I went through most of the typical excuses pretty early in my clay shooting career. So now I have a new approach that seems to work better. I show up with a gun that has the barrels oriented in the wrong way and made around the turn of the last century. It's important to never have the same gun. People are shocked that you're shooting such a relic and they are somewhat stand offish when you get into the stand. They have NO idea what the gun is because it wasn't made in the last 6 months in some foreign country. And then pretty soon it starts; someone sees a piece come off the target that I was not within a city block of. And then the scorer starts seeing breaks as the target descends into the weeds that I was not even close to. It's a wonderful thing to be an old eccentric misguided gun collector just trying to break at least some of the targets you're shooting at; with a little help from your freinds and squad mates.