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I tried a slight modification to the approach I recently wrote about. Specifically, although I still try to release all thoughts and self-talk during a shot, after I’ve released the shot and lowered the gun, that’s when I do something different.

In the movie, Bull Durham, Tim Robbin’s character discovers that when he doesn’t think, he pitches better – a lot better. But knowing and doing are two different things. Indeed, after a couple of good pitches, Tim Robbin’s character gets cocky, starts thinking about what he’s throwing, and blows it.

Last Sunday night, after shooting the 50 foot targets for the NRA Postal where my unofficial score was 534-6 out of 600-40 (there is no X ring in the two 50 foot Slow Fire targets) with a 96-3 on one of the Rapid Fire targets – not too shabby for this Marksman – a couple of the shooters stuck around for an hour of air pistol.

“Yeah, maybe he can talk the talk, but can he walk the walk?”

Bullseye, or NRA Conventional Pistol, is a shooting at paper targets competition. Competitors stand side-by-side and fire at their respective targets from a variety of distances and with one or more different guns. Competitions can be brief and finished in a couple of hours, or span several days and include hundreds of shooters assigned to different squads (for scheduling purposes).

Here are some less-than-obvious values to good equipment.

• The bullet goes where the gun was aimed when the hammer was released.

That should be obvious but, as a beginner I knew my wobble was much worse than the inaccuracy of the gun. My “off the shelf” Springfield Armory “Mil-Spec” 1911 (the Parkerized version) would shoot a 6-8" group at 50 yards. That was good enough for scores of 8, 9, 10 and X. Pretty good.

“Coach Pat,” Patrick Dolan, passed away last Friday, October 22, 2005.

When I arrived home after work Friday, there was a FedEx note hanging on the front door.