starting animal

[rr1220]

given the choice when signing up for a match, which animal do you prefer to start on and why?

[trkykllr]

Turkeys..they are my hardest target so fresh start and best concentration and also because you finish on pigs the easiest of animals and if your arms are tired or concentration is down they have a larger margin of error

My .02 ...

[speedy]

turkeys, because at our range the wind seems to increase as the day goes on, that way you get the far stuff out of the way before the conditions get too bad

[Innocent]

Anyone of them, because at big matches you end up rotating and starting on each of them anyway. Learning to adjust to whatever the environment/match hands you is good.

Innocent M

[Jim Beckley]

Yeah at a big match you don't have a say, so take what is given and give it a shot!

[Bigfoot]

For practice if I have my druthers chickens. I used to start on turkeys but I now like the challenge of progressing from near to far.

Yeah. Big matches your at the whim of the match director but you can develop good habits or crutches by how you practice.

Now where is my stoopid chikuns t shirt. I know I made those for a reason.

[Innocent]

Well I guess some turkeys don't like getting their pick of of starting animals so they take their ball and go home....oh well big matches things happen and you get stuck with the luck of the draw, learn to shoot them all and accept what you get.

Mary

[cedestech]

The animal that has the fewest shooters on it....

[malinois]

What mary said.....learn to adapt, if you get used to a cirtain start animal your panties will be in a twist when you go to the big matches where sometimes you have no choice.

[OldRanger]

I like to start on turkeys at the big matches (not that I have a say in it). The reason is I'm sometimes a bit nervous to start, and I'm not gonna hit many turkeys anyways, so get that all out of the way at once! By the time I get to piggies I'm all relaxed and settled in. Thats the theory anyways

[teetertotter]

I like to start off at the T's because I like to get the hardest out of the way. It does not always happen at our weekly and Saturday matches.

Our season started 2 weeks ago and had our Saturday Tournament this past Saturday. If we keep up with only 4 shooters showing up instead of normal 7 - 8, T's are my choice, but I always ask them where they want to start. Usually they will have put their ammo and score card on a particular stand before it is time for me to ask where they want to start. It works out very nicely. No one has gotten into a fist fight. Everyone is easy going and b/c I am left handed, I will try and pic an animal where we are not back to back, if possible. When it comes to the State Championship, we are more professional and shooters are assigned a station.

[Another Dang 9]

I pick the one with the least dirt behind it so no one sees all the dirt kick up when I miss!

[eric614]

I like to start with Rams. Buy the time I get to Turkeys I am settled in.

[GTKF]

I'd agree with Eric

[Jason]

I used to like starting at chickens so that I'm settled in by the time I get to turkeys and rams. After that, I noticed that as the sun got higher the wind usually picked up, so I wanted to start on turkeys. Now I am usually either running the match or it's a big match where everything is assigned. If I'm running the match, I usually end up starting on whatever everyone else didn't want to, and I commonly start the newer, lower-class shooters on the easier targets. At the big matches, they're in tournament format where it's all assigned and we rotate through starting animals for each successive match. To answer the original question, I guess it has been so long since I got to choose my starting animals that I don't even think about it anymore and don't care where I start.

I would rather start surrounded by the best shooters at the match, as I think shooting on the line with the best helps keep me focused and I can pick up better shot sequence habits from them. The one exception to that would be the time that I was shooting at the same time as Cathy when she shot a perfect 40/40 at the Conard Cup. On that last relay, I was paying more attention to her targets than I was to mine, and my score showed it.