sturmruger
Member
I have a friend who has always been standoffish when it comes to my favorite past time shooting. He is one of those really stubborn guys that will not admit that he enjoyed something, or even admit that he had an ok time. He can be conservative on some issues and liberal on others. Lately my big thing has been shooting IPSC. I shoot Thursday nights and some Saturdays. Two weeks ago I finally convinced my wife and best friend to head out for my weekly league night. At first they were both kind of bored, but as Shaun started to understand the intricacies of our game he started to become more interested, not that he admitted as much. Unfortunately my wife was as bored as ever.
A couple of days later he asked me if we could go shooting sometime. I knew he was semi interested, but wasn’t expecting that kind of response. It took us a couple of weeks to find a good time to go. We went last night to the local range. Wed night is trap league so the pistol range is a ghost town. At first he shot a mag through each of my handguns. He liked my Steyr M40 and SA XD40 the best. Then we got some IPSC targets and some steel pepper poppers and setup a mini practice stage. He enjoyed the practice stage and had a big smile on his face. Then I pulled out our club timer and we tried shooting with the timer. If anyone has ever shot against at timer it is a world of difference. We started adding up the practice points and dividing by the time to find out what our hit factors were. He could shoot pretty accurately, but he just couldn’t get moving fast enough to get his times down.
After shooting we went out and grabbed a drink and some food. I was by no means steering the conversation towards guns, but he kept asking me questions so we ended up talking guns for the rest of the night. I guess he isn’t solidly a gun person yet, but I think he is really interested in shooting as a hobby. He is a single guy that doesn’t really have much to do to blow of steam. I think he is seriously thinking about buying a gun and starting to shoot every week. The tough part for him is going to be deciding on a handgun. We are going out next Wed so maybe after that he will make up his mind.
My goal is to turn one person every six months. Maybe that is low, but I like to work on the slowly so they don’t even know I am trying to convert them. Damn I’m sneaky!!
A couple of days later he asked me if we could go shooting sometime. I knew he was semi interested, but wasn’t expecting that kind of response. It took us a couple of weeks to find a good time to go. We went last night to the local range. Wed night is trap league so the pistol range is a ghost town. At first he shot a mag through each of my handguns. He liked my Steyr M40 and SA XD40 the best. Then we got some IPSC targets and some steel pepper poppers and setup a mini practice stage. He enjoyed the practice stage and had a big smile on his face. Then I pulled out our club timer and we tried shooting with the timer. If anyone has ever shot against at timer it is a world of difference. We started adding up the practice points and dividing by the time to find out what our hit factors were. He could shoot pretty accurately, but he just couldn’t get moving fast enough to get his times down.
After shooting we went out and grabbed a drink and some food. I was by no means steering the conversation towards guns, but he kept asking me questions so we ended up talking guns for the rest of the night. I guess he isn’t solidly a gun person yet, but I think he is really interested in shooting as a hobby. He is a single guy that doesn’t really have much to do to blow of steam. I think he is seriously thinking about buying a gun and starting to shoot every week. The tough part for him is going to be deciding on a handgun. We are going out next Wed so maybe after that he will make up his mind.
My goal is to turn one person every six months. Maybe that is low, but I like to work on the slowly so they don’t even know I am trying to convert them. Damn I’m sneaky!!
