Still a Sporting Clays Newbie

    Hello again!  After shooting at the same club for several months, I had many ups and downs score-wise.  What was I doing wrong?  How could I improve my score?  By now, I had met with and shot with some very good shooters.  They made it look so easy and I didn't appreciate getting smoked each time I shot.  By now I had learned some important and not so important items about shooting sporting clays:

• Ammunition should be 7 and 1/2 to size 9 shot and target loads, not field loads.
• You were allowed to premount your gun and experiment with shooting with both eyes open.
• Some targets required a lead to actually consistently hit them.
• A pump gun was not exactly the easiest gun to use when shooting at multiple targets.
• Some shooters are obnoxious and didn't particularily like to shoot with us poor rookies.  They didn't like anyone talking or laughing anywhere on the course.  Each one of their misses was accomplished with a lengthy "post mortem" about what they had done wrong.  They were quick to give crazy advice, but didn't listen to mine.  I decided that if shooting was that serious, I'd find some other fools like me to shoot with.
• Many shooters were picking up certain spent cartridges and keeping their own.  At first, I thought they were making those Christmas decorations with light bulbs in them to put in their man cave.  Oh, you can reload?

    So, being an old science teacher, I began to experiment.  I bought an autoloading Remingtom 1187 Premier and began changing chokes like some shooters did at each station.  After all, golf players think new golf clubs would make them a better golf player.  In the end, my scores did improve somewhat, but I was still very inconsistent.  Like a football player, I thought practice, practice, practice was the answer.  I would stand in my basement and repeatedly mount my gun over and over to become more consistent.

    Next, I bought different shells: Premier Nito Sporting Clays, AA Sporting Clays, el-cheapo Federal Walmart specials, Gun Club, and even some Fiocchi shells called spreaders.  Does more power mean more hit targets?  I may have had the loudest gun out there but still didn't hit targets consistently.  Why did my gun not break targets when I made the pattern as wide as possible and switched to 8's and 9's shot to get more lead to the target.  Maybe it was the jerk on the gun and not the jerk of the gun!
    At least I looked better.  (So I think!  Ha!)  I purchased labeled shirts, a Browning shooters hat, a shooting vest, over-priced sunglasses, and learned to say things like " I flinched" or " I shot over the target" or "I couldn't catch up with the crossing target" or "who set up this course?" when I missed.  I was into the lingo, but I would rather hit more targets and say " the course was easy today, wasn't it?" 
    I tried using shoulder shock absorbers, fancy clip-on barrel sights, gun stock cheek pads, and special padded shoes.  ( I learned to kick the ground after I missed and wanted my toes protected...ha!)  I scanned the Internet for advice on shooting clays and became more and more confused.  It seemed like everyone was selling a book, a certain gun, a certain reload, a certain technique, or an attitude that they were the only good expert shooters in the good old USA.
    What's a guy to do?  In my upcoming blogs, I will attempt to discuss more of my endless experimentation and tribulations.
    On each post I would like to list a few pet peeves I've developed while shooting.  Here's the first one:  People who ask for shooting advice, then let you say 3 words and go ahead and say the same thing you've heard many times before.  They seem to look right past you and belittle your thoughts.  What are some of your shooting pet peeves?
    God bless and good shooting!