EP 460. Going for the Gold

 

Quick Draw McGraw

Ramsey Russell: Welcome back to Mojo’s Duck Season Somewhere podcast, and today we’re going to talk about shot gunning. Man, I mean, I feel like everybody listening probably grew up a lot like myself shooting with their parents. And I had a shooting instructor one time that he was with the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center down somewhere down in Florida. And he told me that he would rather have young women that had never held a gun a day in their life than an old guy like me that learned to shoot when he was eight years old from his papaw. Because he said, Ramsey, you got so many bad habits, you’ll never be a great shot, you’ll never, ever be a top student in training. Joining us today is Mrs. Amber English from Dallas, Texas, who is a gold medalist in the world of shooting, but a heck of a nice person and a hunter herself. Amber, how the heck are you?

Amber English: Hey, thanks for having me. It was super nice to meet you, not that long ago.

Ramsey Russell: No, it was great. We saw each other in Dallas Safari Club and got to know each other a little bit, and I was impressed. And because I do shotgun a lot, shooting at just ducks. But now, Amber, my saying is I can mess with the absolute best of them. I mean, I would say there may be, I’m world champion in the fact that nobody can go from hot to cold and missing and hitting like me. I can be on fire one day, and the next day, I can’t hit a bull and ass with a bass fiddle.

Amber English: I feel that we all miss, too, that’s for sure.

Ramsey Russell: Do you really miss, though? I mean, seriously, because I watch some of your stuff in social media, and you are an Olympic gold medalist. Do you really miss, though?

Amber English: We do.

Ramsey Russell: What would you say your running average on shooting targets is? I mean, or do you keep up with that kind of stuff? Is that put you on the spot too much to ask you?

Amber English: I couldn’t even answer that question, even if I tried. Every match is so different. And honestly, the way we look at it is it’s just do whatever it takes to win at the time. So just based on conditions outside and a whole bunch of different variables, I actually just got back from Morocco early, early yesterday morning, and I’m still missing a gun and my bag and everything.

Ramsey Russell: Are you kidding?

Amber English: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: What were you doing in Morocco?

Amber English: We were shooting. Team USA went over there for a World Cup, and we got back yesterday.

Ramsey Russell: See, that’s one of the countries I’ve always wanted to go to. And I know that there is some very expensive turtle dove hunting over there, and I don’t think there’s any duck hunting in Morocco. But one of the reasons somebody asked me one time, well, why do you want to go to Morocco? And every time I think of that part of northern Africa, I think of the old, oh, gosh, Raiders of the Lost Ark guy over in Morocco, walking through those markets and seeing the cobras come out with the oboes blowing. And did you all get to see any of that stuff, or were you strictly confined to the shooting range?

Amber English: Yeah. So back then, I didn’t get any time to really visit things, but this time, usually we’ll get a day off. As soon as we fly in the next day, we’ll get a day off just to kind of get used to the times change and what’s what with food and everything get settled in. We went to one of the markets down there, it was interesting. There’s a woman named Kim Rohde, she’s a 6 time medalist and one of my good friends. So her and I went off to the market down there, and it was an interesting experience. I didn’t see any snake charmers or anything like that, but they had just about everything else for sale.

Ramsey Russell: What did you see that I wouldn’t have seen anywhere else? Because that’s really and truly – whether you up in the mountains of Peru or down in Argentina or Azerbaijan, around Baku, you go into those markets, I think of Peru, and that’s an eye opener. Just the food they got laying out, some of those hot temperatures. What are some of the stuff you saw going around Morocco?

Amber English: Yeah, I think the biggest difference was the Moroccan oil. So to get to see them make that from the purest form was actually really interesting to me, I’d never seen that before.

Ramsey Russell: What kind of oil?

Amber English: Just the Moroccan, like, olive oils.

Ramsey Russell: Oh, really?

Amber English: Yeah, all the different oils. They’re really big on perfume there, too. So honestly, I didn’t even have the patience that day to sit there and do that. I was just taking it all in like a sponge. But it was cool to look at. And Arabic is the main language there, but the second language is French. So almost everybody speaks French. So you’ll see a lot of French.

Ramsey Russell: Do you speak French?

Amber English: I do not. Not even remotely close.

Ramsey Russell: I don’t speak any foreign languages, and I understand a little bit of Spanish and can speak a few words, but I’ve been told by some close friends in Latin American countries, they can’t understand me. They said, you’re saying it wrong. Something about your accent, they don’t understand you. So they’ll be sitting there smiling and nodding their heads like they understand every word I’m saying, then they go and ask an interpreter what the heck did he say?

Amber English: Yeah, it might be your southern accent, maybe. But we used a ton of Google translate into Arabic, and that seemed to work really well.

Ramsey Russell: I found in some of those countries, especially the Arabic or in that part of the world, Google translate is limited to word hungry. Yes. No, let’s go. Something just very, very simple and rudimentary.

Amber English: Yeah. We were able to type full sentences and stuff, and then the talk to text part worked well because our keyboards are in the English language, and their Arabic Keyboards are totally different. So we could write in our English and translate it to Arabic, and then we could do the talk to text from that. Shooting words, it just takes a lot longer, that’s all.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah. How did you go from a regular person growing up into shooting in the first place? Was it as simple as going out with your dad hunting?

A Life of Outdoor Adventures

So I was extremely fortunate to be able to grow up in a really cool place in Colorado and we were exposed to outdoors. My whole family is very outdoorsy and avid hunters, and we just grew up skeeting and doing anything outside, really.

Amber English: Yeah. So I was extremely fortunate to be able to grow up in a really cool place in Colorado and we were exposed to outdoors. My whole family is very outdoorsy and avid hunters, and we just grew up skeeting and doing anything outside, really. And I grew up doing gymnastics my whole life and hurt my back at the end of high school and realized I wasn’t going to pursue that in college. I had family members that shot competitively, so my dad and uncle Butch, they shot running target, and then my mom and aunt shot rifle competitively in college. So we had been exposed to guns at a very, very young age, and it was a fun thing for us. And growing up shooting, we shot a lot of pheasants and dove and stuff like that in Colorado. Not many ducks, but, yeah, we were always outside, and I was exposed to guns at a young age. And so after I realized that I wasn’t going to do gymnastics in college, I was bored. I’m like, I don’t want to just go to school, that’s boring. Who wants to do that? So, yeah, growing up in Colorado Springs, we had the Olympic Training Center close to us, and so it was cool. They call it Olympic City, USA for a reason. And there’s a lot of, kind of magical stuff in that town or back then. And I tried rifle and pistol first, and I said, that’s not really me to be inside and stare at the same thing for hours, it’s just not my personality. And so we got with the shotgun instructor, and they’re always looking for women to get involved in the sport. So once I got involved, I was hooked.

Ramsey Russell: That’s incredible. When you grow up in a place called Olympic City where a lot of your classmates were, a lot of people around town were, they were all competing in various Olympic sports?

Amber English: No, not really. In my high school, there wasn’t many people that did it.

Ramsey Russell: So coming in from elsewhere.

Amber English: Yeah, I was just fortunate enough to kind of have a background with family and the shooting sports, and that’s where I got hooked. But there’s a lot of kids that do wrestling and swimming and stuff like that with the hopes and dreams of potentially making it to that level. Yeah, it’s just kind of how I stumbled on it.

Ramsey Russell: So when you were doing your gymnastics, were you an Olympic hopeful? Is that what you were thinking? College scholarship and maybe going to the Olympics as a gymnast?

Amber English: No, not really. You know, to be honest, my body just wasn’t going to be able to make it for that long. And so to be realistic, no. I thought maybe I could do it in college and then kind of hang it up. But, no, I mean, anything’s possible, though.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah. Well, that’s incredible. So when you started off growing up like I read on your bio, you started shooting when you were 6 years old and you talked about dove hunting and some of that stuff. Was it just going out with your folks and hunting or did you all go to the target range and start shooting shotguns?

Amber English: No, I didn’t actually start shooting clay targets until right when I first got interested in international skeet at the end of high school. So everything that we did from 6, we’re just learning how to shoot cans of the 22 type of thing and –

Ramsey Russell: Like everybody else.

Amber English: Yeah. Shoot a 410 and then eventually get big enough to shoot a 20 and then a 12 gauge and stuff like that. So it was just your typical kids, shooting bb guns or red riders outside and then working our way up.

Ramsey Russell: Well, then how in the world did you avoid developing bad habits like, I did? That’s what I’m kind of, sort of digging at is going back to that shooting instructor, here’s how I learned to shoot Amber, a shotgun. I’m 7 or 8 years old, and I think I was 8 years old when my grandfather, instead of sitting by him and racing his dog out to the down doves in Inverness, Mississippi. He brought a 20 gauge, and he had sawed the stock off and glued the rubber pad back on. So it was a full size 28 heavy Remington are heavy, 1100 with have chopped off stock. And he sat behind me and he said, all right, do this, do that, nope, you got to get in front of the bird. He gave me about 3 or 4 practice rounds, and then stuck me way out in the middle of the field where I couldn’t hurt nobody. One shell at a time, I started hunting like this, and I learned all kinds of bad habits. It took me years to get to where I could consistently hit birds flying, just like everybody else, I think we grow. So how did you avoid years of developing bad habits and then get into a very structured hitting a flying target like you all do?

Amber English: I started just like everybody else, kind of like what you said, but I was out on a skeet range with it. There was an older guy named Lloyd Woodhouse, he was a us team coach for a long, long time. And he was old when I first got started, to be honest. And it was just him, going through the very basics, and you’re going to shoot a low 7 going away, and then learn how to, I was not good when I first started, by any means, it was kind of just having a passion and a want and desire to get better at something. And then eventually you just get so obsessed with it that you can’t stop. So that’s kind of how probably with you shooting ducks, too.

Ramsey Russell: Well, yeah, I get that. Amber, you told me your uncle and dad and I think your mom, they were more into the pistols and rifles before we started recording, you talked about the rifling they were doing. Talk a little bit about that competition. I don’t think I’ve ever seen it before in America. I didn’t know it was an American thing. You talking about running targets?

Amber English: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: What did that entail?

Amber English: Yeah, my uncle, my dad shot running target. So it was a rifle discipline. And they started from the hip, and you would shoot a slow track and a fast track. So it would be a picture of a boar, and it had a 10 ring on the face of the target. And so you would start from a low mount and then mount the gun and shoot a 10 ring moving. And so it was kind of your round –

Ramsey Russell: How far was that target?

Amber English: You know what, to be honest, I couldn’t even tell you at this point, it’s been so long.

Ramsey Russell: If you had to guess, was it closer to 20 or 50.

Amber English: 50, I think was 50 meters.

Ramsey Russell: What caliber were they shooting up?

Amber English: They were shooting 22s.

Ramsey Russell: Okay.

Amber English: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: That’s a heck of a shot.

Amber English: Yeah, it’s different. It’s different. But it’s no longer an Olympic sport, unfortunately, but it’s still very active over in Europe, and a lot of other countries are still shooting, and it’s really cool to watch.

Getting Into Competitive Shooting

So we went out to the shotgun range, and I was hooked ever since.

Ramsey Russell: As you were first getting into the competitive shooting part, they tried to bring you along into pistols and rifles.

Amber English: Yeah. So the Olympic Training Center was downtown in Colorado Springs, and they had a rifle pistol range there at USA shooting, and my mom and my aunt shot rifles, so that was just kind of what they all knew, and I went and shot there first, and I’m like, man, this is just, I don’t want to shoot pistol, that’s really boring.

Ramsey Russell: Why was it boring? That’s what I’m getting at. Why was it boring?

Amber English: I think, honestly, just setting up in the same position and staring at a wall for hours was just not what I wanted to do.

Ramsey Russell: Was it a lot more standing around and waiting than it was trigger pulling?

Amber English: Yeah, I was like, it’s not for me. I love that people love this, and it’s hard, for sure, but I don’t like it. So we went out to the shotgun range, and I was hooked ever since.

Ramsey Russell: That was it, the first time, the first round of shooting skeet, and that was it. I want to do this.

Amber English: Yeah, I think it was just me being super competitive. Like, I can’t believe I’m so bad at this. And what does it take to get better? And then I just continued to do that over and over and over again.

Ramsey Russell: You would have been, what, 17 or 18 years old?

Amber English: Yeah, I started at the very end of 16.

Ramsey Russell: But you had shot flying targets, you’d shot doves, you’ve shot pheasants, probably a few ducks and geese out there in Colorado. And maybe that what appealed to you.

Amber English: Yeah, I think. I mean, there’s nothing better for me watching a pheasant blow up super close. It was always fun when we were growing up, but, yeah, I just had experience with that, and it was always super fun shooting a shotgun, doing things like that. And so it just was easily translatable over to the play target field.

Ramsey Russell: And what does it take? Okay, so from where you started, if you had to guess how many targets did you break that first session there in Colorado Springs? 10%. Half? Like everybody else.

Amber English: Yeah. We shoot international, so it’s a little faster and more doubles, and then we start from the hip as well. So first I learned how to shoot from the shoulder, and then eventually, you work your way down, and we shoot from the hip, and then we have a 0 to 3 second delay. So there’s a lot of factors in there that you have to learn.

Ramsey Russell: 0 to 3 second delay from the time you say pull it?

Amber English: Yeah. When we say pull, we don’t know when it’s going to come out, and so we have a line on our vest, so when we say pull, we can’t move the gun until the target comes out. Then we can engage.

Ramsey Russell: Like quick draw McGraw business there.

Amber English: Yeah, pretty much.

Ramsey Russell: Do you believe that most of us are instinctive shooters? Because it seems to me if I’m holding the gun waist high and I can’t move until it goes, till it move, now I’m relying a lot on my instincts. Is sport shooting like that an instinctive sport, or is it a train sport?

Amber English: That’s the great debate with everybody. I think it really just depends on athleticism and kind of hand eye coordination, in my opinion. And once you have the basics for that, then, yeah, it does kind of become an instinctual. But if you’re having a hard time with hand eye coordination and everything like that, then I’m sure it’s not really very instinctual.

Ramsey Russell: I believe that to be true because it’s not like I’ve hunted with a lot of baseball players, but if I’ve hunted with college level or professional baseball players, they tend to be pretty good shots, better than average, I say. And I think, it’s because I think to hit a 90 plus mile an hour fastball coming up the middle, you got to have that eye hand coordination.

Amber English: Yeah, that’s what I think it is, really. And gymnastics gave me that ability to just be super in tune with my body and hand eye coordination, so I think that’s what helped me the most.

Challenges of Professional Shooting

So you can learn something from everybody or take a tool from everybody and then add it to your own toolbox.

Ramsey Russell: I’ll be darn. So when you go out there your first time, you say, hey, I want to start doing this. Did you have a coach, or did people around just kind of start mentoring you? Like when I’d go out and shoot skeeting in college just to do something, besides sit around the house, I had no compunction to be competitive, I just went to shoot because it was fun. There were always guys just giving you pointers and be careful, it’s like EF Hutton, be careful what advice you take. And I just learned that for me to go out and have fun, I needed to just relax and go with the flow and let my instincts kick in. Again, when you’re hot, you’re hot, when you’re not, you’re not. If I was off that day, I’d make a round and wouldn’t shoot a second round. I’m like, well, I’m off today, I’m going on back to the house. Because there’s nothing I can do, there’s nothing I can do to turn it. If I wake up on the wrong side of the bed and my timing is off, there’s nothing I can do in this world to fix it. And how do you cope with something like that as a professional shooter?

Amber English: Yeah, well, when I first started out, it was just kind of the same thing. Having kids around kind of your own age and messing around and then getting serious, like you had said, kind of being careful who you take advice from. I learned pretty early on that that is exactly the case. But I really just tried to be as open minded as possible and kind of picture myself as a sponge. And you know what I tell kids and other people, hey, every single person has a different toolbox and how it’s made up. So you can learn something from everybody or take a tool from everybody and then add it to your own toolbox. But like you had said, with being on or off for a day, that’s something that we really do have to deal with. And some days we wake up and it’s really easy, and other days it’s super challenging. So, we always have kind of like a pre shot routine that we think of, kind of like what a golfer does to get ready for a shot, same thing. I really rely heavily on those routines. So that way, when it’s not easy, then I know how to work through it and just go back to the basics and what does it take to break a target?

Ramsey Russell: You show up, you start shooting, you like this. How long into the game, into you find in your place something you really enjoyed shooting competitively? How long was it before you went from, hey, I like this, I like this better than pistol and rifles to, I’m going to stick this out and go for the gold? I mean, did you show up the first day thinking, if I like this, I’m going to go for the gold? Or was it just a period of time you grow into something like that?

Amber English: Yeah, it was kind of just growing into it. I started, like I said, at the end of high school, and you’re like, man, I think, if I really want to travel the world with my shotgun, this is what I got to do. And I don’t want to do school full time because that sounds boring. I can go to school part of the time and have fun. And so, yeah, I just started as a junior and realized that, hey, maybe I can make a junior team and work my way up. And then the more you get involved in it, the more your goals grow. So I was on the junior world team in 2009, that’s when I really got a taste of traveling, traveling world and seeing the rest of the world and just broadening my horizon in that way. And then you taste a little success and then a whole lot of defeat, and you just kind of become obsessed enough on how to get better and better until you work your way up to the national team and then the Olympic team.

Ramsey Russell: How good do you have to be? You’re traveling around in 2009 and that must have been amazing. How much better did you have to progress? How good do you have to be to get a spot on the Olympic team?

Amber English: Oh, a ton.

Ramsey Russell: Out of a thousand targets, how many you got to break? How many targets do you – that’s a question I should ask. How many targets do you shoot in a competition? 50 or 100?

Amber English: A normal competition, we shoot 125 over 2 days. So it’s 75 and then 50 and the top 6 make the final. Back then, women only shot 75 and the men shot 125 because we weren’t allowed to compete against each other. But that changed several years ago, and now we’re both on an even 125 playing field. And in the US we have domestic matches, so we’ll shoot 4 days, so 250 targets, and then they’ll take the top 6 and shoot a final and go from there. But to make the Olympic team, they’ll do two Olympic selections. So 250 at one match plus 250 at this match. So out of 500, then I’ll take the top 6. And then when I went in Tokyo, only the top two made it. Put myself on that team for Tokyo in Tucson, I shot a 246 out of 250.

Ramsey Russell: Holy cow. That’s amazing.

Amber English: That was tough. Yeah, it was kind of like do or die for me, and I have to do this, and I ended up winning by quite a bit. But it was a tough match, and that was one of my better performing matches, for sure.

Sport Shooting: Developing Physical & Mental Stamina

And I would always just continually talk to myself, and then when the thoughts come in, just instantly revert it back to the process.

Ramsey Russell: Amber, when you talk about, I can’t imagine busting that many targets consecutively. We talked earlier about it being a lot of eye hand coordination. Well, now, what about the mental aspects? How much of breaking that many targets out of 500, how much of that is physical and how much of it is mental?

Amber English: Yeah, the physical part is pretty small, it’s all a mental game for me. I don’t golf at all, but I’ve read a lot of golfing books and mental management on that aspect of it. And a lot of it just comes down to believing in yourself. And I’m very realistic when it comes to, you could tell me the sky is purple all day long, but it’s not purple. So me telling myself it’s purple is not going to convince me and have a whole systemic effect. But I just told myself, like, hey, I’ve trained hard enough for this, I am more prepared for this than I ever have been in my life. And I can either continue to believe in myself and let myself perform, or I can just pigeonhole myself into bad line of thought and ruin it. So I just committed to, what does it take to break the next target? And I broke down so much that that was all I was focused on until it was done.

Ramsey Russell: Do you ever get to the point? I’m guessing you busted 20, you busted 30, you busted 50, you busted 60, and you’re one miss away from, that’s it, now I got to start again at the next competition. I’m just seeing this mental pressure building. How do you cope with something like that? I’m just saying, man, I’m so close, but I’m one miss away. How do you cope with that mental pressure? You just focus on the hand and just let it go, is it like this blank mind or there’s little wheels turning behind the scenes? Like, just don’t miss, don’t miss.

Amber English: And it’s kind of like what you talked about, if you wake up one day and you’re just woke up on the wrong side of the bed, we still deal with that, too. I personally have to be able to talk to myself, and you really just feel insane during the whole process, but it really is just positive self talk or there’s nothing like big high pressure situations for weird thoughts to creep in and stuff that you hadn’t even thought about in 5 years or something. You know what I mean? Like, just leave it for a high pressure situation for that to always come in. And so you just have to learn how to combat those thoughts and like, okay, thank you for that thought. Now, what’s the task at hand? The task at hand is to break this next target. I’m going to do X, Y, and Z, and I’m going to see it and mount them, mount the gun and move, just a whole system. And I would always just continually talk to myself, and then when the thoughts come in, just instantly revert it back to the process.

Ramsey Russell: It’s been so long since I shot skeet. How many stations are there in skeet? 7 or 8?

Amber English: Yeah, there’s 7 around the outside and then 1 in the middle.

Ramsey Russell: One in the middle. Do you have a weak spot? After all these years of shooting skeets is there one, you’re like, oh, gosh, this is just going to kill me.

Amber English: It’s kind of the easy ones now, we call them baseline. So, like, station 1 and 7 and 8, they’re the easiest to hit, and if you don’t pay attention and they kind of squeak away.

Ramsey Russell: Really?

Amber English: Yeah, that’s the stupid stuff you got to pay attention to.

Ramsey Russell: But I always loved the one in the middle, the last one was my favorite. That was always my favorite. That was the easy one. It was ones out towards the center that were just, I’m like, especially as you got, I guess it’d be stationed 1, 2, 3 around station 5 or 6 was always my tough spot as a right handed shooter, and I was prone to miss them all the time.

Amber English: Yeah, you just learned just kind of like golf, where to set up and hold, and we kind of move. We have a thing called a hold point where we would set our gun, and then you can set your eyes based on the background or the shadows and stuff like that. So you’re just constantly changing. And honestly, what I’ve told people, the people who win are the ones who adapt to change the fastest. And you can really just apply that to anything in life because change is inevitable and people who adapt to it the fastest are successful.

Ramsey Russell: I guess, yeah. Life in general could be said that way. I’m going to go back to it, like in the Olympics, you’re on the Olympic team. How many goes at it before you started getting into the winning spots? The bronze, silver to gold? Was it right out the gate or did you have to grow into it?

Amber English: No, I grew into it. So in Tokyo, it was a 2 day event, we shot 75. And I think I was sitting in 7th after the first day. And then after the 50, I had moved up into 3rd going into the final. So I was like, I’m sitting in the perfect spot, let’s get it. And it was tough mentally. You have a lot of people at the Olympics that are just super happy to be there and like, oh, I’m an Olympian and blah, blah.

Ramsey Russell: They’re just glad to be there.

Amber English: Yeah. And I’m like, I could walk away from this and shooting it and be happy with however it ends and know that I got here, or I can do what I need to do and do the damn thing, get it done. And I had shot so much, so much that I told myself, hey, if my B-game shows up today, I’ll still be competitive, but if my A-game shows up, it’s over for these people. And so the first day, I have never felt so nervous in my entire life, I don’t know if I ever will again, to be honest. So I survived the first day, I kind of felt like the squirrel off ice age a little bit that day. And then after that, I was like, okay, well, what do I have to do to get it? So then the next day, I was able to relax a little bit, and I really do feel like my A-game kind of showed up and was able to just get after it.

Ramsey Russell: How often do you shoot? I mean, how many days a year do you go out and shoot?

Amber English: Yeah. So we have competitive seasons. The seasons are getting longer and longer, which has been harder for us to kind of figure it out. So normally our season is probably March through late September. And now, I just shot in Morocco, so now we’re running matches January through October. So it’s kind of tough for us. But traditionally, weather permitting in the winter, that’s kind of tough. But, yeah, I like to shoot at least 4 or 5 days a week.

Ramsey Russell: Is it like a workout routine? Like, some people get up at 05:00 every morning, go to the gym. You get up at a certain morning with a certain routine and go to the shooting range, or you just take it when you can get it.

Training for the Olympics

How many targets do you shoot per day? 

Amber English: The older I’ve gotten, I’ve had to kind of manage training schedules with other life things and learn balance. But normally when I’m training, I do have kind of a regiment where I’ll wake up and try to get to a range at a certain time and shoot at a certain time, whether or not if you feel good or not. Because when we have a competition, we’re based off of time. So I’ll get in a routine of just shooting at a certain time and going from there, and then I have training plans and I’ll tweak that kind of accordingly. And then after Morocco, there’s some things I need to work on, so I’ll add that into training plans and then take it into the next Olympic trials.

Ramsey Russell: So you shoot four or five times a week. How many targets do you shoot per day? A thousand?

Amber English: No, that’s kind of a lot. I would say on average, especially getting ready for the games, I was shooting about 500 a day.

Ramsey Russell: Half a thousand. And how many targets does that work out to a year?

Amber English: Oh, I have no idea. I’d have to go do – some years are different than others. That’s a lot. That’s a whole lot. I’ve shot probably a million rounds through my gun.

Ramsey Russell: A million rounds?

Amber English: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: Are you kidding? That’s up there. Now I’m sitting there trying to think, you shoot 5 times a week, 5 times 500 is 2500 a week, times 52 weeks, let’s say that’s 130,000 targets.

Amber English: Yeah, we’re not at that for sure. Just because we take some months off or in our schedules and some days I’m not shooting 500, it’s kind of like a roller coaster ride. While we’re preparing for a big match, I’ll ramp it up and then other days I’ll completely just go out there and say I’m going to shoot a 75 bird match and then put it away and see where I’m at and then have to coach myself at night through it and what is it going to take to shoot the next 50?

Ramsey Russell: Talk about your mental, you say I have to coach myself at night, talk about that process. How does a competitive shooter like yourself coach yourself at night? For example, by comparison, I go back to camp, eat dinner, laugh and cut it up, have a few drinks and say I hope I wake up on a good side of bed in the morning. I mean, but seriously, how does somebody at your level coach yourself at night? I got to shoot better, I need to do better. What’s that process like?

Amber English: Yeah. Honestly, for me, it’s just the ability to self-reflect and know what I’m bad at and what I really excel in. And I think, having the time to self-reflect is what that means for me. And I like to cut up and have a good time too, don’t get me wrong. So the older I get, the easier it is kind of with that. But with the more experience and the years in this game, I try not to be super serious like I was back then when I was younger. And it’s just kind of, hey, this is what I was kind of sucking at this today and this is what I’m going to do to make it better tomorrow.

Ramsey Russell: I get asked to go shoot sporting clays around town when I’m home sometimes. Hey, we’re having an event over here. Hey, we’re doing this over there and I never go, I refuse to. Because I feel like as much as I shoot, people expect me to be better than I might be, you know what I’m saying? And besides that, the clay targets, I don’t know, for me personally, it’s just vaguely different. My dream has always been, I can remember back in the good old days being down in Argentina where there’s just gazillions of doves flying. I mean, just back in the heyday of Cordoba dove, and I thinking, boy, how would it be to live somewhere like this and walk out to a different spot every day and limit myself to 100 targets every single day? Just go out to my backyard, make myself go through the motions, and focus on shooting these doves, a 100 targets a day forever. What would be then? Because it always occurred to me, like, you talk about skeet, what are we looking at? 22 yards, 22 meters, how far are those targets?

Amber English: Maybe 27 at the max.

Ramsey Russell: 27 meters. And if it’s coming out of a high house, number 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, whatever, it’s more or less the same distance, same angle, and it can become very monotonous. But if you take bird hunting, even if I were shooting birds kind of based on a skeet station, they would be a foot or more or 5 or 6 more, it’d be a slightly different angle, and it becomes a little more. And if I’m talking out of place, let me know. But to me, it become a little more instinctive than mental muscle memory.

Amber English: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: And which makes you a lot more prone to, it’s just figuring it out. It really, your instincts kick in, your timing kicks in, and the misses kick in if you’re not careful.

Amber English: Yeah, absolutely. What we do is very monotonous, and that’s why I like shooting sporting and other live birds because it challenges me in a whole different way. But it is fun, and very rarely will you see people not enjoying their time and anything revolving shotgun sports and stuff like that. So that’s kind of the cool thing. But I learn something every day, and I maybe one day we’ll get to go shoot ducks and you could teach me something for sure.

Ramsey Russell: I doubt that, but, yeah. I doubt very seriously I have it. My advice is the same as my granddad is shoot where the bird’s going, not where he was. I watch some videos of you shooting on your Instagram page, and like you say, it’s very quick, bam, bam. And you’re coming up from the waist and shooting, are you sticking the barrel out in front of the bird or you swinging through it that quickly?

Amber English: Yeah. So it’s both. We would call that a sustained lead or a pass through. So the sustained lead would be, we’re already kind of set up with our gun in our eyes in a certain spot. So when the target comes out, we’re kind of already in front and pull trigger, that’s the goal, we’re set up for that perfect world. Other times we mess it up and we have to make different shots and different ways to get it done. But, yeah, normally I would say we try to set ourselves up to be in front of it right off the bat. Just because the window is so small and the speeds pretty fast, we don’t have a lot of time to mess around.

Ramsey Russell: I mean, for example, on a certain station, I need to be a foot and a half front, you just somehow, that mental picture, you just know when it feels right. And I can say the same thing on ducks and geese, I just know that this is it. I know this is it. It’s just instinctive. Your body sees it, it goes on to autopilot and you see that also?

Amber English: Yeah. Yes, and no. I mean, like I said, with change, sometimes I wake up and it’s hard, too. And you just have to really kind of figure out how to fight that. And even if it doesn’t feel easier right, you can still have the self discipline to make it, to execute the shot. So, yeah, I just try to go with the flow. And if it’s easy today, cool, if not, I know what I can do to still get the job done.

Lessons from Traveling the World for Sport Shooting

But I’ve been super fortunate to be able to travel the world and kind of broaden that horizon. 

Ramsey Russell: Tell me about some of the great things you’ve seen. You were talking about in 2009, you started traveling, and I’ve always said, and I could not have said this back in the day, but I’ve realized increasingly that a lot of what compels me to find new hunts, to go to new places, to new countries and stuff like that, I get as involved into some of the stuff we started off talking about the local cultures and the foods and the different stuff that I do into the actual trigger pulling myself. Do you enjoy that aspect of it? And what are some of the cool things you’ve seen around the world?

Amber English: Yeah, that’s probably one of my favorite things. You know, everybody hates a travel grind of packing and doing the airport shuffle.

Ramsey Russell: It’ll wear you out.

Amber English: That is the worst. And this trip back from Morocco just tested my patience in so many different ways. But I’ve been super fortunate to be able to travel the world and kind of broaden that horizon. And my worldview got expanded. I was able to back then go to Cairo, Egypt and we ran around the pyramids on camelback, that was pretty cool. We’re running around just all over the sand and laughing and I’ve gone to lots of places in Asia and we’ve ate scorpions and all sorts of stuff off of carts and we’ve been able to see a lot of the world, so it’s been pretty fun.

Ramsey Russell: You said earlier setting up for kind of the getting somewhere like you’re going to let your body clock adjust a little bit, let the foods adjust. I’ve had some run ins with both jet lag and eating the wrong foods while traveling. It will get to you if you’re not careful. Especially if you start eating scorpions off of street carts. I’ve got a rule of thumb, if I’m in certain parts of the world, if I’m with some Mexicans, for example, because there’s a lot of local places to eat up and holding the walls, if the locals feel like that, I’m safe, I’ll try it. If they don’t, I won’t dare go. I won’t just pick a street cart to Mexico and go on my own. I just won’t do it. I’ve learned, I think the sickest I’ve ever been and I really, truly thought I was going to die is, for example, in Pakistan. I was told, I was warned, don’t drink the dairy, don’t touch the dairy over there. And you know from travel that unless you really, truly know better, avoid the salad. Always avoid the salad because they’re going to wash everything with the water and if the water’s not good, you’re in trouble.

Amber English: Or ice.

Ramsey Russell: That’s a great one. Avoid the ice. And I was in Pakistan and it was hot, my goodness gracious, was it hot? And very hot. Hot as a Mississippi summer day, hot. It was just hot. And I was run down, I was tired, I was hot. And they lay out, I don’t know, 1400 square foot of food, it’s the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen. Every time you sit down, there’s food everywhere. And it was the most beautiful looking salad I had ever seen. It was just beautiful and it just looked like something I needed to eat on a hot day, and I ate it. And worse yet, two of the other clients said, is it good? I go, man, it’s delicious, it’s amazing. And they ate it too. And when I say we were green around the gills for a period of time, for about a week, we were bad. I described itself diagnosed as amoebic dysentery. It was so bad. And then I still had to go out and hunt. You want to talk about some mental focus, it took some – have you ever been in that situation, where you ate something bad or -?

Amber English: Yeah, I’ve kind of steered away from doing that just because I’ve been around so many people that I’ve gotten sick. I’ve been sick overseas. I got really sick in Rio once where I thought I was going to die too. That sucked really bad. And it was super hot and I had a really high fever, like 104. And I just felt like I was baking to death. But yeah, I tried to stick away from some of that stuff and now, we can go to the doctor and a lot of us will travel just meds, just in case. So if one of us gets sick, we can help each other out. There is nothing worse than that.

Ramsey Russell: I have got some meds I try to travel with. I was somewhere, Mexico somewhere one time, and I don’t know what kind of bug I caught, but it was nausea and everything else. And whatever the doctor gave me, he had written down, he gave me a 3 part shot, and about 5 or 6 hours later I was up and going. And I travel with that now. I put that my bag. I don’t know what it is, you know what I’m saying, but I’m going to use it in case of emergencies.

Amber English: Oh, there’s nothing worse than being overseas somewhere and being that sick.

Ramsey Russell: How do you cope with jet lag?

Amber English: Honestly, at this point, we just suck it up.

Ramsey Russell: That’s all you really can do.

Amber English: Yeah. On the way there, we just do exactly what we can to switch over to the time change instantly, no naps, none of that. We just fight the urge to sleep and rest when you can at the certain time and then hopefully your body just adjusts. But it’s also just learning how to shoot, being severely uncomfortable too. But on the way back, I was proud of myself yesterday for not taking any naps or anything. And then I was dealing with Delta and trying to find my gun all last night, so I was pretty irritated. But it’s just forcing your body to take the full time zone and get over it. I’ve also found that Excedrin helps a little bit, too, because it’s got caffeine in it.

Ramsey Russell: Oh, really?

Amber English: Taking actual, Excedrin does help. Because usually when you’re traveling, you don’t feel that well anyway. And if you need some caffeine and –

Handling High-Stakes Moments: The Mental Game of Competition

That’s what I’m trying to get at. I don’t see how you all mentally focus and that the pressure. I mean, what if you’re down toward, you got 5 targets left, and if you don’t miss, you’re going to get the gold, but if you miss one, you’re just going to go back home with a second place, and it’s like, if you ain’t first, you last.

Ramsey Russell: I stay pumped up on caffeine and nicotine the whole time. It works. But one of the best things I have found, if you can, is even if it’s just going out in the sunshine and walking, or I don’t jog anymore, but maybe swimming, maybe walking, maybe just doing push ups, just a physical activity in that new time zone. But then there’s sometimes, there’s just some places, sometimes I go that there’s nothing I can do, I take those naps I might like. I’ve been on trips for a week that I slept in 2, 4 hour intervals. My timing was off, or the phone was ringing because it’s a different time zone back home when the phones are ringing, people are calling you between 9 and 5, and I’m waking up in the middle of the night, so I sleep 4 hours and then get up and do something and go sleep 4 hours again and get up and go do something, go sleep 4 hours. And sometimes it’s all you can do. But I don’t have to get up and shoot a high percentage of targets, either. I just got to go out and go hunting. I don’t see how you do it, Amber. That’s what I’m trying to get at. I don’t see how you all mentally focus and that the pressure. I mean, what if you’re down toward, you got 5 targets left, and if you don’t miss, you’re going to get the gold, but if you miss one, you’re just going to go back home with a second place, and it’s like, if you ain’t first, you last.

Amber English: That’s what it felt like. That’s exactly what it felt like. But I had to seriously have hardcore discipline. And when all those thoughts and the pressure and everything builds, it’s just, what does it take to break this next target? That’s it. That’s all that matters. And I found that when you focus on the process, the outcome will always come out the way you want it to. But you have to focus on the process. You have a better chance of having a better outcome if you focus on the process than you do just focusing on the outcome right off the bat.

Ramsey Russell: Is it better to be lucky or good?

Amber English: Definitely better to be good. I don’t really seem like I’m a luck – I don’t know if I even believe in luck sometimes. I feel like you are seem to be a luckier person, the more prepared you are.

Ramsey Russell: The harder you work, the luckier you get.

Amber English: Yeah, that’s kind of how I feel about it. Yeah, I’m the type of person I really have to work hard and continue to try new things and self reflect to get there.

Ramsey Russell: I’ll make another pass at it. When you’re mentally coaching yourself at night, are you just literally sitting there in a quiet room and walking through that target and walking through that lead and walking through just so where you can picture that mental image?

Amber English: Sometimes that’s over a cocktail, too. I don’t want it to seem like I’m some crazy strict. I like to have my cocktails, too. No. Even you can do it at night when it’s quieter and just even with your eyes closed, I mean, no one would even know that you’re doing this stuff, but just running through and visualizing, making perfect shots and what that felt like. And even at Olympic trials, I mean, you could be taking a shower and I would just picture my brain, like, what it would feel like to stand on top of a podium or what that would look like if I was on top of a podium listening to our national anthem and stuff. It’s a different deal. But yeah, at night, I’ve even thought about it last night, like, hey, what am I going to do tomorrow? If I finally find my gun and get my hands on it, am I going to go shoot and if I do, what am I going to do? Or what do I want to do tomorrow and stuff. So you’re just constantly thinking about it.

Ramsey Russell: You won the Olympic gold in 2020. You started in 2009, that’s kind of when this competitive things – How many close calls did you get between 2009 and 2020? How many times did were you thinking to yourself, I can see myself on top of the podium, that you missed a target or something happened and you didn’t make it?

Amber English: It really got pretty serious before the 2016 trials. I was well on my way to going up there, I shot the first part of trials and was sitting really well. And then I lost my dad in between those Olympic trials.

Ramsey Russell: Oh, my gosh.

Amber English: Yeah. I didn’t know if my uncle had told you about all that, but, yeah, lost my dad, it was pretty tragic event, and so it was tough for me to get back on the range, and that’s also kind of one of my proudest moments as well, is kind of navigating a severe loss in my life and being able to get back on the range and learn how to perform. So that in 2016, I was the Olympic alternate at that point, so it was disappointing. But I think at the time, with everything that was going on, I probably wouldn’t have been as ready as I was now for that. So I was Olympic alternate then, and then, after that and all the heartbreak and not making the team and losing my dad and just all that stuff, I was like, I don’t know if I want to even do this anymore. I’m over it. I’m over working this hard, I can go be a normal kid and run around and have a career. And so I took a little time off and I realized, like, there’s some serious unfinished business. And that’s when I joined the army into that program. I went full send then and just joined the army and said, I’m going to do something wild and find the best resources and the best team to push me every day and go get it. So I’m obviously really glad that I stayed and did it.

Ramsey Russell: Talk about joining the military. Because you are a first lieutenant in the military.

Amber English: Captain now. Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: Okay. But I mean, you went to boot camp and all that stuff when you joined the military?

Amber English: Yeah. So I was able to go through, it’s called the World Class Athlete Program. And I’d met other people in different sports who were in it when I lived at the Olympic Training Center, like wrestlers and pentathletes and swimmers and stuff. So the army has a really cool program where you can take these athletes and turn them into soldier athletes, and their job is to not only represent the army, but also Team USA and shoot and win domestic and international competitions and make the Olympic team. So although we’re not wearing a uniform per se every day and doing some of the stuff that the other soldiers are doing, we’ve been trained in all those jobs, I took all of 2017 off. I went to army schools for a year straight with no shooting to get trained up in the army stuff, and then went straight back on the gun in 2018.

Ramsey Russell: So what is your “job description” within the military?

Amber English: Yes, I’m a logistics officer.

Ramsey Russell: Okay.

Amber English: Yeah, I wanted to do military intelligence, and I could have had that job. But based on shooting and the timing, it was going to take way too long to get through that school to be able to get back on the gun again. So I went with logistics.

Ramsey Russell: So you had some close calls, you’re in the military now, you’re shooting a very structured situation. Now I’m going to ask a question, what was it like? Lead me up through the competition. You’re in the Olympics, it’s 2020, heated competition. Tell me how many, you say it was two shooting events or three shooting events. How did that work and walk me through the process.

Amber English: Well, originally, the games were supposed to be in 2020, and I had just shot that 246. I’m like, at the high of my game, like, let’s go. I’m ready. I’m shooting against the men, and we’re good. And then COVID hit. Right after Olympic trials, we had just finished March 9th, and then that’s kind of when COVID was really hitting Italy really bad, and we were kind of hearing all about that. And then we came back, and it was like the whole world was shutting down. And then it was just a battle of hearing everybody say that, oh, they’re going to cancel the Olympics, and even some of the closest people around you. It was just a bad buzz and vibe with, some people are happy for you, and some people wish that they were there in your position. And I felt like the rug kind of got pulled out because we weren’t sure if the Olympics were just going to get canceled in general or not.

Ramsey Russell: I’m surprised they didn’t.

The Army’s Role in Helping Me Train Through Uncertainty

But one thing I did is the army helped me continue to be able to train, and that was hard to wake up every day and train as hard as I needed to for an event that may not happen.

Amber English: Yeah, I mean, that would have been so devastating. But one thing I did is the army helped me continue to be able to train, and that was hard to wake up every day and train as hard as I needed to for an event that may not happen. So that was horrible. But then they finally got to the point where they decided to reschedule it, so we took a little time off, tried to regroup and no one on the team or previously Olympians had experience with this type of delay. So it was kind of new for all of us and our coaches. So they finally got another date a year later in 2021, and a lot of our events had been canceled leading up to that. We didn’t have all the World Cups and World Championships and stuff, and we really use those matches to test where we’re at in our game and make tweaks for the Olympics. So a lot of those matches were disappearing, and so we had to get creative and that, I love my team and my coaches for that because we did. We came up with plans and figured out what worked and what didn’t. But it didn’t feel real until, we were boarding the flight to Tokyo. It was like, wow, this is really happening. I really did not think that this was going to happen, but I’m ready. But this sucked, this whole process sucked. And yeah, boarded the flight, we get through, we had to wear our mask the whole time on that flight.

Ramsey Russell: Oh, gosh. Yeah, I remember those days.

Amber English: And I’m like, sucks. And, yes, we get over there and do in processing and get through the Olympic village, and in the Olympic village, everybody was still super excited to be there. And I feel like even more than normal just because we all still had the opportunity to compete and live out these dreams. They say on average, it takes about 10 years to build an Olympic athlete, and sometimes it’s longer than that. So, yeah, that would have been devastating to get it canceled. But we were there, and we got a few days to shoot. Japan was extremely hot, just like Fort Benning. People were struggling with it, but we were used to it.

Ramsey Russell: You’re at home.

Amber English: Yeah, I’m like, do you guys feel that breeze? Like, I think it cooled off. They’re like, you’re insane. I’m like, it is hot, whatever. So that helped a lot, I was already kind of used to the weather. And then, yeah, we had our first day of 75 targets, well, take it back. Shooting is one of the first events or first disciplines to hand out medals of the Olympics. So usually you kind of have to time it around opening ceremony if you’re going to walk an opening ceremony or stay home, because the day after opening ceremony was our official training. So the day before we competed, and that was really important to get good training time and stuff. So I still walked, and we just bailed early. So we got back at, like, midnight or 01:00 AM instead of later. But we were just taking it all in, I said I’d already shot enough, but we get through that and day one was 75. That’s when I said, I was sitting in 7th, and then it was –

Ramsey Russell: How many competitors were there?

Amber English: So the Olympics, they can send 2 per country. That’s the only thing that they’re allowed. 2 per country. So I think we had about 35 people.

Ramsey Russell: 35 people total. Okay.

Amber English: Yeah. Traditionally, the Olympics is a very small event, compared to world championships and stuff like that. There’s a lot of quotas, and they decide how many people per event in what sport get what. But it felt worse than any other match I’ve ever shot my entire life. I remember walking up to station one and just visibly shaking, trying to shoot, and then that’s when I had just talked to myself and hey, I can be happy to be here, or I can go win this damn thing. So what does it take to do that? And night one felt pretty horrible, we didn’t sleep very much, scared the whole time, and then I woke up the next day, I felt much better. I was a lot more confident and offensive, and I was like, I feel like my A game’s here and got after it. We went to the final, so I made it into 3rd going into the final, and then everything starts back at zero, so it becomes a kind of shoot off mentality, and then you get eliminated. So I don’t think, I feel like I took my first breath until three people got eliminated, and I knew I was getting a medal.

Ramsey Russell: Oh, really?

Amber English: We didn’t know what color then.

Ramsey Russell: Was the pressure harder on you for the Olympics or for the 2018 World Championship?

Amber English: Oh, for the Olympics. There is nothing like the Olympic games and what that feels like. Oh, yeah.

Ramsey Russell: Really?

Amber English: Oh, yeah. It’s an insane pressure where you feel like you can just, people describe, like, cutting it with a knife, that is exactly what it feels like. Like, the pucker factor is real.

Ramsey Russell: How many targets did you break over the days to get to the gold? What percentage targets did you break?

Amber English: Well, I shot a 121 out of 125. That put me in 3rd going into the final. And then I missed my last target in the final for a 56 out of 60. I should have hit it. But at that point, I knew I only had to break one to win, and I saw the puff, and it’s like I just forgot how to shoot.

Ramsey Russell: That just somehow reminds me, I hunt, I told you, I don’t speak much Spanish, and I don’t speak much Spanish. But I have been to hunts in Argentina and Mexico, where there’s a guide with me, and I’ll miss, and I’ll say a bad word, probably a loud F-bomb under my breath. And it gets to be where, after a period of time, usually the first morning, maybe the second, before I can say it, the boy behind me will say it for me. He don’t speak English, but he knows that word by day two, when I miss a bird and I say that, that bad word, he starts saying it for me.

Amber English: I feel like I can write a book with all the cuss words I’ve come up with, they’re pretty colorful sometimes.

Winning a Gold Medal

Like, I honestly just felt like a deer in the headlights.

Ramsey Russell: What did it feel like, Amber? You’d won the World Championship, you’ve dedicated yourself to this since you were a teenager. And they almost canceled, you kept practicing, and you knew, you went into the final round knowing you were going to get a medal anyway. But the bronze and the silver ain’t the gold. What did it feel like standing on that podium with the whole world watching you, and you said to yourself, I won the gold. I mean, seriously, what did it feel like?

Amber English: It honestly didn’t. It was like it wasn’t even registering in my brain that this was over. I think because we had such a horrible roller coaster ride to get up there, the ups and downs and whether it was going to happen or not, I genuinely felt like at that time, I was going to have to put my stuff away and take it back out the next day. Like, no way is this event actually over? No way. And it took me several days to just feel it. And like I had said, you kind of visualize, like, feeling yourself on the podium and everything and crying and no way. Like, I honestly just felt like a deer in the headlights.

Ramsey Russell: It was kind of like a shock? Yeah.

Amber English: Yeah. I was like, there’s no way this is over. Like, I’m going to have to do this again tomorrow. I’m going to have to fight again tomorrow and more. And so, someone had told me it’s going to feel real when you wake up tomorrow and that gold medal is sitting on your nightstand next to your bed, like, whatever. And it was true. You’re like, this is like, oh, my gosh. But it was cool. They have had no woman in the shotgun sports to have back to back golds. And the woman that I shot against, she was the reigning gold medalist from 2016.

Ramsey Russell: Where was she from?

Amber English: Italy. And they’re one of our biggest rivals. It’s always the US and Italy going at it. And so I was extremely happy to be able to take that away from her. I told myself at the very end, and there’s 3 of us, it was China, Italy, and myself, and they’re very heavy hitters. And I said, I am not listening to the Italian national anthem today, I’m not doing that. Like, I’m not going to listen to it, I’m not going to make my teammates listen to it, like, no way. What does it take to get it done?

Ramsey Russell: Are the competitors at the Olympics? Are you all kind of sort of friendly towards each other, or is it kind of like, hey, we’re buddies until we’re out there and shooting or no, is it just like, vicious enemies almost going into it?

Creating a Trust-Based Training Environment for the Team

So we worked really hard to be able to trust each other and depend on each other when it was tough. And so I was really, that was another proud moment of mine is that when we got there, we were a very close team, and if I can’t do it, I hope my teammate does for everybody’s sake.

Amber English: Not really in our sport. One of the things that we worked on really, really hard on the skeet team specifically, too, is, we did a lot of training camps. Vinnie Hancock was there, he just won his 3rd gold then, and I’ve known him since I was 16 years old. And we had Phillip Youngman he was a soldier, too, at the army marksmanship unit, so him and I shot together a lot, and then there was a girl named Austin Smith. So Vinny and Austin shot together. So Vinny and I really tried to come up with a plan on how to get our core group of 4 of us together to train a lot to where we could depend on each other and not have cattiness or any of that. Vinny and I were a lot older, and I’m not going to put up with that, and he doesn’t either. So we worked really hard to be able to trust each other and depend on each other when it was tough. And so I was really, that was another proud moment of mine is that when we got there, we were a very close team, and if I can’t do it, I hope my teammate does for everybody’s sake. But there are teams like that, too, and on the other end of the spectrum, but we work very hard to not have that be the case with us.

Ramsey Russell: What about the other countries? What about, like, the Italians? Do you ever go out and socialize with them? Do you all stay in touch during the off season or it’s like, screw them, they’re the enemy.

Amber English: I mean, we’re all friends on social media and stuff, and it’s different to like each other’s posts, and we’ll see each other at matches and say hi, and everybody’s friendly and everybody has, for the most part, extremely good sportsmanlike conduct. I mean, no one’s nasty, and fair is fair. I’ll fight for other people, if they call it a lost target on the field and you know, for sure that was a hit target. I don’t want to win that way. So being fair is always important to most of us. And so, yeah, I say we’re all friendly, but when it comes down to business and shooting for a score and stuff, it is for yourself and your country and your teammates.

Ramsey Russell: That’s amazing. How do you physically train for something like this? Or do you? I mean, how important is that?

Amber English: We’re not like a sport like wrestling or swimming or anything like that, fortunately. So we can still enjoy cocktails and stuff and hang out. But it is important to be able to prevent injuries, and especially with how much we shoot in a day, it’s easy to get injured doing repetitive things, so we try to stay on top of that. And the longer I do it, the more I realize how messed up my neck and shoulders are. So I’ll get it fixed eventually. But yeah, just kind of staying proactive to be as healthy as possible and prevent long term injuries.

Ramsey Russell: Physical activity and physical strength, conditioning is good for the mental aspects of it, too. So I just wondered if you all had to go out and if you did, to keep yourself in shape, were there any particular, I mean, do you work on core? Do you work on your abs? What muscles are most important to help you do this?

Amber English: I mean, I probably just try to – I like to lift, I don’t like to do a bunch of cardio. The only cardio I’ll do is to do stuff for army physical tests. I hate running.

Ramsey Russell: Gosh, I do, too.

Amber English: I’ve done a lot of time on the stairmaster while, do 45 minutes on the stairmaster that is horrible. But it’s also the mental thing of doing the same thing for that long and forcing yourself to get through it, and that kind of translates into shooting and what we do is kind of challenging yourself and other little things, so that way it’s not so bad when you need to challenge yourself for real. But yeah, I like to lift and yeah, stay as fit as I can.

Ramsey Russell: How does your competitive shooting translate into duck hunting or dove hunting now? How does shooting that many targets at that given range and that mental focus, how does that translate into you go into a dove hunt or a pheasant hunt or a duck hunt now?

Amber English: Well, I would say instantly, right off the bat, it’s way more fun to go shoot live birds, not having that massive pressure. So it is a really fun thing for me to go out and do something different. Beyond that it’s kind of getting away from the mentality of doing the same thing over and over again. And it is challenging, sometimes have different presentations of birds and what they all do and yeah, I would just say I do have a really good time and just take what I’ve learned in shooting clay targets and try to apply it to birds and have fun with everybody.

Ramsey Russell: Have a good time. It’s a good way to go back to your roots like that, isn’t it?

Amber English: Yeah. Oh, yeah. It’s super fun. And I look forward too. I’m not going to shoot skeet forever, and I really look forward to getting out in the duck blind or shooting whatever I can. And I just started getting an archery and stuff, so that’s been really fun. And just going to go hunt as much as I can.

Making Time for Hunting

Ramsey Russell: That’s kind of a big deal out in part of Colorado where you grew up, and even there in Texas where you live now. Do you have time to do a lot of hunting?

Amber English: No, and I hadn’t before just because we were traveling so much and, but now, I’ve kind of slowed down a little bit with the shooting, and we’ll ramp back up again. We’ve got our Olympic trials again next month on the top tool decide that team. But after that, after the games, I really look forward to kind of putting down the gun a little bit and then going and hunting a lot more and get back out there.

Ramsey Russell: So you’re training for another round of Olympics right now? When will that take place? If you qualify, if everything goes into place, when would you find yourself shooting in the Olympics again? It’s coming up, isn’t it?

Amber English: Yeah. It’ll be the very beginning of August, I believe is when our –

Ramsey Russell: Near term.

Amber English: In Paris.

Ramsey Russell: That’s fantastic. One last question that just came to mind, as much as you travel and you’re talking about, you lost your shotgun for now, coming back from Morocco. Have you ever had any other travel deals? Like, here’s where I’m getting at. You were in Japan, I went to China one time and a couple things I learned, I thought I liked Chinese food until I went to China. And I do not like Chinese food, it reminds me of stink bait.

Amber English: I like American Chinese food.

Ramsey Russell: I like American Chinese food. I like spring rolls and what we call sushi and everything else. I had a friend, we were going to Mongolia, and I had a client that wanted to do real Ramsey shit. And I said, well, I’m thinking about going into China early and just maybe hike around, see some stuff and go the Wall of China, whatever we’re going to do, and he wanted to go with me. And long story short, we ended up spending 9 hours sequestered in this room because there was a miscommunication between the 72 hours customs line that we did need a visa and getting the paperwork to the military and the airport police about our firearms. So we show up in China. I’ve since learned only 5 people in China have the right to own a firearm and keep it in their home. One of them was a client one time that went on some hunts with us, and huge in manufacturing, but out of billions of people, only 5 people could own a farm. So here, me and my buddy show up through customs, it goes through the X-ray machine, they see guns, and things start getting escalating real quick. So, we find ourselves in a small room with a whole bunch of yelling Chinese folks, highly excited and agitated that we had firearms and ammo and everything else in their country. And long story short, 9 hours later, I decided I was never coming back through China with a firearm. Have you ever had any interesting situations like that?

Tales of Traveling with Firearms

Amber English: Yeah, this last trip back from Morocco really just tests my patience, it was kind of like that. We go through all the gun permits and get it, but I swear, we show up, and it’s like nothing ever happened. But, yeah, on the way back from Morocco a few days ago, our flight was at 06:50 AM out of Rabat, which is where the Capitol is, that’s where the king lives. And so they picked us up. Our shuttle to the airport was at 01:30 in the morning for a 06:50 flight, and we’re 20 minutes away, but we had to go get our gun out of the armory on the range, and then drive to the airport. We show up, it was just a cluster. We had been updates to see what was going on, and they decided that they weren’t going to let us fly out of Rabat because they’d shut the airport down earlier because the king flew through there that morning. So there’s about 30 other guns in this airport at the time. You had the French team, Greeks, usually the Germans, a few other Arabic people are there flying us, there’s 30 of us with guns. And we just knew it was going to be a cluster as soon as we showed up. Like, there are way too many guns for this airport to handle. We’re not making our flight, and we’re there so many hours early. So we offload the buses and everything and get to the ticket counter, it was just a lot of hurry up and wait, like the military, and then they decided to check us all in, but they were only giving us bus tickets. So then they made us load up a bus again after about 2 hours, and they transported us to Casablanca just about an hour and a half away because they decided we were all going to fly out of there then we’re like, great. Pushed our flight till 10:00 AM at this point. And my teammate Caitlin and I were the last two people to check in, I had to pay almost $200 to get my gun in my bag back. I was the only person that had to pay money to get him back.

Ramsey Russell: Now you had to pay it to the airlines or you had to pay it to somebody?

Amber English: Who knows? I’m like, whatever, just get out. We need to make this flight. This is the very beginning of a trip that, and then, them delaying our flight going through Paris. So, yeah, we finally get on the plane and make it all there. And it was a cluster of the whole trip backs. I was originally supposed to fly into Boston and then because of the weather, I decided to reroute it through Atlanta because they’re getting hit with a big snowstorm. So it was a cluster. But, yeah, we’ve had a lot of experiences of showing up and sitting there while people are yelling at you, and you’re just like.

Ramsey Russell: My whole question asking that is, guns are a real big freaking deal worldwide. And the further you get away from a first world country, and I shouldn’t say that, but the crazier it gets. For example, you can’t check your bags in Atlanta and fly to Africa with your rifle or your shotgun by way of anywhere in the European Union. You can’t just fly through Germany or fly through Netherlands, you can’t even just pass through. You can’t pass through to Argentina, going through Lima with a shotgun if you think you’re going to make it, let alone your gun, a lot of these countries have really big, complicated deals involving firearms, even if it is just an over and under competitive gun, let alone a deer rifle or a semi-automatic shotgun, it freaks some of these countries out, they don’t know what to do. One time coming back, I don’t know from where, I think I may have been in Qatar or somewhere, and the bag was checked all the way through to Atlanta, and it didn’t matter. As I’m boarding my flight, I get pulled aside, and they fortunately held the plane for about 30 minutes while a couple of us tried to explain to a couple of gate agents that we have firearms being loaded on their plane, and it was a big deal. I was thinking, holy cow, this could be an international crisis, or I could lose my gun. It was a big deal trying to explain to a gate agent why we had firearms.

Amber English: Now, it’s a little easier because we take those airtags and throw them in our gun case. So I can tell you exactly where it is. But when you start getting into flights and you have gun permits, and each of the gun permits are different for each country, too. So if you get delayed on one flight and your gun permit expires the day before, then it’s a whole different cluster of stuff there. So, yeah, it gets sporty sometimes, but you just kind of got to show up and laugh.

Ramsey Russell: When you travel with guns, or for that matter, wildlife, you just have to take this Zen approach to it, take a deep breath and go with the flow and relax and so you don’t get in trouble. Of all places in the world, I would tell anybody listening, do not go through Toronto anywhere on earth, do not pass through Toronto with a firearm. Your firearm will not make it to your final destination if you go through Toronto. They are not a first world country, they’re a very almost socialistic airport place. I’ve seen several times, we’ve showed up around the world that somebody found a cheaper flight that went through Toronto, and they never saw their gun during that trip.

Amber English: No. Even Paris is pretty sketchy coming through. Last time I flew through Paris, I lost my gun for two weeks, and the army almost put me on a plane to go get my gun myself back there. This time, they lost it, but we called the French Federation, like, hey, get them to release it, we got to go. And it gets very sporty sometimes.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah. All right, well, Amber, are you going to shoot today? Are you going out to the shoot range today, or -?

Amber English: I got to go harass some people at the DFW airport, find my gun first. After this interview, I’m about to go put some shoes on.

Ramsey Russell: Where does your airtag say that your gun is right now?

Amber English: It said it was in Detroit this morning. So I got a phone call late last night from a TSA person in Detroit telling me that they needed to cut my gun locks off to inspect my gun. And I was like, no, I don’t like that. At least it made it to the states. And I said, they’re like, why? They were like, well, we have to inspect it. And I’m like, for what? You don’t have a serial number to check, so why can’t you just send it to Dallas? And then when I get there with TSA guy, we’ll inspect it there, and I’ll show you my 4457 and the paperwork to get back in the country and inspect it there. And she let me have it and said, no, and if you don’t like us cutting your gun locks off, then I guess you can fly to Detroit and do it yourself and open it for us yourself.

Ramsey Russell: It’s terrible. Welcome to my world. It’s terrible. You got all these federal agencies and what blows my mind. Let’s just say I’m going to fly to California tomorrow with my shotgun, and my shotgun gets stuck in Dallas. Well, somebody just breached federal law. By federal law, my firearm is supposed to be on my flight. The passenger is not supposed to be separated from his firearm that is federal law. How come the airlines or the government agencies aren’t held to that standard?

Amber English: Well, here’s a story for you real quick. I was talking to a German guy, he over there, he was flying out of Frankfurt, and he’s German, and he gets to Morocco, and his gun had been stuck in the Frankfurt airport for 3 days, right. They finally figure it out, release it, the gun shows up to Morocco. He had a big pelican case, the hard black case and then he had, like, a small, I think it was a Beretta, small Beretta case on the inside of it. So he opens, his locks had been cut off of the pelican case, and then he goes to open his Beretta case, and they had the vest and everything in there, but the shotgun was gone. Stole his gun right out of his bag. Out of his gun case. Bill sent it to Morocco.

Ramsey Russell: And so it’s gone.

Amber English: Gone. I mean. Yeah. And the Moroccans freaked out because they’re like, where is it? And he’s like, I don’t know where it is. Like, what happened? Where is it? And so they went back to – Yeah, he was flying home with us with an empty gun case.

Ramsey Russell: That’s crazy. I wonder if they confiscated it or if they stole it.

Amber English: No someone stole it, for sure, stole it out of his case. And so now they’re doing the whole investigation, trying to find it out of the Frankfurt airport. Normally, if I had to fly through anywhere, I would say Frankfurt or Munich or anything, try to avoid Paris and definitely don’t fly through London with a gun.

Ramsey Russell: Or the Netherlands, I’ve learned. And there are companies out there that will get temporary visas or firearms permits or whatever that they can file where it comes through, but it still becomes extremely complicated. One of the craziest things I saw coming through somewhere in Germany one time was some clients were coming through from a European country with two ice chests full of bird skins and just common, regular, everyday birds. But because of the European Union laws, they were confiscated. It’s like, okay, our host could check it back to the local airports, they were checked and that they weren’t in that airport, but then they vanished, they were no longer in the system and the birds weren’t there and they never showed up, we’re talking 248 court ice chests full of bird trophies just vanished. It was either in the UK or Germany one, I can’t remember which. And to which, somebody finally said where you’re lucky you weren’t arrested for bringing a wildlife product through this country. It’s crazy.

Amber English: Yeah, it’s hard to keep up with. All you can do is just do your research as much as possible and try to have all the gun permits. Like Amsterdam, they’ll have a transport, like a transfer paper, and you can tape that to the front of your gun case so that anybody can see it and just tape it really well across the whole thing. But, yeah, that’s the unfortunate part about traveling with guns and just the stigma with it. It’s getting harder and harder to kind of travel around with it. But hopefully one day it’ll get better.

Ramsey Russell: I doubt it. Any parting shots, pun intended, for not missing targets?

Amber English: I would just say –

Ramsey Russell: Don’t miss.

Amber English: Well, just honestly try to have, but it’s all about having fun, number one, if you’re not having fun, like, what’s the point of doing it in general and just learn something from everybody. I mean, you can learn something from the old man who’s been doing it forever, or even a young kid. You can learn something from everyone and just have a good time and continue to learn and kind of look for a routine. Like I said, I don’t golf, but I’ve read a lot of golfing books and that’s really helped me a lot, too. They’ll spend a million dollars to study Tiger Woods. They’re not going to spend that on a shotgun student.

Ramsey Russell: What impressed me about competitive shooters like yourself, and I’ve asked so many questions about it getting in your head and the weight and the focus and everything like that, because it’s a totally different world than mine. And my approach to shooting all things equal is an open mind, a clear mind, don’t dwell on it, don’t think on it. I might say an f bomb in the blind. I might teach my Latin American guides to repeat after me at every miss. But at the end of the day, shrug it off and focus on the next heart. Just go with what you know and shoot this bird. And one time, Amber, I took to my point, you ever had a song stuck in your head? I mean, just, you wake up in the morning, you got this song in your head, and it follows you all day long. And so we were down in Argentina, my kids were, my boys were, I don’t know, 14, 16 that time frame right there, 12 and 14 and they could shoot good for that age and they’re both great shots today. But they were stinking it up down in Argentina, they just weren’t hitting on flip, and it got in their head. And we were riding out to an afternoon hunt to shoot doves around a house, where a lot of birds would come in and roost in this wood lot next to this home. And the driver, the car had just like a little thumb drive radio player. And those boys love Metallica, man, they love Metallica and guns n roses and stuff like that. And Sandman came on, and I push, repeat, and for the next 5 or 10 minutes, it was just Sandman over and over. When I got out of the car, I realized I couldn’t get that song out of my head. And I’m shooting some doves, and I look up, here come the driver walking by, singing Sandman just to himself and it just stuck in his head. And I asked myself, well, how the boys shooting? And he gave me a thumbs up. So I went over there to see my youngest son, and he was singing Sandman at the top of his lungs, not a care in the world and there was a circle, he was standing in the middle of a circle, a shotgun shell, because he was just shooting 365° and there were dead birds everywhere. Once he cleared his mind, it’s what I call my Sandman philosophy. Just quit thinking about it and just go pure instinct and usually, for guys like me, it works out best.

Amber English: Yeah. That’s the way to do it. Just feel the best you can and go with the roll with the punches.

Ramsey Russell: Amber, thank you very much for coming on today and telling us about it. And I wish you the best of luck. I hope to flip on the television and see you.

Amber English: I hope so, too. I don’t think they’ll play shooting on TV there for a while, maybe in the middle of the night, but I hope so. Thanks for your support, it’s been really fun to get to know you and hang out, and I hope we can go shoot ducks together soon.

Ramsey Russell: Let’s get Yarnell on the blind. I want to put yarnell in between me and you and get in his head and try to shoot all the birds before he can shoulder up. Can we do that together?

Amber English: Yeah, we can do that.

Ramsey Russell: Oh, red beard, it’d be fun to put him in the middle me and you on the end and try to hem him up. I would have as much fun as that I would shooting birds.

Amber English: Oh, yeah. That would be guaranteed entertainment right there.

Ramsey Russell: Of course he stands about 2ft taller than me and you, it could be tough to hem him up. But anyway, thank you, Amber. Folks, you all been listening to my friend, Gold Medal Olympian Amber English. Thank you all for listening this episode of Mojo’s Duck Season Somewhere podcast, we’ll see you next.