Clays=quail: when it comes to shotguns, it's never too late to get your groove back.

Just when you think life's OK, everything can go to hell. Although that definitely applies to the economy, I was really thinking about shotgunning. I don't practice as much as I used to. I shot clay targets a great deal when I was a kid, but I burned myself out on competition, so today I rely on muscle memory.

Today, as middle age encroaches, this is an increasingly bad thing. Well, I guess it doesn't matter if one doesn't care. Truth is, I do care. So I must either quit caring about missed birds or targets or do something about it--like consistent practice, which would be a good belated New Year's resolution. But the main effect, interestingly, isn't general mediocrity, as you might expect, but rather an unpredictable mix of good days and bad, where I'm either red hot or ice cold.

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Some shotgunning I did this year provided perfect examples. I went to the Grand National Quail Hunt in Enid, Oklahoma. I borrowed a new Merkel 2000CL 20 gauge for the bird shooting. Shooting an unfamiliar gun is always a mistake, but the Merkel seemed to fit perfectly, and I don't own a 20-gauge quail gun (you get extra points for 20 gauge as opposed to 12 gauge). I forgot altogether that there was a "friendly" trap shoot (is there really such a thing for an old trapshooter?), so I didn't bring a trap gun at all.

One of the common trap guns that I've shot quite a lot, and usually shoot well, is Browning's BT-99. My old friend Bob Stutler, just retired from Ruger, was there with h is BT-99, and he offered it to me. Perfect. Except I missed the first two birds clean as a whistle, no idea, no excuses. Then I bore down and broke the next 48 for 48 out of 50. How's that for a cold start and a hot finish?

Despite an unfamiliar shotgun, I was fairly consistent on the two quail hunting days, actually winning the "top gun" award. I figured that little Merkel was a magic stick, and I had it figured out. Then, over Christmas, my friend Kirk Kelso, who outfits mostly whitetail from his Rim Rock Ranch in Longton, Kansas, decided to get out of the game bird side of his operation. We had sort of a "fire sale" on chukar and pheasant and released a whole bunch. We shot a lot of birds, but there's a huge difference between pen-raised birds and wild quail, and I missed more than my fair share. I was perplexed.

A few days later my wife, Donna, and I went down to former U.S. Congressman Jack Fields' Dos Angeles Ranch, not far from Del Rio, Texas (www.dosangelesranch.com). Dos Angeles is an Orvis-approved bird shooting operation specializing in wild bobwhites--pretty hard to find in profusion these days. Thus far Donna has done a lot of rifle shooting and is quite competent, but she's very much a beginning shotgunner. And, as I hope we all know, the two skill sets are almost entirely different. I was looking forward to showing her some bobwhites over good pointing dogs.

This we got, but we also got a huge bonus. Even though Donna and I are both left-handed, it's very difficult for husbands and wives to actually instruct each other. Why this should be, I can't say; it just is. Especially with something as fundamentally instinctive (and thus potentially frustrating) as shotgunning. When you get it, you get it. Until you do, it can be pretty hit-or-miss. Shotgunning legend "Tito" Killian does a lot of the bird dog work on Dos Angeles, and we started on the five-stand sporting clays range with Tito providing excellent instruction.

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I was simply amazed. Actually, Donna and I were both amazed. In less than an hour, and with just a couple boxes of shells, Tito had her consistently breaking targets at a variety of angles--and staying smooth and picking up lost targets or pieces with the second barrel. Mind you, this wasn't her first outing with a shotgun, but she was fresh enough that she didn't have ingrained bad habits--yet. And she was shooting a little Ruger Red Label that fit well. But any way you slice it, progress made with just an hour of good instruction made a huge difference.

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Me, of course, I don't need that stuff, right? Tito offered, and somehow I choked down my machismo and stepped to the line. Well, that little Merkel fits well and shoots well, but in about five seconds Tito showed me what I should have been able to figure out for myself, but had not: Relatively straight-stocked, it was shooting a bit higher than I'd realized. On really fast wild bobwhites on a windy day there was built-in compensation. On slower birds and flatter targets, well, I was shooting right over the top. This was an odd mistake for an old trapshooter, because I prefer straighter stocks and higher-shooting guns. But there it was: I needed to see a bit of daylight between bird and bead.

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So, fresh from the range, we sallied forth and followed some really fine shorthairs, and we shot some birds. I still wasn't red hot; I missed a few and hit a few. Donna shot her first quail as well, no easy feat not only because they fly fast and unpredictably, but because with dogs and other people around there are an awful lot of things to pay attention to when birds get up.

There was an old lesson here, and a new one. Old: I recognized once again that if I care about my shotgun shooting I'd better start practicing, before it's too late. New: Even old dogs can learn new tricks. It's been 40 years since anyone showed me anything about shooting a shotgun. Tito helped me figure out a simple mistake I should have been able to figure out on my own. So what about a real beginner? If you have a spouse, child or friend you want to get started in shotgunning, think about getting them a bit of help from a competent and impartial instructor. I'm now convinced there is no better way to jump-start the learning curve.