RetiredUSNChief
Member
Nice! That's some sweet shooting!
People can be quite surprising in their abilities, especially new shooters. I believe many times it's because they don't have as many preconceived notions as others and are willing to put in the effort to learn to shoot well.
Any time I take someone out shooting, especially for the first time, I make it about "fun". Shooting has to be fun...or people won't enjoy it, and things they don't enjoy they don't come back to.
Fun is more important than accuracy, although there's no arguing that nailing the target consistently and accurately is fun. Teach the basics and have fun doing it and everything else will follow.
The first time we took our kids out shooting "real" guns, our oldest daughter wanted to shoot my Remington 870. She's not a big girl by any stretch, and given her age at the time (probably around 12 or so), it seemed like she wasn't much bigger than the shotgun. I stood behind her, ready to catch the shotgun if she dropped it. She leaned into it like a pro and nailed her zombie target smack in the center of the head! She looked back at me and saw me staring at her. "What? It's a zombie, Daddy! Gotta be a head shot!"
She did the same thing at a later date with my Colt SAA with her first shot. Right in the middle of the face! "Zombie, Daddy!"
My wife is pretty good, too. First time I went shooting with her back when we were dating, she was putting plenty of .45 ACP holes center of mass on silhouette targets. Several years later, though, when I took her to the range with her new PPK/S, she was all over the place and mildly upset that all my shots with her pistol were smack on center of mass. I told her that plenty of people couldn't even hit the target, much less consistently put holes in it like she was doing, even if it wasn't what she was used to. I asked her if she had fun shooting her new "Bond gun". "Yes!" "Then that's all that matters...because that means you'll enjoy coming back to shoot more!"
People can be quite surprising in their abilities, especially new shooters. I believe many times it's because they don't have as many preconceived notions as others and are willing to put in the effort to learn to shoot well.
Any time I take someone out shooting, especially for the first time, I make it about "fun". Shooting has to be fun...or people won't enjoy it, and things they don't enjoy they don't come back to.
Fun is more important than accuracy, although there's no arguing that nailing the target consistently and accurately is fun. Teach the basics and have fun doing it and everything else will follow.
The first time we took our kids out shooting "real" guns, our oldest daughter wanted to shoot my Remington 870. She's not a big girl by any stretch, and given her age at the time (probably around 12 or so), it seemed like she wasn't much bigger than the shotgun. I stood behind her, ready to catch the shotgun if she dropped it. She leaned into it like a pro and nailed her zombie target smack in the center of the head! She looked back at me and saw me staring at her. "What? It's a zombie, Daddy! Gotta be a head shot!"
She did the same thing at a later date with my Colt SAA with her first shot. Right in the middle of the face! "Zombie, Daddy!"
My wife is pretty good, too. First time I went shooting with her back when we were dating, she was putting plenty of .45 ACP holes center of mass on silhouette targets. Several years later, though, when I took her to the range with her new PPK/S, she was all over the place and mildly upset that all my shots with her pistol were smack on center of mass. I told her that plenty of people couldn't even hit the target, much less consistently put holes in it like she was doing, even if it wasn't what she was used to. I asked her if she had fun shooting her new "Bond gun". "Yes!" "Then that's all that matters...because that means you'll enjoy coming back to shoot more!"
