Musings of the Rookie – Sharing the Journey Part 7
Author: Rob Ridley, Rookie
Wowww…..!
Can’t say how many times that was said over a couple days with Gil and Vicki Ash of the OSP Shooting school. Silver Willow brought them North from Houston, right here to Canada’s premier sporting clays venue.
The OSP School is world renowned and it was a privilege to shoot with, learn from and make friends with the Ash’s – Ashes? Ashs? (Feel like I’m trying to conjugate “y’all”.) Great folks!
Now I won’t say their method is necessarily any better than the other methods I’ve been taught, but they are radically different.
After a couple days exposure with an open mind, I do believe I’m shooting more consistently, and I’ve even figured out some demon birds. Clearly, this is the point I’d like to say something about “more than one way to skin a cat” – but every time I use that expression, Marilyn smacks me up the side of the head and tells me to quit threatening her cat – so I won’t say that – even if it is appropriately descriptive.
But, I digress. The format itself is unusual with each instructor taking out a squad with similar goals, and we all learn both from shooting and from watching others figure it out.
At one point, a technique started to come together for me, and I turned to Gil and exclaimed “Geeze Gil. You were right!” He looked just as dumbstruck as I did and said, “Would you please tell that to my wife because she is not going to believe it.” Vicki and my wife, Marilyn would get along just fine if someone took the ill-advised step of introducing them.
Now I’m not sure I’ve ever paid full attention to someone continuously for two whole days (except for courting Marilyn and we’re still doing that), but after the entire weekend of instruction, I feel like I’ve been beaten with a psychological sack of hammers – and I enjoyed every minute of it.
Check out their website at www.OSPSchool.com. There are thousands of articles, images and videos available for free, and many times that if you subscribe to their knowledge vault. The great news is that they love Silver Willow and are coming back next year.
Rob Ridley
Rookie!