HEAD CONTROL
This very basic tenet of shotgunning is one that regularly is overlooked or plain forgotten when the shooting heats up. If your head is not down on the stock in its proper position, you will consistently shoot high. If your cheek is not snugly tucked against the comb of the stock, side-to-side swings will be erratic, plus when taking an extreme angle shot you can wind up with a lump on your jaw that looks as if you recently had a molar extracted by a drunk orangutan.

THE NUMBERS GAME
"The secret to being a good doubles shot is making sure that you hit the first bird before you shoot the second," my grandfather told me roughly half a century ago, and it holds just as true today. No matter how many doves come boiling across a field toward you, select one, and shut the rest out of your mind. When you see the selected dove wilt under the shot charge, you have plenty of time to pick a second choice. If before you kill the first dove, you're looking at the next one you want to shoot at, or even thinking about looking at it, you'll miss the first dove and get neither bird.

POSITION
If possible, have your shooting location selected before time to put the guns to use. Even if you don't have a chance to actually see the flight paths used by doves coming to feed, you can take notice of hills, power lines, trees (especially those around the field with bare branches) and other places that naturally have the majority of winged traffic. If you really want to show off in terms of your shooting average, pick a place where most of the shots taken will be incoming and outgoing.

You can hedge your bet even more by putting a few dove decoys on fence wires, bare limbs or anywhere else they can be seen by flights of birds coming into the feeding area. Camouflage color and pattern? You can wear a bright pink tutu and a diamond tiara and won't flare most birds outside shotgun range if you break your outline and do not fidget around.

REALISTIC PRACTICE
With the aid of a friend or two, set up so that you can safely throw and shoot birds that come in, go away, and cross your front from both sides. Make safety your first priority, of course. Alter distances as you shoot, and by all means, use the chokes and shot sizes mentioned earlier. This is a good time to try different guns, too. A light, gas-operated 20 gauge, properly handled, will take birds mighty handily and is a delight to use because it won't knock you around. Of course, if you insist on using Grandpa's fixed-breech 12 gauge and the ammo he had left from the 1965 waterfowl season, it's your shoulder.