You sure he said "...never look at the target until it clears the barrel-rib-bead area..." and not "...never look FOR the target until it clears the barrel-rib-bead area..."?
This depends on how high you hold the gun before you call the bird. Trap is a game of minimal movement, ideally with minimal vertical movement and mostly horizontal movement. Some people hold the gun too high in an attempt to minimize the vertical movement, but doing this makes the target acquisition slower, and then sometimes people lift their head to look for the bird, which is very bad.
1-3 ft above the house sounds about right, depends on how people perceive height at a distance I guess.
As regarding to "So, your eye doesn't go away from the bead when looking for the bird." and "It is true that the bird can get away and one moves after it, but what we were instructed to do is get the bead onto the bird. That is, we are moving the bead toward the bird by keeping it present while looking at the bird." With all due respect, to me the first sentence seems to contradict the last one. How would one move the bead towards the bird while looking at the bird and NOT lose sight of the bead?
Picture this scenario: you are on the 1st station, you mount the gun and call for the bird, you get a extreme left flying bird. The instance your eye picks up the bird and locks on to the bird, you can bet you've lost sight of the bead, the bead won't even be in your peripheral vision, it's gone, left behind. Now this doesn't mean you've moved your head, your head stays on the gun, but your eyes have turned to the left in their socket as opposed to the starting position, where they were looking ahead.
Doesn't matter how quick you react, this step ALWAYS takes place. Now, after your body started to react, and you've accelerated your gun from motionless to a steady swing, then you will be able to look at the bird while having the bead in your peripheral vision, because the gun has started to catch up somewhat to the bird.
It is possible of course to have the peripheral vision of the bead from when the bird is launched to until the bird is broken or otherwise, it is possible WHEN you get a bird that is launched in an angle that is not to the extreme left or right. Say a bird that's going straight away from you, then yeah, you can pretty much maintain the eyes, bead, bird relationship, in any other scenario the bead will be 1st behind the bird and then catch up and over take the bird.
One last thing, when he said "The idea is to move your eyes and the bead together. " I'm almost positive he meant "The idea is to move your HEAD and the bead together."
I've spent some time reading what you wrote Gasanmu and am not sure I agree with all of it. Daro said "...never look at the target until it clears the barrel-rib-bead area...". We only played with moving to the streak at the end of the workshop when we had gotten a bit quicker and had started preserving the bead-barrel-rib relationship. So, your eye doesn't go away from the bead when looking for the bird. The idea is to move your eyes and the bead together. It is true that the bird can get away and one moves after it, but what we were instructed to do is get the bead onto the bird. That is, we are moving the bead toward the bird by keeping it present while looking at the bird. It does take time to move the body, as you say, and this may well be why speed was emphasized in the workshop as well as various kinds of stances and movements and so on. It also may be why Daro is very finicky about the kinds of releases he gets too. I don't know. He does attribute misses to poor (slow) releases. One thing I said before that didn't get across accurately was that, speaking for myself, when the bead disappears while I'm moving to the bird I often still hit it. I think that probably means the movement has made a correct relationship between the bead and the bird. I 'don't' see the bead again until 'after' I have shot whether I hit or miss. (If I think about having lost the site and look for it I will miss.) In fact, I automatically look to see where the bead is 'after' I've shot to get some idea of what the gun's relationship to the bird was. I thought this would ensure that I followed through well enough as well as giving me some idea about why I hit or missed.
