The Master – Kenny Barnes

Setting Targets – Jason Menke of Briley/Mattarelli

Seeing Clearly – Allan Lehman

Country Gentleman Gun Fitters – Todd Nelson

Chokes – Cliff Moller of Briley

Going Mental – Lanny Bassham

Let there be Light – Dr. Rich Colo

The dealer split the deck into five equal piles of cards, face down. Each man at the table physically shuffled and reshuffled each stack. And then did it again, the dealer never once touching the cards. Then, the dealer asked, “What are the odds that when I turn over the top card on each stack, we will have a royal flush in Spades, the Ace, King, Queen, Jack, and the Ten?”

My friend Adam Stull replied, “probably the same odds as breaking a 400×400 with a set of pump shotguns”. Then, the dealer exposed the top card on each stack, revealing the royal flush to the astonishment of those seated around the table. Ironically, we were at the same gun club where thirty-eight years ago, the first 400×400 was broken. And the man who achieved that feat, and did it with a set of Model 12 pump shotguns, was the dealer.

It was December in 2005, and I had been looking forward to this day for some time. I had started shooting skeet at this club in Los Angeles, back in the early 1970’s. And back then there was one man on top of the skeet game, and it was Kenny Barnes. Now over thirty years later, Kenny Barnes was attending one of my clinics.

As we worked our way around the field during that initial round, I shouldn’t have been surprised, but I was. Standing behind Barnes and watching as he shot, I felt that I had been transported back into the 1970’s. The same aggressive stance, the same setup, it was all there. The same flawless move to the target, with no wasted motion, was there, on every shot. I was in awe.

We had a great day shooting and sharing stories and memories of the old days. At the end of the day, I sat down with Kenny and had the following conversation with one of the sport’s greats about his decades of skeet shooting.

TB: Kenny, you are one of the greatest shooters to ever shoot the sport, but you are most famous for breaking the first ever 400×400 back in 1967. We talked a lot about that event at the club today, but can you tell us a little bit about that weekend and how everything came together for you.

KB: Obviously, I went to the shoot with no intentions of breaking a 400×400, it had never been done, and it was above anyone’s imagination that it could be done. Not that it couldn’t be done, but the expectations were not there.

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Last summer Cliff Moller of Briley and I sat down and discussed what was happening within the shooting world, what is happening to shoots in general, and how gun clubs, i.e. management, and shooters could interact together better, to increase our enjoyment of the game and it’s longevity. Our debate found it’s way to targets and what people expect. The following are a few of Cliff’s thoughts.

C: An awful lot of new shooters just step up and shoot the targets where they are, you frequently see that. But there is a group of more demanding shooters, that go beyond what they have a right to expect. The problem I have seen is that people walk out and say ‘I want to beat Wayne Mayes and I want perfect targets.’ If the targets are not perfect they feel cheated. In reality the targets move around for Wayne Mayes as much as the next guy. It is not the gun club’s fault. In most cases they are going to give you the best targets that they can afford. People volunteer and promote shoots not because they are making money but because they love the game.

T: And they are not out to specifically screw you.

C: They are not out to screw anybody, they are just trying to do the best they can do with whatever funds they have available. However, competitive shooters look for every edge that they can get. The top shooters realize that it is up to them to perform, they choose the places they compete. If it’s windy it’s a risk that they take. They are not going to get perfect targets every time. Then there are people who have unrealistic expectations; they expect perfect targets off of old machines and or windy conditions.

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Clay target shooters have a multitude of products to choose from, some necessary and others not so necessary. Although, always a good idea, it has only been recently, in the last few years the eye and ear protection have been required, not only for the benefit of the shooters, but also for a liability standpoint for the facilities and governing organizations.

Even though eye protection is first and foremost, a means to protect our precious vision, it has especially in the last decade also been an avenue for vision enhancement. There are a lot of eye protection products available to shooters these days, and a variety colored lens that cover the entire visible spectrum. So to wade through assortments that are available to the shooter, I decided to track down an expert in the field, Allan Lehman.

I have worked with Allan concerning my eye protection for over fifteen years. He is a visible fixture at most skeet and trap shoots around the nation during the spring and summer. I had the opportunity to sit down with him for a few hours at the 1996 Great Eastern, and the following interview is what came out of our discussions.

T- Allan, tell us about your background and experience.

A- I am an optician. An optician in my state is someone who is licenced, and I am licensed in Ohio, and Arizona, to be a dispensing optician and we are allowed to make and dispense glasses. You need about 2000 hours of experience, and then you need to take a test, proving that you have the skills and the knowledge to be an optician.

T- When did you start?

A- I started with the shooting glasses in about 1976. Other people made my glasses for about 10 years, and then in 1985, we put in our own laboratory, and we make our own lenses. We buy frames from all the good shooting glasses manufacturers, and put our own lenses in those frames, both prescription and plano.

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Having good equipment, and equipment that is tailored to you personally can go a long way in helping you satisfy your goals. But you probably wouldn’t hear Todd Nelson finish that phrase in that manner. After spending only a few moments with Todd, you will realize why his business is called, and his nickname might as well be, the “Country Gentleman.” His relaxed, respectful, and God-fearing manner is only superceded by his knowledge of gun fit, and how a shooter and their gun should interface.

Before this trip, my only knowledge of Muscle Shoals, Alabama came from late nights with Lynrd Skynrd. But situated just a few miles outside this northern Alabama city lies the home and workplace of Todd Nelson. The purpose of my visit was to get my new Beretta 391 12 gauge automatic to fit and feel the same as my Krieghoff K-80. After a few hours in his shop, we sat down and discussed gun fit, gun mount and how those things fit in with what he does.

TB: Todd tells us a little about your experience and background in shooting and stock fitting.

TN: I got started quite by accident. My career started in trapshooting, I won the sub-junior title here in Alabama, and that qualified me for the Champion of Champion event at the Grand American in Vandalia, Ohio. So each year I went to the Grand to compete. We met a man at the Grand named J. C. Griggs. HE was in the gunstock business, and hired Dad to help him. That association opened the door for tons of hands-on experience. Then over time and observation Dad noticed that people weren’t standing right, or they were mounting their gun in different ways. He noticed that this guy’s head was straight on the stock, but this other guy’s head was crooked on the stock, and nobody was really addressing gun mount along with stock work.

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“What chokes are you using?”, maybe the most asked question since the birth of the shotgun. There is a variety theories that are only superceded by the variety of chokes available to the shooter. So to answer this question of question I decided to go to the mountain so to speak. I caught up with Cliff Moller of Briley Manufacturing this summer, and sat down and spoke with the man whose is recognized by the industry as the industry leader in this area. Briley makes more chokes for more guns than everybody else put together. The following is the interesting and educational conversation that I had with Cliff.

T: I have always thought that choke work in a shotgun barrel was an unscientific science.

C: It is an unscientific science and I really do not have the slightest idea how it works, and I don’t think that any of us knows exactly how it works. There are propositions that it works like fluid dynamics, but that isn’t correct. All that I know is that theinformation that we have is based empirically. We go and do this, we have this kind of constriction or this kind of geometry within the choke, and we shoot them and see the effect. Every time we go to work on specialized chokes whether they are duck chokes or heavy shot chokes, we start at zero and we go in two-thousandths (.002) increments, and we start shooting them until we find something that we like. The problem with this is the multiples of patterns that you have to shoot to come up with something that is statistically reliable. You can shoot ten patterns and in most cases they will follow suit, but there are going to be weird things that happen.

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In 1972, at the Munich Olympic Games, Lanny Bassham failed in his attempt to win the Gold Medal in International Rifle Shooting. He had a mental failure. He took the Silver Medal instead. Frustrated, Lanny wanted to take a course in controlling the mind under pressure. After looking for a program and not finding satisfaction, Bassham began to interview Olympic Gold Medalists to discover what they were doing differently to win.

What he discovered was truly remarkable. Bassham created a system of mental control he called Mental Management. Within the next six years Lanny Bassham dominated his sport, winning 22 world individual and team titles, setting 4 world records and winning the coveted Olympic gold Medal in Montreal in1976. He ranks third among all shooting athletes in total medal count with 33 and is a member of the Olympic Hall of Fame.

I was fortunate enough to be able to spend a few days with Lanny this fall, and the following is just the beginning of what I plan to learn from this fascinating gentleman.

TB: Mental Management Systems, the company and program that you have developed, isn’t just about your experiences or just about your career is it.

LB: Frankly, when I first started to study the mental game, I didn’t think I needed a mental game. I was number two in the world in rifle shooting. I thought I had it down. I could tell you everything I need to know about the mental game in 15 seconds.

TB: Because those fifteen seconds were all you knew?

LB: That’s right. You needed to be confident, you needed to be relaxed and visualize what you wanted. That’s all I needed to know. And I got away with it because that’s all my competitors knew too. I got in the Olympics in 1972 and I choked. It was then that I realized I didn’t know anything about the mental game. And I was afraid that if I didn’t learn about the mental game, that I would come back four years later and choke again.

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I’ve learned a lot of things during my career. One of them is that a group of people who sit around and speculate about something that they have very little knowledge of, generally do not come up with very much. Which is why when I want to learn about something, I would prefer to go to someone who knows what in the hell is going on. That’s why when I want to know something about vision and how vision relates to the shooting sports, I go to Dr. Rich Colo of Connecticut in the United States. Dr. Colo is fast becoming a respected source of information for vision and the shooting sports, not only within the shooting world, but also in the world of eye care. Recently our paths have crossed with more frequency, which is no accident by the way. Dr. Colo and I have begun to combine his decades of theoretical and clinical experience with my parallel experiences in the field. As we have related our experiences to each other, we have found much common ground, so in the future you will see some further collaborations between Dr. Colo and myself. Initially, I have asked Dr. Colo to give some advice that will help shooters understand more about eyes, and how they can increase their scores. The following is our first offering.

TB: So Dr. Colo, tell us a little bit about how the eye works, and how this affects our vision.

Dr.C: In our discussion of vision, we will be relying on well-established information about the eye. This information is not new. Our focus, however, will be to relate this information to clay target sports.

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