Attn Ladies! 75% Off !

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Subtitled : The Official THR Ladies Shotgunners Thread.

I darn near got trampled. I got the Ladies Attention tho'. :D

Ladies,

Please share your introduction to shotguns.
If it was Grandpa letting hold single shot .410 as a little girl, to remembering a shotgun over the mantle, seeing daddy go out to hunt rabbits or birds, any and everything.

Your first experiences with shotguns.
From Grandpa letting you shoot that little single shot .410, getting to hunt rabbits in the snow, popping a tin can - to being interested in Shooting clays or home defense.

How you learned.
Bad experiences from some smart aleck guy using a light gun with heavy load and turning you off shotguns to
That handsome fellow that really knew how to instruct with soft loads and getting a shotgun that was pretty, YOU liked, and it fit you.
Maybe just a bunch of other ladies invited you, and you felt well received and continued to learn.
Attended a known shooting school , be it for wingshooting, clay games or defensive training.

Guns.
Share your guns.
If you have only one because it was Grandpa's over the mantle, you bought one to be secure at home - or you have a variety of shotguns.

Experiences.
You shoot trap, skeet, 5 stand, or Sporting Clays.
Military, LEO experiences.
Use one to hunt birds, deer or turkey.
Reloading.

This is your thread to share. Toliet seat is down. Extra Toliet paper in the Restroom, and the candle is not scented (didn'twant to aggravate any sinuses as mine get with a scented one).

All sorts of Tea, and Coffee. Got the Vanilla Bean and Hazlenut - hey I might actually get some of this coffee and I like these.

Chocolate! You name it - I got a selection for you. Yeah I did homemade brownies...<hands in pockets, kicks foot>

Okay I know some about you ladies and experiences, Please share.

I contend THR ladies can beat other ladies in all sorts of Firearm Related Stuff, including shotguns.

pax...pax, would you stop with shooting rubber band across the room and post something. I mean CJ has a new shotgun and lilac shells. :)

Sandy Ashcraft, oh well I stay in trouble. At least Sadie is on my side...I think.

Lee Lapin - I know your better half the PhD has some experiences.

Regards,
Steve
 
MrsBozemanMT's story

From the Mrs

I was born to a hunting family, it’s naturally in the blood, but they stopped hunting about the time I turned 7. So, I never learned to shoot. I did however, ask my mom for her shotgun when she moved out of the family home. She had an old Winchester Model 12, 20ga. I had that around for years and never shot it.

In June I married a gun nut. (BozemanMT) :D After about 4 weeks, he dragged me out to the range, with that old model 12. He taught me to shoot pretty darn well. The first time I did about a 15 on the trap range and 0 on the skeet range. My model 12 only had a full choke, so I didn’t stand too much of a chance. However, I really enjoyed it.

On the way home from that first trip to the range, my husband stopped by a friend’s house and bought me a Lanber 12 ga. O/U. I shot pretty well with that gun. Problem was that it was a right-handed gun, and I’m a short person with a dominant left eye, so I shoot lefty.

One day shortly afterwards, we stopped by the gun fitter at the range we go to. He checked out the gun and said this is TERRIBLE! :cuss: it didn’t fit me at all. It was a cheap gun so we just had him cut down the stock to fit me instead of a full fitting. I started getting really good. I started beating my gun nut husband. Low 20’s in trap and 24's at Skeet, he was still beating me at Sporting Clays, but I would get tired before we got to the end of the course. Well anyway, that’s my excuse, and I’m sticking to it. He taught me that the most important thing a shooter should take to the range is his excuse. So I’ve mastered that. :rolleyes:

About 2 weeks ago, I finally got a real live left hand shotgun. :what: A beautiful Browning 525, 32” barrels. http://www.thehighroad.org/showthread.php?t=173936&highlight=525 Got it fully fitted and rebalance with about a ton of brass in the stock. Now, I’ve beaten him 3 out of the last 4 times we’ve shot Sporting Clays. We are both very competitive, but it works out ok. If I beat him, he can always say, “Hey, I taught her!” So it’s a win win situation for him.

For those women who might be wondering, why I shoot a 12 ga, it’s no problem, I shoot 1 oz loads that my husband and I reload ourselves, and I just shoot sweet as can be. I would recommend any women to take up shooting. It’s tons of fun, and women are just naturally better at it.:p It’s kinda fun watching the men squirm.

Mrs BozemanMT
 
Steve's fault

The first time I shot a shotgun was when Larry and I were dating. He went dove hunting and I went along. I got to shoot at a few but didn't like it much.

After we were married we started shooting silhouettes and I figured out I really like reactive targets.

Then Steve convinced Larry to buy a 28 guage. I told him I didn't like shotguns but I didn't know how much fun it is to shoot clays. They are reactive targets.

I think the best part is our Little Old Farm. We can go out back and shoot clays or pistols and just have fun. I can't wait to teach our Grandkids to shoot. They are just a little too small yet.
 
The first time I shot a long gun I was a child, don't remember how old, but not a toddler, and before I was a teenager. My grandfather let us shoot at some cans at the farm, behind the barn. I don't even remember what it was, but it was loud and kicked pretty hard. It would have been either a .410 or a single shot 12 gauge; as a child I'm sure either one would have seemed "loud and kicking". We didn't shoot a lot; just enough to make me not want to do it very often.

Though I've come to this new enthusiasm for guns sort of late, I think that I really have to give the credit to my parents, who let me be the tomboy that I was. I had my dolls, which I liked a lot and played with a lot. But I also had my little green plastic army men, to move around in various positions on the floor, and an air pellet gun, which I got to use out at the farm.

'Course, I also had my little double-holster set with the 6-shooters, and my little red cowboy hat, too. (A really early Christmas present--I look about 6 in the pics--:)

Thanks for asking.
 
This is Mz LeeLapin in reply.

Steve asks so many great leading questions. My father gave me a little twenty gauge when I was a girl. Introduced as one of the three kinds of firearms people need: pistols, rifles and shotguns, each a tool suited for a different aspect of the work people need firearms for.

I lost that shotgun during the dissolution of a marriage that was over before I was twenty-five and I am in my sixtieth year today.

My serious working partnerships with my shotguns began when I took up IPSC competition to help myself grow enough concentration, focus and brain cells to survive my graduate school years. IPSC shooters were all three gun shooters at heart, although three gun matches were less common than the pistol matches.

Well, my great gun club, in its formative years, decided they'd have a shotgun match on an off-weekend, and of course I was game to play the game. Wasn't much I wouldn't play in those years and my friends already knew I was safe and I would shoot anything they put in my hands.

So they devised this masterful point scoring system. We were going to score our shotgun match the way, I am told, golf is scored, with some sort of handicapping system.

So when I took up my shotgun and started out down what we happily called our jungle trail, most of what was explained to me was the handicapping system and very little was explained about much else. The last thing I said to the R.O. was "Okay, so all I have to do is go down this road and look for hidden IPSC targets, shoot the shoot side, don't shoot the no-shoot side, watch out for tin cans tied to trip strings, hit all the targets and I'm ALREADY STARTING OUT WITH MORE POINTS THAN ANYONE ELSE in the match, so I'm already winning just standing here?"

"Well, yeah," said the R.O.

So I went down the trail and shot all the targets and didn't blow up any tin cans. As I recall it took about eleven minutes, which was also part of the scoring system.

I was shooting the house shotgun, a twelve guage Mossberg pump, reloading out of my pockets. There was no pre-match drill or prep. My entire attention was on seeing those jungle targets and wired cans.

Now these are the lessons of that match, now legendary in their effects in my club.

(1) We never again used any scoring system with any sort of handicapping system.

(2) We never again used any proportion of any match fees as prize money.

And

(3) All female shotgunners were warned against the dreaded tit-lash.


Right, I won. The inside of my arm turned blue from shoulder to elbow because I let the Mossberg's stock drift, but apparently I maintained some proper semblance of the left-foot forward stance which whipped my breasts with every shot.

That shotgun went with me through the stages of my last competitive match, a two-day three gun match August 5-6, 1996, in Spring Lake, NC, where you had to carry EVERYTHING you were going to shoot each day, all day, or you didn't get to use it. That shotgun retired with honor: it had never missed a target in competion.

I cannot begin to convey to you the faith I have in shotguns. I make a shoot-no shoot decision EVERY time I pull ANY trigger, so that doesn't change, firearm to firearm. But more than any thing else on the earth that goes bang, most shotguns act like that old Mossberg, when my mind says RIGHTEOUS TARGET, the shotgun comes up and my finger squeezes the trigger, the shotgun goes bang and the target goes away.

Training and practice and BETTER GUNSMITHING improved my performance to no end with pistols and rifles, but the shotgun? A day in 1984 was the same as a day in 1996 as far as my shotgun was concerned.

You gotta love that, even in an inanimate object.

MzDrLL
 
My first experience with a shotgun turned me off of any type of gun for over thirty years. A friend of mine from college wanted to take me shooting and introduce me to guns. He handed me a 12 ga. double barrel with a hair trigger. I don't remember what kind but he told me to hold it up to my shoulder and pull the trigger. Nothing on how to hold it, recoil, etc. and not knowing anything, I did just that. Both barrels went off, I landed on my butt with my shoulder completely out of place. At age 53, I wanted to try to get weapons qualifed at work (prison) and bought a .357 and a 12 ga. Stood out in the field forever before I got up enough courage to try. Had an experienced person with me who told me the basics and shot the .357 with a full magnum load. Did the same with the shotgun--12 ga 00 buck. I will be 55 in April and now own 15 different types of weapons from .22's to .45's and everything in between. I still am not weapons qualifed at work--librarians don't have to be--but I have my CCW, taught safety classes, helped with CCW classes and taught other ladies how to shoot. I am also a competition shooter as well.
 
Dusty Rusty,
Welcome to THR!

I do not mean to pick on you -
Instead , you brought out something I knew would come out of this thread:

My first experience with a shotgun turned me off of any type of gun for over thirty years. A friend of mine from college wanted to take me shooting and introduce me to guns. He handed me a 12 ga. double barrel with a hair trigger. I don't remember what kind but he told me to hold it up to my shoulder and pull the trigger. Nothing on how to hold it, recoil, etc. and not knowing anything, I did just that. Both barrels went off, I landed on my butt with my shoulder completely out of place.
Click to expand...

I want all you Guys to read this. I mean read it again and understand this was NOT Responsible Firearm Ownership , No way to treat a lady, No way to introduce any new shooter, male, female, young, old...

Regards,

Steve
 
Love this thread, would like to see many more replies from the gals, even the ones who are still poor shotgunners. Not everyone has instructors, range availability, time and money to quickly become expert. I'm male and really just passable with a shotty but love 'em! Come on, gals, 'fess up!

Years ago, I dated a little red-headed country girl up in PA. Guess she was 18 or 19. For Christmas Big (6'8")brother and Dad bought her a 20 ga pump. Don't remember, maybe Hi-Standard? She shot it till her shoulder was black and blue for weeks. We split a short time later, had nothing to do with guns, just 2 kids going seperste way.I expect she's still shooting despite bad shotty experience.

Stay safe.
Bob
 
All right, I'll be honest: I have always hated shotguns.

In the past several years, I have slowly learned how to shoot them passably well -- not excellent by anyone's standards, but passably well -- but I still have no particular fondness for the platform.

First shotgunning memory, circa age 7 or 8: Dad and big brother and I were down in the river bottoms shooting tin cans. The gun would probably have been my brother's 20-gauge, because Dad didn't expect it would kick and promised me it would not. I don't remember being told how to hold it (though I probably was), and I don't remember how I stood (probably leaned back). Next thing I knew, I was sitting flat on my backside in the mud, and Dad was apologizing up one side and down the other -- an honest apology, not the "hahahha I gotcha" kind of apology.

It was a long time before I tried shotgun again.

When I got married, I pretty well put the guns away for years. Dad kept the shotgun I didn't want, though I had my little .22 rifle and a couple of others. It wasn't until a few years ago that I tried shotgunning again, and for various reasons, I ended up with a 12 gauge pump instead of a semi-auto 20. That choice probably hasn't helped my attitude much, but the reasons I had for choosing it seemed adequate to me at the time and still seem so.

What really hurt both my attitude and my shoulder was the fact that my stock was far too long for me when I first started shooting shotgun again. If you can't hold the shotgun easily, you sure as heck cannot hold it properly -- and if you can't hold it properly, you sure as heck cannot expect to shoot it comfortably. Lesson learned.

In the past few years, I've taken several classes in shotgunning, most of them taught by the incomparable Gila Hayes. This blonde, petite, feminine woman really knows her way around shotguns, and it is a positive treat to watch her work with one. Have to add here, sadly, that the most sexist comments I've ever heard on the range have come from shotgunners -- big strong guys who cannot believe that a female would be able to handle any shotgun. One of the reasons I so much enjoy watching Gila work is simply the thrill I get out of watching macho guys rearrange their prejudices in her presence.

This past summer, I obtained a Knoxx SpecOps stock to put on my 870. It certainly made shooting the shotgun a lot more enjoyable than it had been in the past. I can't help but suspect if I'd had good recoil-absorbing gear years ago, I might have avoided the bad attitude that still occasionally plagues my shotgun work.

My shotgunning continues to improve, but shotgun still is a long way from being my first choice for a fun day at the range. I keep expecting that if I just get better enough, eventually the light will come on for me and I'll begin to get the enjoyment out of shotgun work that most other people evidently do.

pax
 
My introduction to guns was about 2 months ago. I had been thinking about learning to shoot for a while. an I mentiond this to a guy I work with when I saw him looking at guns online one shift. He started helping me learn what I needed and one shift about a week later he asked If I would be interested in going to the range with him the next day. I said sure...why not.

Now a month or so later I am pricing Ruger GP 100's and posting my 43rd post. Only1asterisk has been a great mentor and Working man has been very nice about answering stupid newbie questions that I can't figure out on my own. I have to say that Gun folk are some of the nicest people I have ever met. They are more that willing to hgelp newbies and just say hi. so to all the people here on THR...thanks for making my transition from ignorant curiosity to learning newbie:D
 
Have to add here, sadly, that the most sexist comments I've ever heard on the range have come from shotgunners -- big strong guys who cannot believe that a female would be able to handle any shotgun. One of the reasons I so much enjoy watching Gila work is simply the thrill I get out of watching macho guys rearrange their prejudices in her presence.
Click to expand...

This is so true.
Three times so far in the 6 months, the wife and I have walked into a new sporting clays course, and the guy behind the counter goes, "one for shotguns today"
:banghead: :banghead: :cuss:
I see my wife just seethe.
Why would you ask the question that way? You should do it the other way and ask if it's two shooters and then be corrected.
Stupid.
 
Just bought my first one yesterday. A used Browning BPS for shooting trap. Before this, I used my son's Mossberg.

I'm a notoriously bad shot. It's one of my charms. :)

But I have fun and that's what counts.

I'll let you know how league goes.
 
I appreciate the responses from everyone.

PM sent to pax.

There are reasons I walk[ed] off from some aspects of my life. Why I fired some folks from my life and quit some firearm competitions.

I am ashamed to be around some firearm owners, some are shotgunners I am sad to say.

Disrespect in introducing new shooters to shotgun / any gun is flat wrong.

Regards,

Steve
 
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