An Interesting Juxtaposition...

[Dave McCracken]

Being Sunday morning, with nothing on the work radar and for once an empty Honeydo list,I went to PGC and fed my trap Jones.Hit 93/100,not bad considering.

More importantly, I got to see some old friends and make a new one, along with helping a couple rookies a little.

During all this, I noted a young girl handling a 20 gauge Express. It was a little long for her, she being about 4'8" and 12 years old. She was breaking the majority of her birds nicely, her mom videotaping as she went. Dad was also shooting an Express, and doing well.

Anyways, as things go, we ended up squadded together. Her Dad was also there, and a guy I've shot with whose big enough for me to hide behind. An old friend and myself filled the card.

The old friend is this case is Charley. Of the Geezer League, he's 75 and not kicking as much butt as in days of yore. He wears a back brace full time now, had an operation last year he's still in recovery from, but his mind is sharp and his skills intact. Due to the back brace he wasn't wearing his famous old shooting vest or the jacket his wife made from old shot bags and covered with straight patches from four decades and several games. He handled his old O/U like Perlman does his Stradivarius, and ground up targets with monotonous regularity. Charley and the girl seemed to have the same amount of fun, a fact I gladly took note of.

As I wiped off the TB and packed up, I reflected on this. Having the young girl and Charley on the same squad brought home again the fact that shotgunning can be universal. Age,size,health etc, need not affect how much fun we can get out of our gunning, though admittedly they can affect performance.

May both of them have many more happy years of life, and shotgunning...

 

[kudu]

I hear you Dave. I stopped at my local club saturday after working in the morning, didn't have a gun but went to BS and see what was going on. As it turned out there had just been a Hunters Education class that morning that was just breaking up and many of the youngsters, both boys and girls seemed to just love the target shooting part of gun handling. It looked like the club may have picked up 10-12 new members just by helping to sponsor the hunter ed class. I was hearing comments like 'when can we come back dad' or 'mom' as the case was for several kids, and 'boy was that awesome I can't wait to come back and shoot.' There were several adults also that had never been there that were getting information on how to join the club. It's good to know that there will be some people that will keep the shooting tradition going. As soon as my girls are old enough to shoot I will make sure I get them a gun that is set up and fit to them to give them as good a chance at enjoying shooting sports as I'm able to.

 

[Dave McCracken]

Thanks, Kudu. It's not just kids. When exposed to the shooting sports, open minded adults exclaim about how much fun it is. My Sicilian Granma received some handgun instruction from me when in her 70s, and had more fun than can be imagined.

Mom wasn't fond of centerfire rifles or shotguns, but was a whiz with a 22 rifle and passing fair with Pop's old 38-44 Heavy Duty.

As for shotguns, my Boy Scout troop had a week long camping vacation at the Western Md farm my father's hunt club leased every year. A big part of the activities included clays with shotguns. When someone got in the way of the arm on that old trap, we got in some first aid practice too. We also plinked with 22s.

Back to this and the universality of shotgunning. Some of the folks there were stereotypical middle aged white male trapshooters.Others were female,and/or not Caucasian,and of divers ages. A goodly numher of kids from teens to toddlers were there also. Some shot, others didn't.