Outdoors

   Since I was a little kid, I have owned and shot guns. Starting at about seven years old with a BB gun shooting tin cans and sparrows up to the present, I have used shotguns, rifles, and handguns for hunting and various shooting competition or games. At one time, I thought of myself as a fairly good shot. The older a person becomes, the more they realize, there is always someone better. My first realization of this came at shooting sporting clays. This entails using a shotgun to shoot clay targets thrown at different directions and angles. Being quite proficient at shooting pheasants and quail, I knew this would be easy. It did not take very many rounds of sporting clays to discover I was not the expert I thought I was. Years later, my skills have improved at sporting clays, but I am far from expert.

   Last weekend, I discovered a new game I was not great at. It is much like target shooting a person did as a kid. This continues to this day when there is more than one person with a .22 rifle and a little time on their hands. This is called silhouette shooting.

   Silhouette shooting is off hand shooting small metal cutouts of various sized animals at fixed distances. Seven animals, ranging in size from about two inches to about six inches are shot at with forty rounds in groups of five shots from twenty-five yards. When the squad determines the total number they each hit, or missed, as the case may be, the series is repeated at fifty yards. How hard could that be? For some reason, it is much more difficult than I originally thought. One reason is, a person does not normally shoot a rifle without bracing on something, when squirrel hunting, I always find a handy tree to steady myself. Elk hunting, I like to lie prone, so I can steady myself with two elbows on the ground. Standing straight up and shooting at a stationary two-inch target is more difficult than it should be, especially since it is only twenty-five or fifty yards.

   There are classes for shooting scoped rifles, open sights, and pistols. I decided to try in both open sight and scoped. When I was twelve years old, I saved up money by baling hay during the summer and collecting bounty on crows. I bought a Ruger 10/22 with my savings. A few years later, I put a scope on it and have been using it this way since that time. Over the years, it has shot thousands of rounds, and I thought I could shoot it quite well. The only person I beat on the scoped squad was a ten-year-old kid. Last year, for my birthday, my wife bought me a new CZ open site .22. Using the logic of a women knowing nothing about guns, she bought the nice looking one. She chose well as it not only is a fine-looking firearm, but it also shoots well. I felt much better about myself and life in general after placing second in the open class.

   There were shooters at the meet aged from about ten years old to close to eighty. A full range of prices of rifles could be seen on the gun rack, from antique single shots to high dollar target rifles. We all had a lot of fun with good, friendly competition. I would recommend this sport to anyone. It will improve a person’s shooting skill as well as keeping one humble.