An Educational Excursion
A couple of months ago my husband returned from his weekly Friday night coaching session at the local gun range. All winter he coaches young people in the art of competitive rifle and pistol marksmanship. With the season over he apparently did not yet have his fill of observing trigger-controlling neophytes clutch firearms of various calibers and try to score points by hitting targets, for this is what befell my ears:
"We are going to shoot traps? Fred off of Scooby Doo will be horrified!" I replied drolly. I knew full well what trap shooting was, however, one must keep up contentious spouse appearances. It's for the children.
My Polynesian husband projected me a "look." Here is that same look captured on the face of another relatively famous person of Polynesian descent:
My husband is more than slightly proficient with firearms. He shot competitively throughout high school, spent his career in the military, owned a gun store, was a firearms instructor, is now a 4H shooting sports leader, and is a certified range safety officer that does all manner of volunteer work for everyone from the Boy Scouts to the local shooting clubs. Both of my children shoot competitively, and are rather well versed in the utilization and safety of boom sticks. Me, well, I can use a gun safely, but as a right handed, left eye dominant person, let's just say that the awkward is for real.
The husband thought we would like trap shooting though, and also thought it was an activity that we could all do together. I'm always up for trying something new, and was pretty excited to get a lesson from a lady at a skeet and trap club.
We pulled into the local skeet and trap club one fine, recent Saturday morning for our "lesson." This might be time to mention a peculiar quirk about our family; we might project that we know absolutely nothing about whatever it is that we are doing. My husband is the most laid back person I have ever met, I kind of think it is the Hawaiian who spent a good chunk of time in a war zone mentality thing that makes him project this "could care less chill." My children, they are super laid back too, probably because their lives are not complicated nor full of strife, and me, well I'm a twitchy little squirrel-hobbit of barely contained unease.
This projection of chill (and in my case almost contained spazziness), makes a lot of people develop interesting first impressions of our abilities. This phenomenon played out as our lesson progressed.
Our instructor was Rhonda, and she was incredibly knowledgeable and competent. We patiently listened to her, told her how the children had never shot a shotgun before, how I was pretty much a noob at everything, and my husband managed to be conspicuously absent for most of the initial "talk." Rhonda's demeanor, although welcoming, could not be described as warm, and I smiled multiple times inwardly thinking that she must have thought we were gung ho newbies with not a lick of gun safety training or knowledge between us.
We walked outside to the trap field and the hubs and I let the children go first. Apparently it is a big deal to even hit a clay pigeon when you shoot trap for the first time, or so Rhonda said, so when our son annihilated 14 of them on his first ever trap shoot round and first time with a shotgun, I was slightly proud.
I noticed Rhonda kept looking at us with a little crinkle of puzzlement on the edges of her shrewd eyes. We just smiled and waved. Although, I have to admit that I was rather fascinated by this group of people clumped together to our right. They were all dressed in the exact same shade of khaki cargo pants, they all had on black polo shirts, and they were all armed like a Hollywood version of a special forces team. Curious.
My attention returned to trap shooting, as it was my turn to give it a try. Full GK disclosure here, I feel incredibly awkward handling firearms. It's the whole having to shoot with my left hand thing. I still managed to blast five pigeons out of the sky, and I really enjoyed the whole point and shoot aspect of trap shooting, and I even got a compliment from Instructor Rhonda about my "indexing."
The great personality warming of our instructor happened in full when it was the husband's turn to shoot. He blew all five of the clay birds out of the sky, and continued to do so with each position that we worked through (There were five). The look on Rhonda's face was priceless as she stepped back and looked at all of us again. We just smiled blankly in return.
Shooting trap is a lot of fun! There is nothing quite like lining up and trying to get ahead of the bird. It is quite a bit different than shooting rifle and pistol as you point and pull the trigger instead of aim and squeeze. My daughter and I were enthusiastically invited to a ladies trap clinic in September, and we are going! Rhonda, as she jotted our info down, said she was glad we were coming and was going to put us in:
"The advanced trap class."
It was then that she saw me staring at the khaki commandos once again. We had been talking about the differences between shooting shotgun verses rifle and pistol. She said:
The group of folks that were prepared for imminent doom were from a local company that offered firearms training services. Apparently it can be difficult for tactically trained people to grasp shooting shotgun because it is a different method of shooting. I can understand that, what I was trying to wrap my brain around was why in the world one of the storm troopers needed 6 pistol magazines and two tactical knives on his person to go to a shotgun shooting instructional class. They all clinked like tank tracks when they walked by, and I wondered if there were hidden armaments on their persons as well.
We are going to be taking a special trip this winter, a trip that I will be writing about in future posts, and most of the places that we will be staying have a skeet and trap range. I am looking forward to some friendly family competition on the range, and maybe spying a khaki commando or two in their non-native habitat.
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A buddy from work and I used to take a long lunch on Fridays and hit the shooting range. Fun times!
Oh I know that type. My son and I giggle when we watch some YouTube vids where they do their EDC (Every Day Carry) vids. Its typically their gun (OK I'm good with that). Three clips minimum. Then their backup gun. Three clips minimum. Their main knife, the backup knife, the wallet knife, the neck knife, and the just in case knife etc etc etc LOL!! All I can think is I hope they don't fall in deep water coz they are going down like an anchor!
Ha ha ha! I'm super cool with carrying, being prepared, aware of your surroundings, etc., but having more pointy protuberances than a porcupine seems to be a little counter productive. I mean, a person's only got two hands right? lol! Of course, I never thought about all of that armament being the equivalent of a sinker on a fishing line, but I guess that's something, so thanks for that!!
Oh, and your Friday lunch breaks sound fantastic!
I'm imagining a slightly more uneasy and curious Meriadoc Brandybuck minus the hairy feet - not judging if you do have hairy feet.
Oh to be a bystander who could laugh through all of Rhonda's expressions! Lol. Not disclosing the mad skill one possesses makes the manifestation of said skill a sweet surprise.
Oh good, you seem to be completely cool with the idea of my feet and their accompanying braids.....LOL! I'm kinda feeling a bit of sadness that I don't have hairy feet right about now, and I'm LOL again! 😆
Rhonda's expressions will always be cherished! It is so much easier to float through life assuming that I have no idea what I am doing, projecting that sentiment, and then enjoying the friends that I make if the opposite (or not) happens to be true. Okay, and my crew and I might be just the the tiniest of bits of ornery at times, but it's always with the best of intentions, lol!
Hope you and your wife are having a fantastical evening!!!
I'm not sure we have enough lol to go around between us.... 😄😄
I completely understand the ornery silence of our species - the world may never know.
Thank you!! A blessed evening to the GK household!
Nice post!
Thank you sir!
Shooting trap is fun. And any basic shotgun with a good choke will do, so there's no need to buy a $3000 trap gun! A secondhand Mossberg or Remington with a long non-tacticool barrel and a modified choke gets the job done just fine.
I also had to break my aiming instinct and learn to swing the barrel as I fired. It isn't easy if you're not used to it.
Whoa! Agreed on all counts! How can this be? LOL!
It was amusing to see people with multi-thousand dollar shotguns shooting along side people with their grandpa's old Remington, and everyone was having a great time no matter the source of their gear! Although, I wouldn't turn a Benelli over and under away if it materialized. Just saying.
beast @generikat
Ha ha ha! I am not sure that I qualify as a beast, a beastie maybe, but thank you for that!
Brilliant post, G. I'm a little behind here, but then what else is new. Gives one a different perspective in life when viewing everything from the back as it passes by.
Love your families subtle approach to life. Rhonda must still be telling everyone about the Von Traps (love that). And would be a hoot to see hub's eye/glance look too. Classic. (Ever see D.J. in "Be Cool". Another of my favourites, as well as the prequel).
I'm not real gun savvy, though I did take a pistol course, and never shot skeet, but am going to try it soon, as we sort of won a trip to the range for a day out. I'll keep you posted on how many poor little flat pigeons break up on the rocky ground vs. the preferred alternative.
I always get a kick too out of the total preparedness stuff. Though I wouldn't say anything about it to someone all Rambo'd to the max at the time. But it does seem a bit over the top. Then again, when things go awry, I'll be the first to hide behind them ( :
Have a most wondrous day
Oh dd! I am so very far behind on my replies! I have been lucky over the last 48hrs to even get a post out! I do so enjoy that my friend the movie buff got the Von Traps reference, lol, and I promise I will write you an almost never-ending epistle of friendly happenings in the am. Well, after I pick up, haul, and stack 4 tons of hay that is!
Be Cool Home Skillet! LOL
I just can't get enough of this Home Skillet business. Cracks me up to the Nth every time. You're doing better than me, that's for sure. I won't write a book here, as it only makes it more stressful at that end to write back. Sounds like your platter is running over, a plate just wouldn't do. Just remember to sleep now and then... ( :