New Year Resolutions

Meet our new technique guru, Simon O’Leary of Hownhall shooting school, as he offers a few general tips to help make the most of those last few weeks of the season

- Simon O’Leary

The long, mellow, somewhat miserable month of January is often received with an air of blandness. The festive party atmosphere and flashing lights of Christmas have now passed, and the anticlimax, at the advent of a new year, is here… again!

As goes the old adage of ‘every cloud…’, though, you still have the opportunities of one more month in the field, a saving grace to sweeten the deepest post-Christmas melancholy.

Should you have been fortunate enough to shoot throughout the season, you will have noticed the pattern of physical change within the birds: strength of wing, speed of flight, general condition akin to that of a well-trained athlete. Your approach to shooting must now be of equal prowess – a miss-mount or stuck feet will most definitely ensure you lose the game. Now is the time to rebuff your mistakes from earlier in the season and ensure you entertain only fluid, clean shooting.

Footwork