On the 10th of September 2013 I had my BASC pre-assessment day.
I found out about the day that was going on in Derby on the 9th of September 2013!
There has been some staff absences and reorganization within the shooting standards team at BASC during the writing of this. This lead to some short notice to the candidates and some shortage of volunteers to use as clients. All that aside the day still went ahead and five coaches in training turned up to be assessed.
The assessors there were the aptly named Rob Pheasant and the resident coach to our hosts, Garlands shooting ground Graham Barrett, joining them was Peter Marshall the head of shooting standards at BASC.
We were welcomed with a coffee and had a briefing on how the day would proceed.
Throughout the day we will have to give 2 full lessons, show our own shooting skills, do some fault finding and then answer some questions on shooting law, gun safety and trap safety.
As it happened the volunteers took a while to rally up so Peter Marshall decided to take two of us for the shooting skills and fault finding.
I had to show I could hit a target, always good if you are going to teach something then you may aswell be able to do it :)
The target was a left to right crosser and I hit a pair much to my relief. Then I had to explain the 3 BASC methods of shooting, Smoke Trail, The Method and Maintained lead. Then I had to shoot the target using the three different methods.
Peter then shot at the same target and I had to pick up on why he was missing them. most common faults were stance, thumb on the barrells, face lifted off the gun or using the wrong eye. The sort of things you would expected to pick up if you were coaching.
All this seemed very straight forward yet some were not taking to it as well.
My first lesson was a male around 25 years of age and had never shot before.
By this time my patter has been shortened and rehearsed to the point of being pretty professional without too many ums and errs and I had faith that my coaching skills were as good as needed to be. All I needed to do was tell my nerves that it was just like any normal lesson.
Going through all the steps that I posted in the last post I managed to get in the zone and it all flowed very well. Intro, safety and gun fit were faultless and at the cage I talked him through how to approach the target. After a couple of snap cap shots were were ready to live fire. As the target came out he seemed to track it for a long time and then the gun went off miles away from the target.
I asked for some feedback as to why and he said there was a problem with the trigger. So I did a couple of test with the snap cap again and they were fine. Back on the live firing I said "target coming now' and bang the guy shot at the trap before the target had come out. Again I asked why he did it so fast and he said the trigger is sticking. I loaded up another and this time as I released the target I kept an eye on his trigger finger and noticed he was squeezing it before I sent the target.
With Browning shotguns if you pull the trigger to the 'click' point without it going off then try to squeeze it locks up, until you release and pull again. This I found out right there.
This set a few extra checks in my preshoot list.
1. Make sure the client has their finger on the wood next to the trigger as you push the safety off.
2. Make sure the client is not pulling back on the trigger before taking the shot.
3. Always ask if the person is from the military and has been shooting rifles for the last 3 months in Afghanistan!
Second lesson was a young lad about 16 that had shot before but not much and was keen to learn.
Again the Safety talk and gun fit was good and the lesson went well.
After smashing the first few he started to miss and I tried changing his pick up point and was making sure his mount was right and that he had his face on the gun. After I paused for a moment and thought about it and he said "if I moved over the the right a little I would be able to see them better"
a side step to the right and we were back on them.
Added to the checklist.
4. always ask for feedback and what the client sees before clutching at straws.
Its all too easy to over complicate your thoughts and trap yourself in getting the technical answers right to the problems to make sure you are assessed correctly.
Just remember to engage common sense and stay relaxed.
After everyone had finished their 2 lessons and shooting skills we did our individual pop quiz on gun law and safety and then we each had a debriefing.
At this point I was confident that my lessons went well and that the shooting skills were fine. But after hearing a few horror stories about little things you missed or the way you explained thing wasn't quite right. I had a few niggling doubts as to if I had met the grade.
As I sat down they referred to their notes and passed judgement. I passed and was told that I was very professional and had great rapport with the clients and was very good at fault finding, and keeping to the time limit necessary to give a lesson. One poor chap took one and a half hours to give a lesson. :(
I walked away feeling very happy and ready for some real live assessments.
Lucky really as they were that weekend at the midland game fair!
But that is another story.
