Rickard Gustafsson | Saturday, 16 August 2025
I saw an interview with a shooting instructor and trick shooter where he mentioned one of the biggest problems he sees with his clients. They just put the rifle away and when they come to see him it can be months since they last handled their rifles. His tip was to regularly handle your gun, get into the shooting stance and do some dry firing at home. Get familiar and don’t loose the grove. This pushed me to share this tip I’ve been thinking about sharing.
I keep a bit of tape on most of my rods and I often have a rod but laying around. This makes me pick up the rod but and swing it around a bit. I can just do some accuracy strokes. Check some part of my distance stroke. Stand in front of a mirror and check my tracking. Checking the tracking I must admit is hard. If you don’t know what good tracking looks like you’ll just stand there doing something and not knowing if it is correct. You can see some strange deviations in the rod path that just happens because of the light weight and not swinging a full rod. But after time you will learn to how to look at your stroke in the mirror.
This is a light version of Paul’s tip of always having a rod accessible. This is more accessible though and maybe a good start to build a training habit. Could be an idea for a beginner to familiarise with the rod and explore different feelings of handling the rod. And probably good for the experienced caster also.
But why tape on the rod? I have a small piece of painters tape to stop the rod from clicking and clacking when I’m going on. For the sanity of the people around me. You can also use this tape as a marker when training carry.
Cheers, Rickard