In the last seasons here in Argentina and inmany parts of Africa -as my african colleagues told me-we are seeing a degrading of shooting techniques ,shooters cannot shoot fast and accurate,cannot repit the shots ,and the need ALWAYS suported shooting ,never offhand ,kneeling,rone or shooting ,i believe we must train AT HOME in all positions posibly.
If we will have the rigth to take a life WE MUST DO THIS with responsibilty ,and this responsibilty is TRAINING.
How we can train ,we can train indoors with airsoft -many 3 gun shooters and rreal world operators do this-air rifles ,22s and of course our hunting equipment.
Double rifles can be trained with a shotgun of the same characteristics,safe,triggers ,weigth etcand then with the rifle.
Competiton is very good because it aids pressure to the training.
In USA there are excellent instructors and courses like SAAM where ex seals traing you in an African enviroment,MONTY KALOGERAS great for doubles,Gunsite ,where my friend IL LING NEW gives excellent safari preps courses ,she born hunting and shooting as her father was a PH,and of course our mebers IVAN CARTER OR GANYANA can give you excellent advice regarding rfiles and techniques for safari.
On the other way and this was noticed by the late JEFF COOPER its a great improvement in naturalists among hunter ,and this is good ,they know all the species of the world even the scientific names ,and costumes .
But we need to improve in both things .
Some hunters i guided mostly AR members are fanatics and shoots shotguns and rifles like the best experts in the world ,on the other hand i guided people with hugh trophy rooms that they dont know anything about guns or shooting ,and sometimes that causes a bit of pain in some parts of the bodies of the PHs .
What you think my friends are you observing this trend too.

quote:

Originally posted by juanpozzi:

shooters or naturalists...
...we need to improve in both things.

+1

I am guilty as charged for not taking the time to practice more kneeling and off hand shots with a rifle because, most of my shots at whitetail's at home are from a box stand or ladder stand with a rest. Occasionaly when I am on the ground I am presented with an offhand shot at a deer and will take it because my heart rate and breathing are normal. Most of those shots are well within 100 yards.

I had to pass on a great blue bull eland in Namibia because my heart rate and breathing were high, we were tracking at a very fast pace that I was/am not used to, which caused my cross hairs to go all over the place even thou he was only about 75 yards away.

Put a shotgun in my hand and there is no problem. I can't count the numbers of ducks, doves, squirrels and rabbits that I have taken over the last 30 years with one. I will admit that I do my fair share of missing but, who doesn't.

This tendence was well studied by the lat Col.Jeff Cooper that said in the SCI conventions he saw a lot of naturalists with great knowledge about game and its species but very few shooters .
We guides too have the moral obligation to train .
I do my homework with my airsoft and air rifles ,and sometimes 22s but i have few money to shoot with my open sigthed cz375hyh the only center fire rifle i could afford.

I will freely admit to not being a naturalist, just don't feel the need to know about all the flora & fauna. If you enjoy that, then I certainly respect you for your knowledge.
As for shooting, a friend of mine & I have our own rifle range & when getting ready for a hunt I shoot a LOT! I enjoy shooting, especially off sticks. Getting my short fat butt down on the ground for sitting-shooting practice is quite uncomfortable, I do it, but not a lot. Kneeling-shooting practice is definitely something I do not practice enough & will probably practice less of in the future because of bad knees.
I stink at free hand shooting, I practice at it, but never seem to improve much, was decent at it earlier in life but just not that steady anymore. Still I think I am proficient enough for close range free handed.
Even with all the practice off sticks, I still seem to make a bad shot or 2 on every safari. Sometimes it's adrenaline related, others are just unexplainable by me, like the 75yd shot on a bushbuck with what looked like a clear line of sight, missed him clean, no idea what happened.
I somewhat understand the concern that ph's have as with the hunting club I'm in, very few shoot even a box of ammo all year, then blame the gun or scope when they gut shoot or miss a deer.
1 new guy missed 5 deer early in the season, when ask how his scope was sighted in, he had no idea, the gunshop where he bought it had bore-sighted it for him & he thought that was good enough, he did not have a clue.
Starting to ramble, so I'll close out.

I had this same discussion with Nixon while on safari last year. He had a Danish client that simply could not handle the .375 H&H nixon had him shooting. He said he is having more people show up that cannot shoot especialy Europeans.

I had some European clients who had to borrow a 308 to shoot their Buffalo because the 416 they brought scared them too bad. Aim, close eyes, yank on trigger, wake up next day, repeat.

Of all the AR members I have guided or hunted with, I have found that the hunters from AR are usually much better shots and more competent with their guns than the average hunter.

I agree totally with Wendell Reich ,almost every AR member i guided is an expert on guns shooting and some of them even in Nature ,i supouse because here ,the regualars members are most of their lives among guns.
But i have almost blow out my head with an injured puma ,many accidetal discharges and horrible shooting ,i have to say that most of the people were Europeans ,i didnt want to say this but its true.
This is specially with rifle ,but one time Julio Fabry one of my PHs gave his pistol to SPANISH GUY TO FINISH A BOAR and he nearly took off my legs and Julios legs ,thanks to the stupid gun laws so common in Europe he never fired a pistol in his life ,after that im very carefull about pistols.
Shotguns are another matter most of Europeans are brilliant shotgun shooters .
But everybody will improve at a good school like ,Dave Fulsons SAAM ,or Rifles Only or any good schools .BUT FOR AFRICA CONSIDER SAAM .