A couple of months ago, I wrote about the virtues of having a back-up gun.
If you missed that post, you can find it HERE
You may recall that in addition to having a ready back-up in case of a mechanical failure during a shoot, I discussed the recommendation from Lanny Basham that switching to a backup gun could be just the reset needed to break out of a slump. I mentioned how there was some science to support Lanny’s suggestion – and even had benefitted it myself having earned a punch in my first competitive event after making the switch to my own back-up gun!
In the previous post, I mused about whether or not I would see the same success when I made the switch back to the primary. I am sure many readers have been waiting with baited breath to hear the results of my experiment, so without further time spent setting the stage, here is the time line for what transpired with both switches:
June 3 shot my last round with the primary gun before retiring it to the safe and switching to the back-up
June 7 shot a 110 round practice session at Deep River Sporting Clays and Shooting School
June 10 shot a 52 round practice session at Deep River shooting all true pairs – excellent session!
June 11 Won my class in the all true pair event at the Deep River fun shoot with the back-up!
June 16 – July 23 Continued to shoot the back up gun over 16 days shooting 1915 rounds. Shot in 4 tournaments with a couple of 2nd place finished but no punches. Made the decision to switch back to the primary gun.
July 27 shot a 100 round practice session at Kidd’s Place with the primary gun
July 29 shot a 50 round practice at Kidd’s Place
July 30 picked up a punch on the blue course at Kidd’s Place!
So there you have it! Switching to the backup gun with a few practice sessions yielded a punch! Then, switching back to the primary with a couple of practice sessions resulted in another punch! Of course, we don’t really know what would have happened had I never made the initial switch to the back-up… The results may have been the same – but let’s assume the switch provided the reset Lanny had mentioned!
Does that mean you should “willy-nilly” switch back and forth between guns? I suspect the “Hawthorne effect” would start to wear thin and the old adage of “beware the man who has a single gun, he may know how to use it” would prevail! I plan to stick with the primary gun for the foreseeable future now – but the time will come when I will pull the back-up out again!