I was on vacation last week, and spent it on some trigger time, and worked on reloading as well. I shot 720 rounds over two days of practice at the gun club, mainly doing transitional drills as fast as possible, but also shooting groups. During a few drills, I didn't fire my gun on certain shots, and initially thought maybe I was outrunning the trigger, but that seems preposterous since my fastest splits were 0.17 seconds. Much more likely that I wasn't slacking out enough for the trigger to reset. The practice paid off very well during the 3-Gun match yesterday, when I aimed nearly all my shots.
Which leads me to... modifying shotshells. Before High Plains, I bought some Winchester slugs that didn't fit my shell caddies, being about 1/16" to 3/32" too long. So I sanded the end down, and used them just well, and had several left over. Fast forward to yesterday, starting off a stage shooting slugs out to 50 and 100 yards. Using the rest of these slugs, my second slug fell apart right as it was entering the chamber mouth, and I spent what felt like five minutes trying to dig the slug and part of the shell out of the chamber while holding the bolt back. I won't be modifying any ammo destined for competition again. Also, the last slug I had loaded to fire at that array was a high velocity slug (1600fps), which I totally forgot about during the rush to clear the one that fell apart. I wasn't prepared to shoot the high velocity slug, and now my shoulder is sore. I suppose that lesson leads to using consistent ammo, which I haven't held to with the shotgun.