Shotgun Instructor Class

SCSon on the range

The SCSon shoots with the SCTP group at our local range.  The head of the group sent an email explaining they had an instructor class coming up and the needed "instructional candidates" (Crash Test Dummies).  The deal was too good to pass up - The SCSon shoots free courtesy of the SCTP group, and I get free instruction and half price clays.  I call that a screamin' deal!

Shoot like a girl*

We signed up for the Saturday afternoon session but I guess they needed more.  "Can you make Sunday too?" was in the reply email.  So I forwarded the invite to our good blog friends Mz VRWC and Exurban Kevin.

Broken Bird

The SCSon shoots 100 birds a month, but most of that is at night under the lights.  He does better in the day light.

The closest thing I've ever had to formal shotgun instruction was a round of skeet where an old timer saw I was struggling and gave me some pointers.  I explained this to our instructor "Rich" adding "So lets assume I'm a total noob and likely everything I "know" is wrong."

One of the things that really helped was Rich showing me how much lead to use and when to break the shot.  "Don't look at the bird, look at the leading edge of the bird!"  By the end of the afternoon, I was calling where the shot went on the missed birds, based on the sight picture.  The top picture shows Rich sighting along with the SCSon.  I assume he did the same for me but I never noticed it in the moment, it wasn't intrusive.  

One down, one to go.

BTW, while we understand some parts of the country are shut down due to snow, you might also notice a distinct lack of white stuff on the ground here.  This is why we put up with summer temps in the high century-teens.  Or to quote a phrase: "It may be hot but at least I don't have to shovel it off my driveway!"  Stay safe you guys!

Click on the pics for fuller size.  Photo credits to SCSon, ExKev, Mz VRWC & your humble host.  It was my camera but It was passed around for all to take pics.  Film is cheap - "The camera has an 8G card and I have an extra battery in my pocket!"  I obviously didn't take the bottom pic because I'm the one in the funny hat.  But I'm pretty sure I took the top one.  I'm pretty sure because it's yet another in a long line of my trademarked "almost a really good shot".    It would have been a much better pic if I'd not cut off the cactus on the right.  Grrr...

* for the humor impaired, "shoot like a girl" is high praise, not a chauvinistic comment.  In this specific case MzVRWC can and will out shoot me every day of the week and twice on Sundays.  She works at it and practices more than I do and the results show on the time sheets.  See also Molly, Julie, Karen and thousands more.  I am glad I am part of their sport.

I like the photo sequence because it caught the ejected shell and the follow on shot of the broken bird.  Not sure if it was all in the same shot but I like the story it tells.