CAUSES to Miss — CAUSES to Learn 
What do you do when you miss?
I
keep track of my kills at least. And that gives me the opportunity to
keep track of my misses.
➔ A while ago I began noting down
the CAUSES of my misses. Here's my list.
Please comment, I'd welcome your suggestions! 
The hardest cause to fix of course is
BBC = bad body control — how I control my body when executing the shot (poor trigger finger control, breathing, canting the rifle, messed-up follow-through, etc.).
Right along, but a total different class, are
the WEE = wind estimation errors. Very difficult to learn. Never perfect.
Some causes of misses are simply
user errors of the equipment — they should be much easier to learn to avoid.
• cocked the gun but forgot to load a projectile first
• did not laze the shot with a range finder (many of my shots allow for the 3 seconds it takes to range)
• estimated the range wrong (for those lightening fast shots)
• dialed wrong (forgot to turn the elevation back the two revolutions, or just didn't read the numbers carefully)
• held-off wrong with the reticle (got mixed up with the hashlines, the Christmastree ornaments, the works)
• remembered a dope number wrong
• got low on air
without realizing it (my fault)
• double-loaded projectile
Then we still get to battle with
LUCK — the bad kind:
• The quarry moved at the last moment, or stopped moving if I was leading the shot.
• I hit an obstruction like a leave, twig, or a cable or the wire of a chain link fence.
Sometimes(!) we have
faulty equipment: • gun had lost zero without me noticing (bump, or whatever)
• projectiles were out of spec, or damaged
• range finder malfunctioned
• Now, after all those causes of missed shots, do we really still need the
FLYER?
Maybe we do.*
Ergo: Without succumbing to an unhealty self-centeredness or falling into unduly attention-grabbing:
In the end, most of my missed shots are caused by...
ME, I, and MYSELF! 
Matthias
*Yes, we do need the category "flyer". Because, leaving out voodoo for now, some pellets still just do weird stuff.
