Dan’s Notes on With Winning in Mind (PDF Included)
I want to share something personal today — something that means a lot to me, and I think it’ll mean a lot to many of you too.
A good friend of mine, Dan Ehlers, gave me the notes you'll find in the attached PDF. Dan was one heck of a trapshooter, a straight shooter in life, and one of the first guys who ever really encouraged me when we were building the Crivitz Trap Team back in the spring of 2022. We met not long after I moved to Crivitz, and before I knew it, we were shooting together regularly, talking shop, and I ended up becoming friends with his whole crew. His best friend Jon, his brother Tim, and Ryan.
Dan passed away in October of 2024. And man… I miss him. I miss sending him my shot report after a shoot. I miss the phone calls, the banter - especially the Army vs. Air Force jabs we traded every time we talked.
Dan was the one who introduced me to Lanny Bassham’s With Winning in Mind, and he refused to give me his notes until I read the book myself. (And he checked - every time.) The book is also on Audible, and I still go back to it pretty regularly. It’s one of those systems you don’t just “read once.” You revisit it, you apply it, and you keep finding value in it.
If you don’t already have a mental system, Lanny gives you a damn good one - especially with his Triad State model. Dan lived by this stuff. He believed in it. And he used it. And if you’ve ever shot with him, you know it showed.
So in honor of Dan - and in the spirit of sharing the things that actually help us grow - I’m sharing his handwritten notes here. I cleaned them up and put them into a PDF so the community can save them, study them, and use them.
I highly recommend grabbing a copy of With Winning in Mind if you haven’t already. And keep Dan’s notes nearby as you go - they hit the key points and summarize the heart of the system in a way only someone who lived it could do.
Hope these help you the same way they helped me. And here’s to Dan - a great friend, a damn good trapshooter, and someone I’ll always remember when I step on the line. Last summer, Jon, Tim, Ryan and I all threw in to have memorial stones made and put in place for Dan and Dan & Tim's Dad, Richard at the Wisconsin Trapshooting Association Home Grounds in Rome, Wisconsin. It was a deserving tribute and I am looking forward to getting the four of us together again for a photo over those stones.
Pictured L to R, me, Dan, My son Jack, Jon, & Tim at Westshore Sportsman's Club in 2023.
— Randall