If you love the outdoors and you love the solitude of the woods, then this is the place for you. I am sure that no matter the time of year, it is special. My time spent in this lovely place (which shall herein remain anonymous and unidentified) was autumn: the colorful foliage and the smell of pine trees abounded. As Jerry once sang, there was “not a chill to the Winter but a nip in the air.”
If I could die and go to heaven, this is surely the type of place where I’d like to be, I thought.
I had travelled to this place to be with friends for the weekend. No place I’d rather be. The accommodations were cozy, the friends old and special. The lake glittered in the sunlight during the day, and shone in the moonlight as well. It was getting colder, and at night that was surely emphasized by the factor of the wind chill. There was a comforting fire, oft-times blazing and sometimes aglow with coals, in the big, stone fireplace.
My buddy who invited me up to his “camp” informed before I went that we would be shooting trap and skeet. “Do you have a gun?, he asked. Yes, I do. However, once I figured out that this destination was too far to drive to from home, I decided to fly. That took using my gun out of the equation. “Not a problem,” he said. “They have guns.”
The format as I was told was an informal club trap and skeet shooting tournament. I willingly said “I’m in” and informed my friend of my novice (at best) standing shooting clay pigeons.
The weather on the first day was glorious! Beautiful blue skies sans a cloud to be seen. It was cool but not cold with a slight breeze.
The atmosphere among fellow shooters was informal and cordial. There were “pros” from the club offering advice and even their guns if you needed one. My experience with shooting clays with others has often been somewhat akin to this: it’s one of those “we’ve all been there before” things similar to golf, where others are nice and tolerant of any weaknesses, flaws, or errors in your game because they, too, have indeed been “there” when they first started the sport.
On that day, we would be shooting “wobble,” which is a format with five stands on a platform probably about ten feet off the ground. True to other “stand” formats, each shooter would shoot a total of twenty five shells, five at a stand, and rotate to each stand until he had been at each one. The clay pigeons, or clay discs circa four inches in diameter, are launched out from at least twelve different directions and heights: some clays are going left to right and vice versa, some are going away and some are coming at you. This makes the experience quite challenging (or very challenging in my case). The operator would give directions from where the clay was coming and where it would be heading, which was a big help. But even then, hitting those clays was difficult to do. As I understand it, this sport does not require dead aim (like shooting a rifle and trying to hit a still target). This target is moving …. and fast! I liken it to throwing a football to a moving receiver: you have to “lead” or throw the ball far enough in front of your receiver so that the time it takes the ball to finish its flight coincides with the progress of the receiver. If you don’t, then said receiver who is moving will keep moving and your throw will be behind him. Thrown ahead, and the ball will reach the receiver and accurate timing will have been achieved. Well, it’s the same with shooting clays. You must lead (either up or down or left or right) the target with your barrel. OK. Seems easy enough.
The four fellows on my team, all of whom were over half my age, seemingly had twice the talent at this skeet shooting thing. They “carried us,” you might say. I myself managed to hit probably ten to twelve out of the twenty five shells and to not totally embarrass myself. The others shooters? Well, if their titles weren’t “pro,” they sure did comport themselves as such. To hit twenty three out of twenty five clays for them was par for the course. It was amazing to watch them shoot!
And so, we all agreed what a good time we had, said our goodbyes until tomorrow, and departed back to our camp.
We would live to see another another day of shooting.
The next day dawned, and it was not at all like the day before. There was less wind in the air, but it was colder, darker and cloudier, with rain in the forecast.
We jumped in our cars and made our way to the range, which was about ten miles away.
The same “players” had gathered together for this next event, but this contest took place a few hundred yards away in another, quite different location. Today the format would be another five stand but on solid ground, not like the tower format of the day before. I had experienced this before: the five stands were situated almost, but not completely, in a semi-circle. Other than that, the scenario was similar in that the launchers propelling the clays were coming from twelve different directions, angles, and heights. Okay, I thought, I can get this down and hopefully do as well or better than I had the day before.
That’s where I was wrong.
That’s where things got trickier. Much trickier.
I stepped to my stand, one of five in a rotation that would see me at each stand, with variations of shots at each one. Again, the shooter is told by the launch operator from where the clays would be coming, a seemingly advantageous position in which to be. When a clay was launched low and either from the left or right, it seemed to blend into the background foliage of brush and trees. It was hard to see. As a shooting strategist, that’s what I told myself. The clays were hard to see because their orange tint was disguised by the golds, oranges and yellows of the leaves in the background. 0 for 1. 0 for 2. Then when the clays were launched into the sky and from either side, it was like I was blind to some extent and could not see the clay until the last second. 0-8. 0-9. 1-10. This was absolutely the worst position that a shooter could be in, mentally or physically. I found myself at each stand in this mental and physical state: I literally could not see the clay until the last split second. What? This is extremely difficult in the best of circumstances, when you could see the clay throughout its flight and could lead your shot with the barrel in order to have have a chance to hit it. Time and time again, particularly when the clay was launched from the side, it was as if I was blind to where the clay was throughout its flight until it was too late, each blast from my shotgun completely wasted. If I were in a firefight in the jungles of Viet Nam, I would have been a goner long ago, I thought. In a fit of frustration, embarrassment, anger, and pity, I finished my round hitting a mere two out of twenty five clays.
I rationalized to myself that the day before, on the wobble platform, I could see the clays after they were launched every single time. My teammates were good sports. They had done quite well on this, the second day of shooting, but even they had not scored quite as well as on the previous day.
Later that day, I recalled my experience with by friend’s girlfriend, and received a bit of consolation. She had been with us the day before and was quite a good shot. “Ya know,” she said, “the first time I shot at that five-stand, the same thing happened to me. I found that I absolutely could not see the clays when they were launched from either the right or left. When I asked the instructors about it, they told me that it was merely a matter of keen peripheral vision.”
“Oh man!,” I said. “That explains a lot!” My ego, having been bruised beyond recognition because of such a terrible showing, received a slight boost.
“Your peripheral vision is extremely important in those situations,” she continued. “You just can’t count on seeing or even having a chance of hitting a clay if you can’t see it, out of the corner of your eye, when it is initially launched.”
“Oh!,” I exclaimed. “That makes me feel a little bit better.”
“And so, yeah,” she said. “I found that the next time I shot there, I did much better.”
I still look forward to some day revisiting this beautiful part of the country, and even the trap and skeet range there.
I don’t know if I will ever have the chance to shoot again at that five-stand skeet range, but rest assured, if I do, I will be looking out of the corner of my eye like never before when doing so.
I’ll be looking for clays on the periphery.
Credit:
The Grateful Dead. “Scarlet Begonias.” From The Mars Hotel, Grateful Dead Records, 1974. CD.
