, absolutely.

Ramsey Russell: Boy, that’s a great great analogy. I’m asking a little bit about shotguns because you’re talking about the mount. Like for example, I’ve heard rumors about a certain gun out there shooting high and to the left and when asked about it, I don’t have that problem. And I’ve wondered to myself, is there something about the fit of that shotgun or the way they’re mounting that shotgun? Maybe it’s different. But when it comes to shotguns and I’m asking this as somebody that’s always shotguns off the rack and what advice would you all give hunters to finding the right shotgun fit? And how important is the gun? Is it more about the Indian or the era?

Anthony Matarese Jr: I’ll start off with it and Will can pick it up. I mean it’s definitely more about the Indian than the era, that’s for sure. If you understand a little bit of what you’re doing, you can even make a gun fit you. So I don’t necessarily – I shoot a custom stock for clay target shooting built, specifically for me, when I shoot with a Beretta, I hunt with a Beretta, waterfowl with a Beretta A400 or the extreme, whatever the most current model is. And it’s got the shim system so you can adjust, most semi automatics have a shim system that comes with it. These little black spacers in the box and you can adjust that height of that comb higher or lower, depending on the fit, and then it also switches the cast from left handed to right handed. A lot of people have their Benelli or their Beretta or their, whatever their waterfowl gun is, if it’s a semi auto, it has all those little spacers in there, those shims in there, they don’t even have any idea what they do or if they wanted to change the fit that they can, that changes the height of the comb so that if you get someone’s got a big old full face, you got to have the comb lower. If you got some skinny little kid, he’s got to get that comb moved up there as high as he can. Now, can you make it work without that by kind of learning what it’s like to look down the gun? You can, but generally the better the gun fits you naturally where when it hits your cheek, it seems like your eye is naturally in line with it. What that allows you to do is ignore the gun. You can now watch the bird better instead of looking down the barrel to make it fit. So, if I shoot a gun that’s really too low for me, where too low meaning when I put my face on the stock, I can’t put my face into the stock, I lose sight of the rib. Now I’ve got to be a little bit more conscious of that, so I’m watching the gun more. So the better your gun fits, the more you can watch the target and ignore the barrel. The less your gun fits, the more you try to get your eye in line with the barrel during the shot. So there’s a little bit of that that matters and the average person, depending on what they’re using, they can make the gun fit them by knowing what good gun mount is like and what it should be like. And then there are some things that you can do to make sure that you can get that thing to fit as, if it’s too long or too short. The guns are now coming with more options than ever in terms of like being able to adjust the length of pull with a different pad or system for the semi autos. If you buy it off the shelf, over and under the stock is what the stock is. You would have to have an adjustable comb or put something on it to raise the comb if it was too low. There’s very few guns that like you mentioned someone said the gun shoots high into the left. Well, there’s very few guns that actually – if it’s a decent gun that really leave the factory shooting high or left. The barrel should be designed to shoot like 50-50 point of impact, if your eyes with the gun. So, if your eye is higher on the comb, your eyes sitting up above the barrel further, the gun’s going to shoot high. If your eye starts to fall behind the receiver, you’re going to have a multitude of problems because you start losing sight of the target. –

Will Primos: That’ll make you flinch.

Anthony Matarese Jr: Yeah, your left eye will take over as well, if you’re right handed and shooting with both eyes open.

Ramsey Russell: How common is that, Anthony? you make a good point. I’ve heard about these guys and I’ve only hear about this and with guys that shoot competitively, they’re right handed but the other eyes dominant, they put a piece of tape over, I mean, how common is that among shooters? What percent of hunters would you say are that?

“If you had a guy shoot at the pattern board and they’re right handed and their left eye takes over a little bit,”

Anthony Matarese Jr: It’s a great question. There’s a lot of eye dominance going on that people don’t really have that much understanding of. So if you’re a hunter and you’ve always just – somebody’s always just shot with one eye because that’s what worked well for them, and their buddy said try 2 eyes. There’s a high probability that they might have some kind of eye dominance and that’s what caused them to be a one eye hunter, because they couldn’t figure it out with both eyes. Now that doesn’t mean that they need to be, it just depends on how that dominance is. So I would say that we have right eye dominant, left eye dominant, then there’s a degree of center dominance, meaning someone could be like 90% right eye or 50%, which means they’re like 50% left, 50% right. So, there’s probably only 30% of the population that are actually strong right eye dominant or strong left eye dominant and the rest is somewhere in the middle there with some form of your brain using both eyes. If you have a, like a, a subtle dominance issue, which is somebody could say, oh I’m partly center dominant, you can probably get away with shooting with both eyes open and that working fine. If you had a guy shoot at the pattern board and they’re right handed and their left eye takes over a little bit, they’re going to – patterns going to go to the left. If they’re right handed and they get a little bit of influence from their left eye, that doesn’t mean that the gun is wrong, it means that their dominance is causing them to be to the left. Now that person would actually have to have their eye to the right of the barrel, wouldn’t look like it’s in line to actually hit the board in the middle on a patterning board. So there’s a lot going on with eye dominance. If we kept it, simple, if someone – if you have both eyes open and you pointed at an object across the room and you’re right handed and you close your left eye and it moves at all, then you’ve got some influence from your left eye. And the opposite is true, if your left hand and you point your left finger at an object and you close your right eye and it finger moves at all, you’ve got some influence from the right eye someone who’s strong dominant, if they’re right hand and they’re strong dominant when they pointed an object across the room and they shut their left eye, assuming their right hand and they think they’re right eye dominant and it doesn’t move, then they’re strong dominant. Depending on how big that shift is of you, how far your finger moves depends on, what would need to be done for that dominance, you can get away with it a little bit, if it’s a little bit of shift, if it’s a kid and they test out to be left eye dominant, we really need to get them consider shooting left handed. The problem is if you’re, someone that’s been shooting for 20 years and you realize, oh, I figured out I’m left eye dominant. Well, if you’re not going to shoot a good amount on that side, it doesn’t make sense to switch shoulders, right? So then you just squint the off eye, so if you’re right handed and you’re left eye dominant or some kind of center dominance and you can’t figure it out, you just squint that eyelid. I run into a lot of hunters that, they’ve always just shut the eye and some of them just learn to shoot with one eye and they don’t need to learn to shoot with one eye and some of them are shooting with one eye because of dominance. So, it’s at least worse knowing what you’re dominance is with both eyes and your dominance allows that, I mean and they are mostly left eye dominant, left hand, it’s a massive advantage. If you can shoot with, it’s a massive advantage if you can shoot with both eyes open.

Will Primos: And the book does a good job of touching on that and explaining right eye and center dominance. But if you are worried, you need to get with a qualified shotgun instructor who can really help you understand eye dominance and how to address your own personal issues. But back to gun fit, I mean, there’s a lot of women that are shooting and the women are built different than men. So the way the stock is shaped, the cast, the pitch, all of that enters into it, if a gun ever hurts you, if somebody shoots it and it hurts their face, then what would you say? What’s wrong with the gun, Anthony?

Anthony Matarese Jr: Well, first you want to look at how they’re mounting it. So, if the gun hits you in the face, first look and make sure the gun is fit sitting properly in the shoulder, it’s not way too high or way too low in the pocket of the shoulder. A lot of old field guns have a lot of drop in the stock, okay. So, they’re built where the front of the comb is a lot higher than the back of the comb. The more drop you add to a gun, meaning the slope in that stock, the more likely it is to get recoil. So the gun’s hitting you in the face, it’s either the pitch of the gun in the back of the gun where its –

Will Primos: Pitch of the gun is the cut off the back of the stock.

Anthony Matarese Jr: What the angle – how that gun sits in the back of your shoulder, what the recoil pad, how it sits in your pocket or you can have a gun just depending on the person’s build, that the gun has too much drop in it, like an old school, Beretta field gun, an old school Browning field gun, they’ve got a lot of drop in there. Somebody goes and takes that thing out in the field and they’re getting whacked –

Will Primos: Drop in the comb.

Anthony Matarese Jr: Drop in the comb, meaning from the –

Will Primos: Top of the stock.

Anthony Matarese Jr: Front of the comb to the back of the comb. So they have to mount it like, perfectly, not to get that recoil, so, I mean, you shouldn’t, if the gun’s mounted correctly, there’s not too many guns that you should get recoil into the, anywhere, but it can be a combination between gun mount and what’s correct and that gun might not fit you.

Will Primos: Yeah, but all those things are so important for shotgunners and with somebody the other day and they said, golly, the gun is just, these shells are just killing me, they’re kicking me. And I looked at the shells and they were shooting a low velocity, not a 1160ft a second shotgun, not a 1300 or something. And the gun did not fit them and the way they were mounting and it was slapping their cheek and it caused them to start flinching and they weren’t enjoying the process, so gun mount and gun fit are so important. I would say gun fit is probably the end of the journey, when you shoot enough and you learn your mount, that’s when you can better know that you need to change how the gun fits you. Is that right, Anthony?

Anthony Matarese Jr: Yeah. Until you’ve worked on some idea of the mount, it’s hard to, a really good gun fitter, wouldn’t even fit you anyway. They would say, hold on, work on this, make sure you get this down, because I don’t want to fit the gun to you, I want to make sure you got the gun mount correct.

Will Primos: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: How important is choke selection and what’s the most misunderstood aspect of it?

Anthony Matarese Jr: I mean –

Ramsey Russell: I’m thinking that for you to shoot on the field all the time or shoot in the competitive arena and then move to the field, you probably go through a lot of chokes.

“You can kill birds out in the field, you can kill clays on the range, if you knew you’re going to be out in the field hunting and getting some further shots, maybe you tighten it up a little bit.”

Anthony Matarese Jr: Right. So when I shoot clays, I pretty much use the same choke 95% of the time, so I shoot a pair of modified, shooting it over and under, shoot a pair of modifieds in both barrels, you can hit with a good shell, a good quality shell you can hit anything 60 yards or in with a modified choke, I will open it up for something really close, like a rabbit that’s jumping around at 20 yards on the ground or a real tight window shot in the woods, that doesn’t give me a lot of time. The choke is affecting your pattern by a matter of inches and people are sometimes missing by a matter of feet. So, it’s not going to change and make you a much more effective shooter. Now I will say if you’re hunting, if you’ve got distant shots and you know that that’s what’s happening that day because of the conditions, there’s definitely, you want to have enough choke in there to kill what you’re shooting at and not just wound it, if you’re in the field. But you can, I would, I generally err a little bit on the tighter side and keep it simple so I don’t have to change back and forth all the time. If I did go, if I was, occasionally, so I do a good amount of waterfowl hunting and I would just leave like a modified in there most of the time, which is almost with I got steel shots almost like using a full, but if I was shooting like teal in the beginning of the season and I knew that everything was closer and buzzing through the decoys and I’d open up and shoot proof cylinder because I feel like, it’s giving me a little bit more bigger room. So the choke matters less than what people think, if you went out to the clay range, don’t shoot your full choke, you don’t need it, put an improved cylinder choke in there, that’s a good all around. I think an improved cylinder choke is probably, the best all around choke for most people, you can kill birds out in the field, you can kill clays on the range, if you knew you’re going to be out in the field hunting and getting some further shots, maybe you tighten it up a little bit.

Will Primos: Yeah. And I will say for us older hunters and shooters, the shells of today’s time are so far superior to what they were 20, 30, 40, 50 years ago. It is amazing different, so the shells are just that what’s being made today, wouldn’t you say, Anthony?

Anthony Matarese Jr: Oh yeah, for sure.

Will Primos: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: One thing I appreciated about your book, we’ve been talking a lot about hitting moving targets and ducks and things of that nature, but one thing I appreciated about the book is you all did address other game animals. How should hunters adjust their shooting approach based on different game? Ducks versus upland birds versus turkeys? Because you all do go a little bit into that the different kind of stuff.

Will Primos: Well, you have in birds and ducks and doves, those are typically flying, moving objects. You need to be paying attention to your gun mount and looking at what you’re shooting at, focusing on some, the smallest thing you can focus on the dove’s head, the color of a duck’s head, something that makes you key in, but turkeys, you’re shooting the shotgun like a rifle, typically you’re not shooting them in the air or running, you’re trying to make the turkey hunt you, you’re sitting there, you’re frozen, you’re not moving and you want to just make one slight movement, the last moment when you need, when the turkey walks by the tree or whatever, so you can put – you can close one eye if you want to, but you’re looking straight down that gun and using the shotgun like a rifle, that’s why some people put rifle sights on their shotguns for turkey hunting. Unlike a bead, some people use aim points. But turkey hunting, you are trying to shoot the turkey at the base of his neck, you want as much of that pattern covering the entire neck of the turkey, if you shoot it, if you aim at his head, half your pattern travels over the top of the turkey’s head. So, lower your point of aim and aim at the wattles of the turkey, the red wattles of that gobbler and then your pattern is going to take out his neck, you break his neck, he may flop for 5 minutes, but he ain’t going nowhere.

Ramsey Russell: Are there any drills from the book that a hunter could practice right now to start improving their shot. You all have covered a lot of important elements and I’m leading up to a very important question, I’ll just ask this one, Anthony or Will either one, on days when otherwise decent shots can’t seem to hit the broadside of a barn, I mean, an otherwise great shot steps out into the duck blind and it’s just his day, he can’t hit nothing, I’ve been there, done that too many times, what’s going on and what’s the best fit for it?

Will Primos: So –

Anthony Matarese Jr: I mean. Go ahead, Will.

Will Primos: Well, depending on the day, I mean, if this particular day, the ducks are faster and they’re not matching speeds with that duck and pulling away or how far they angle the distance and the speed or they might have on more closed than they normally do, so the gun mount is off. So, understanding if it’s below freezing or below zero and you’re duck hunting and you’ve got all those clothes on, your mount is totally different, you’ve lengthened the stock and so you’ve got to be sure you’re mounting that gun and looking at what you want to kill and mount the gun and you can check it to see how is my mount with all these clothes on? How am I doing? You might find out and because of all that, you’re shooting to the left side, you’re looking down the left side of the rib and if that’s happening, you’re not shooting where you normally would be. So the mount is critical to put that gun where you are looking, if it’s not happening, if it’s not mounted correctly and you’re not looking down that rib, down the middle of that gun, you’re not pointing where you think you are.

Anthony Matarese Jr: I think, Ramsey, I’ll give you a good – I’ll give you an answer and just – I think, so what Will’s highlighting is like, some of the fundamentals of shotgun shooting could be off and you just don’t kind of have a basis of that, you didn’t understand the birds are faster, you didn’t understand something changed with your mount, that’s all possible, definitely. And sometimes what happens is it starts with something like Will describes as, like a spark and then a spark turns into a forest fire, because what happens is you lose confidence, so when you lose your confidence and now you’re doubting yourself and the first couple ducks came by and you missed them, your buddies are looking at you and you’re like, what the hell? You start to doubt yourself. So, as you start to doubt yourself, you’re now searching for an answer, you’re more conscious of what’s going on, as you search for that answer and you’re more conscious of what’s going on, you watch the process of shooting the gun more and you watch the bird less. So when you were, on your most successful day, you’re pretty instinctive and you’re trusting yourself and you’re letting yourself shoot and you’re letting your years of experience kind of play out, so you’re essentially a little more subconscious and you’re a lot more conscious, you’re a lot more confident, so that’s why your subconscious is working a little bit better. When you lose your confidence or you have any self doubt in what you’re doing, you start to question yourself, your conscious mind engages, as your conscious mind engage you see the process more, as you now see the process more, you start to measure, lead more, you ultimately end up with a really bad day that is actually cemented by lack of focus on the target that you’re shooting at, because you’re stuck in that process, you’re stuck in that conscious mind of trying to figure it out, so it’s like, can I go duck hunting and miss a couple shots that I shouldn’t miss? Yeah, but I self correct really quick because I get back to a simple change of a fundamental and I get back to just watching the duck. I can shoot at a flock of ducks sometimes and be like, I shot too fast, I don’t even remember, I don’t even know what I shot at. I don’t even know if I shot at a drake or a hen at that matter, because I just, I rushed the shot, I didn’t look at the bird and when that happens, it all happens quickly and you’re like, what in the world – what am I doing? So you have to go back to a couple simple fundamentals, but you got to get back to watching the duck or watching the dove and keeping your eye on it, because really what happens as soon as you lose confidence and as soon as you have self doubt, you watch the barrel way too much, when you watch the barrel way too much, you lose your hand, eye coordination. And the only answer for being drastically way off, you could be off a little bit because of a fundamental, but the only answer for being drastically way off is that you’ve lost enough confidence that you’ve taken the instinctive part of looking at the target that you’re shooting at out of the equation, not intentionally, but by trying to fix what you’ve got going wrong.

Ramsey Russell: That answers everything. Because there are just some days or sometimes I wake up and it’s like my bio rhythms are off. It’s like, man, my timing is off and I was on a – one of the funnest hunts I’ve had in a long time with a white wing dove hunt recently, we went in the morning instead of the afternoon and just as the bird started flying, it wasn’t followed together, there wasn’t enough dove hitting the ground and I reached in my pocket and turned on itunes music went to some old Rolling Stones and just started, I don’t know, it picked my timing back up just hearing that music and focusing more on it instead of getting too far in my head, bam, it just improved and it was just like this internal timing, I need to reset it somehow. And I asked that question of you, Anthony, because one of the things that strikes me most about competitive shooters is, man, there’s a lot of mental pressure, even if you’re shooting kind of in a ski where you got the same target, it’s a lot of pressure and it just, it mounts and besides that high volume shooting is physical, so it’s mental too and it’s just, you would think, well, I can go out and shoot the same target over and over. But at some point in time, it is a lot of focus and a lot of mental stress going on just to repetitively shoot those targets.

“I’m stepping up to a station, I got 4 pairs and I’ll shoot the 1^st pair”

Will Primos: Ramsey, let me tell you how fine tuned that is. One time I asked Anthony, I said, Anthony, I’m stepping up to a station, I got 4 pairs and I’ll shoot the 1^st pair, break them solid, break them good, 2^nd pair, break them good and then sometime the 3^rd or 4^th, I will miss 1 or 2 and then I go to the next station and the same thing happens again. And I said, what’s going on? And he said, well, more than likely what you’re doing is, you’re doing all your fundamentals, you’re breaking those first 2 targets, you’re breaking those second 2 targets and then you say, okay, I don’t want to miss any, I don’t want to miss anything, so I’m going to make sure I see the picture perfectly before I pull the trigger and what that does, it takes your eyes and your brain off of the target and back to the gun, trying to see the relationship so you’ll get it right and when you try to get it right, you get it wrong and I went, oh – And that’s what Anthony meant to me when he says, Will doesn’t trust himself, so quit trying to see it and just trust yourself and it’s totally changed my game.

Ramsey Russell: I’ve only got a few more questions. We’re about to wrap up and I’ve learned a lot and gathered a lot so far in this conversation. As shooting skills increase, obviously mastering shotgun skills is going to contribute to more ethical kills, but as I become more experienced and become a better shotgunner, do you feel like I’m going to take longer shots or different iffy shots or is it going to be the complete opposite? Am I going to become more restrained in what I shoot and how aggressive I am at just shooting every duck that comes by?

Anthony Matarese Jr: I think that the answer to that question and its a great question, especially in, asked to a broad audience of hunters that might be listening, etcetera, I think that you’re going to be a – as you’re shooting skill increases, obviously you should kill more birds and wound less just by being a better shot. But here’s what you really gain by mastering technique and fundamentals and becoming a better shot and the pursuit of excellence with a shotgun, you know what you can do, you know what your limitations are, I can look – we could be in a duck blind, you know and I use my father in law as an example, he’ll go and say we got a black duck and it’s circled us and circled us and it hasn’t been that – we haven’t had that much action that day and I only take him out a couple times a year, he wants to pull the trigger and he wants to go home with a few ducks, so, I’ll be like, wait, Steve, wait and then there’s one time like, I could have killed it, when it came around, I know I could have killed it, but I know he can’t kill it at that range and then it comes by again, it’s a little further and then it’s gone and he goes, we should have shot it. I’m like, Steve, there was one moment when I was off my side for me and I was waiting for you and none of those times when that bird came by, was actually a good distance or angle, of what that – the angle of that bird matters drastically. If you’ve got that duck coming at you and he’s, way the hell up there, but off to the side a little bit, that’s a lot different than that duck coming at you dead over your head, where he’s square on or quartering over your shoulder, behind you, by the time you get up and take that shot. So, I think the answer to your question is you just really, as you become a better shotgun shooter, you know your limitations and that even can go for a shorter shot, so like something buzzes through the decoys and it came by at 30 yards and by the time I go and mount my gun up there, I can, I don’t pull the trigger, because I know, it’s a quartering away, I’m shooting it in the butt, teal it, it’s going to be 50, actually trigger the shot, he was only 20 when I got started. So I think you learned basically better trigger control of what you can, what you do and you can’t, what you can do and what you can’t do and the better shot you become, yeah, you put the gun in the right spot more often, so you’re more ethical hunter. But you actually know your limitations. So –

Will Primos: No doubt about it.

Anthony Matarese Jr: I see that happen all the time. It’s just like, we should have shot that, no, we could have, but we’re not out here just to shoot shells, if we want to just shoot shells –

Will Primos: You could have shot at him.

Ramsey Russell: That’s right.

Anthony Matarese Jr: I think it’s good for clay target range, if we just want to shoot shells.

Ramsey Russell: Well, on the one hand and that’s why I asked this question, on the one hand, you do not add to the strap, 100% of the birds you don’t shoot at, but really and truly, you likely cripple or educate if nothing else, every bird you should not have shot at.

Anthony Matarese Jr: Right. I want to come hunt here in this spot next week and if that duck is still in the area, he’s going to come back to this area.

Ramsey Russell: That’s right. If – 2 questions, it’s kind of a double question, if there’s one single piece of advice you could give to young or new hunters about shotgunning, what would it be and likewise, how do you hope that straight shooting for hunters influences new hunters and shotgun enthusiasts?

Anthony Matarese Jr: Go ahead, Will, go ahead first.

Will Primos: I will take the 1^st one. I think the number one thing somebody should do if they’re fixing to pick up a shotgun to start shooting, is to get with somebody who is a good shot to help them understand what the fundamentals are and how to learn them. Learning the fundamentals will start you in the right direction of being much more successful than if you don’t have those fundamentals.

Anthony Matarese Jr: What was it? What was the follow up part of that?

Ramsey Russell: I just wonder, I wonder how you hope, with this book, it’s a great book, how do you hope that it influences future generations of hunters and shotgunners?

Anthony Matarese Jr: Yeah. So, I mean, I truly believe that, I spent my whole life teaching shooting. I grew up on a clay target range in a hunting preserve, I’ve been around hunters and shooters, literally, I spent my whole life at a gun club and I truly believe that the book is written in a way that I would love for the book to be the basis of how people learn to shoot a shotgun and it’s written in a general way and it’s related to all the different species, etc that, for the last, since the turn of the century when people went out with a shotgun to shoot a moving target, whether it’s in the field or plays or whatever it might have been, they’re only being taught by, for the most part, the most knowledgeable person around them. So if the most knowledgeable person around you was your grandpa and he took you out and dropped you off and said, all right, now just put one shell at a time, keep this thing pointed in a safe direction, that bird comes by, get in front of it and shoot and that’s your guidance and that’s all you had, that’s great. But if you had a little bit more information that can get passed down to someone starting and then people that are already into it, I like the perspective of how to shoot a shotgun, the goal would be that we could get enough reach with the book that it gets out there and there’s enough people educated and the next grandfather that’s out there, teaching his grandson how to shoot, he says, look, when I started, I didn’t really have that good of a basis and I worked through it by trial and error. But I read this book and I want you to read it, but here’s the short version of this book, even if he didn’t get – Will mentions, getting qualified instruction, that would be great, but the reality is that’s probably not going to happen for the vast majority of the people that take to the field, but if we can change the perspective of what proper fundamentals are with shooting a shotgun and kind of, generations moving forward have more information than generations previously, that would be our goal.

Will Primos: Let me say this. If I’d have had this book 50 years ago, I would have had twice as much fun in the field.

Ramsey Russell: Me too. That’s a good note to end on, thank you all both for coming on and sharing you all’s insights. I greatly appreciate both of you.

Will Primos: Thank you, Ramsey. We appreciate you. Go kill a duck.

Ramsey Russell: No, don’t worry, that’s going to happen. It’s Duck Season Somewhere. Folks, thank you all for listening to this episode of MOJO’s Duck Season Somewhere podcast, with my friends Will Primos, Anthony Matarese Jr, where we’ve been talking about their book Straight Shooting for Hunter: The Champions Guide to Using Shotguns in the Field. Go get a copy, get a copy for your kids, get a copy for your friends’ kids, introduce everybody into proper wing shooting, guaranteed they’ll have a lot more fun doing it. See you next time.

Will Primos: It’s available on Amazon.

Ramsey Russell: Amazon.com the man said, you all go find your copy. See you all next time.

[End of Audio]

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