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THOUGHTS ON EXPERTISE

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This is quite true, if only based on my personal observations. I was a guest instructor at several "lady handgunner" clinics held at a local range in Raleigh in the 1980's. IF they had a man with them, the men had to leave (we had a special event for the men on the range farthest from where the women were training). The reason was their male companions made them nervous, AND there was ALWAYS some yahoo among the men that wanted to...how should I write this?...."help out" :mad: the instructor. These guys NEVER knew what they were doing either. So with the men gone, they could relax, and ya know miracle upon miracles they all ended the day being good shots at Self-defense distances. ;)

LD

Women make great instructors too, especially when teaching children. They posses patience and a proper demeanor for teaching.
Men can make children nervous .
 
Wiksmo, Dutch's system works for pistols. The one caveat is for cap and ball revolver as there is not patch. For them, the size of the bullet or ball, how much powder, lube and/or wad, to use cylinder filler or not, all become factors in getting the best accuracy.

Given my own ability with pistols, I probably won't notice much improvement in accuracy on target unless I'm shooting from a bench regardless of how I load it.
 
Sun City & Loyalist Dave, through my many years as a firearms instructor and range commander for the state of Maryland and many ,many entrance level classes I have found out that a female student is the easiest student to learn and apply the principles of marksmanship. The reasons for this is in my observations 1-they do not feel the need to compete 2- I have never came across the (I have been doing this with my father since knee high) 3- I honestly think the ladies have a lighter touch therefore no gorilla paws. And the most important the ability to accept instruction and corrections. As to the term expert I always look at the individual with a bit of skepticism, There are very knowledgeable folks and then there are the ones that let their ego get in the mix. Personally in my thoughts there are no experts in any thing, some are more practiced and some need lots more practice if you get my drift. The other problem I have ran into as a instructor was my fellow associate instructors they after years of instructing they forget why they are there, I have always looked forward to the issue that my job was to teach officers how to survive in a intense situation, not to just qualify them. There is a responsibility that the so called experts forget, YOUR ACTIONS AND DEMONSTRATIONS WILL HAVE A EFFECT ON THE PEOPLE WHOM YOU ADRESS. So be very careful experts.
 
Appreciate your follow up, too, KS Jake. Yeah, I've read a little about cap and ball revolvers and noticed they are a different critter to load. The BP world is sure interesting!

Wiksmo, Dutch's system works for pistols. The one caveat is for cap and ball revolver as there is not patch. For them, the size of the bullet or ball, how much powder, lube and/or wad, to use cylinder filler or not, all become factors in getting the best accuracy.

Given my own ability with pistols, I probably won't notice much improvement in accuracy on target unless I'm shooting from a bench regardless of how I load it.
 
Just the fact that in the early stages of my teaching I discovered that many men think that just because they're men
that they are natural born shooters and pay little attention to training! On the other hand when teaching a woman
they listen to EACH AND EVERY WORD and apply what they have been informed about! If they don't understand
something they ask questions concerning the issue! They don't have an ego problem which makes it quite easy
for the instructor to teach!

In the small amount of instruction I have given I have found this to be right on.
 
In my experience wisdom isn't a blanket coverage and it always comes in "degrees" or "levels". A shooter/builder/historian will ultimately know a lot about a spot here, a spot there and nothing really about this area over here. It takes long (more or less) experience for someone/anyone to earn a good grasp of "what makes a good flint", the best powder for a job, where to shoot deer, not to mention ball size, patch material, lube, you name it. Most of what is offered as advice is merely "opinion" and is normally no better or worse than than advice from someone with less experience. Really, now, experts - as commonly understood - DO NOT EXIST when it comes to the ins and outs of muzzleloading. There are pretty good authorities on styles, history, etc. But they know very little more, if that, about the other aspects than the guy who's been into the sport only 5 or 10 years. Think PhD - Pile it Higher and Deeper. Or think of it as learning more and more about less and less. I have my area of expertise, but I'm no expert. Despite the degrees, academic and otherwise, it would be foolish for me to claim to be an expert on anything. There have been a few (very) "renaissance men", but none, I'm sure, writing about muzzleloaders.

Okay, so we have no experts; only certain individuals who know a lot about certain little things. What about celebrated gun builders and the art they produce? Well, they ARE incredibly knowledgeable about anything to do with gun building; but they seldom agree with one another, hhhmmm... Other than that, well, they are about like the rest of us. Certain laws of physics/chemistry are, as far as we know, immutable. These can be a basis for a "pretty sure this is right". Different strokes for different folks and if it works for you it's some degree of right, guaranteed.
 
I have also found women to be easier to instruct when showing someone new how to shoot. They listen to your instructions and more importantly, work on using them. In short order they are shooting some pretty darn good groups. Men either won't listen or have done a bit of shooting in the past, enough to have bad habits that are tough to break. Usually it is flinching the trigger when the sights wander by the bulls eye.
 
I've taught women to shoot and they certainly do make the best students. Men, OTOH, often have BIG egos and think they already "know".

After teaching martial arts for more than 45 years I have to say that I learn from the student as he/she learns from me. That's why in the MAs there are no "experts", only lifelong students.
 
I was involved in BP shoots forever. I watched guys do things wrong all the time. At many shoots there were only 2 of us to trade first and second places and the times we tied for a shoot off, I would say to give that man the win as he was a friend. As top shooters we talked to the rest to help and the big kick in the butt was they would NOT change. Ladies listened but men were hard to work with. In every shooting sport I was involved in, the top shooters would go out of their way to improve everyone else but there is a mindset you can't break because some gun writer said THIS and don't get me started about the writer SPERTS. Today some pour BP on shoestrings and light them to tie.
Even with modern stuff gun rags show $6000 to $10,000 guns and a scope is worthless unless it costs at least $4,000. Then only factory loads are tested. But understand they get the stuff free to write about. They need to return but some don't even though they can buy at cost. One BPCR writer had a shop with 1000 die sets and hundreds of guns, some originals worth $250,000. NOT on a writers pay so who would I trust?
You fellas here and Dutch that did the work.
Most shooting sites have a King of the hill writer that all lick the sand they walked on but not here.
I know I do bring in some modern guns to compare now and then but things apply at times. I never made a dime to pass on knowledge as you all are in need one time or another. I am near 82 and live on SS so I have little but I need nothing but friends. I never bought a friend. Since I retired I must have fixed several thousand guns free, just pay for parts and postage if needed, come shoot and I will spend all day to show you things.
Thank you for a nice place.
 
This child has been burning powder for a while now, and made my own share of mistakes and learned from most of those and passed on what I could to others including family, friends, and a passel of strangers. My own experience is that if the ladies want help, they listen carefully and try what you suggest --- and if they don't you're just wasting air.
Whilst I'm on the soapbox here, I'd like to speak to what Carbon 6 just posted. He's right! I used to be a serious competition shooter with suppository guns, primarily pistols. Got so deep into it that I was doing hours of dry firing, exercising with weights, and dieting to cut back on anything that might affect my shooting. Then one day my bride pointed out that I got into the sport to have fun and I didn't seem to be having much any more .... brooding if I dropped a point in a match, and so on. For a change, I listened. Finished the season with my team then resigned.
Got back into black powder shooting and started getting interested in buckskinning. Turns out, most `skinners like to shoot matches but nobody really cares who wins so long as they have fun. There's competition but it's friendly. Mostly. That's my kind of doin's. There floats my stick.
 
This is quite true, if only based on my personal observations. I was a guest instructor at several "lady handgunner" clinics held at a local range in Raleigh in the 1980's. IF they had a man with them, the men had to leave (we had a special event for the men on the range farthest from where the women were training). The reason was their male companions made them nervous, AND there was ALWAYS some yahoo among the men that wanted to...how should I write this?...."help out" :mad: the instructor. These guys NEVER knew what they were doing either. So with the men gone, they could relax, and ya know miracle upon miracles they all ended the day being good shots at Self-defense distances. ;)

LD
I’m smart enough to know that I’m the last person on earth qualified to teach my wife... anything at all really. But then again I didn’t marry her to be any kind of a teacher, I needed a partner and by God she’s been all of that!
 
You guys are great. I miss the wife shooting but she lost interest. When young she loved it. We went to the grand river in Ohio and were over 100 feet above it. Her brothers tossed bottles in up stream and tried to hit them with rifles but she hit all with a Ruger Mark I .22 pistol. Yes I know that we did wrong with glass in the water but we learned to protect the waters. I shot song birds as a kid and still regret it and now we feed thousands along with all the squirrels in the yard. We learn as we age but Carol wants a gun to shoot the tree rats, not true of course, both of us can't. I need to go into the other woods to hunt and don't like to hunt the deer that come in my yard. Experience and mistakes taught me and I did wrong also. My dad did nothing at all so I had to learn and appreciate nature. I will not kill what I don't eat. But to shoot a squirrel from a window at the bird feeder or a deer in the yard will never happen.
 
In two places where I've lived I had no choice but to shoot gray squirrels in my yard. They had gotten into the attic and had been chewing and we had to protect electrical wires that were vulnerable. And there were scores of them. But after a little bit of thinning they got wise and stayed away from the attic. We had plenty of flying squirrels in the yard and I believe they appreciated my efforts.
 
Women vs. men as shooters ?? At shoots that I attend every month, you hear all kinds of advice and most of it can just be funneled in one ear and out the other. Do what works best for you and call it good.
I was at a very large local Flea market/Trade days event for the past few days helping a friend that sets up there, and I took along a few muzzleloaders and hunting accessories to put on the tables. I had one lady that stopped to check out the rifles on the tables...there were 7 of them...and decided to educate us about them. She had a major ego problem and was actually sort of entertaining. She has decided she knows everything there is to know about muzzleloading..including facts like 4H kids don't like shooting TC Renegades ???? We never bothered to argue with her, just smiled and let her educate us.
 
As a certified muzzleloading instructor here's a couple of my observations-

Girls/women are much easier in general to work with. They listen and improve quickly. Best student I had last summer was a 12yo girl. After about 30min of instruction, she got to the point she was intentionally cutting the wires holding the targets with a Civil War musket. Not that she had any encouragement to do so:D

Guys can be problematic. I had one who insisted he was right eye dominant but was actually cross dominant and refused to admit it. They often bring seriously bad habits/form with them. I had another who talked smack from the moment we started shooting about how he was going to be the best, yadayada. Wouldn't listen, couldn't hit a cracker on the wire when we had other kids doing it. In frustration, he dared my other instructor and me to do it, wrong thing to do pal. My other instructor took out half the cracker with his shot and mine reduced the rest to tiny crumbs. At that point, he started to listen. Sometimes a cold reality bath works wonders.

At the range, you'll see lots of folks who have never had any form of instruction and they shoot horribly and think they need the next great shooting gadget cause that's what some gun rag author said. In reality, they need to get back to basics and eliminate poor habits and technique. It's very prevalent in the pew pew crowd. Some of them are so into themselves that when they see me pull my competition Enfield Musketoon out of the bag, they do a bad job of hiding the sneers. I love to con those types into an impromptu match with an 8in gong at 200, offhand only. The Schadenfreude flows strong on those days when I point out that all pew pew does for the poor shot is allow him to miss at a much faster rate.:p

Generally at our range, I don't tell anyone I'm an instructor. Only a very few know. If somebody asks for help, I'll do what I can. Most of the time, I'm just shooting my stuff and observing and enjoying the day.
 

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