Shotguns and Trap

In the late fall of 2013, a good buddy of mine, Jeff Carver, called me up and said he was heading over to the trap range and wondered if I might want to go with him…I wasn’t doing anything and had not fired a shotgun since I was in high school – when I tried to shoot trap with a friend and his Dad who had one of those portable traps – so, it sounded like fun and thought I would give it a go…

When you shoot singles trap, you move between 5 stations and shoot at 5 targets (“clay pigeons”), scoring one point for each hit target…well, that first round I scored 21 or 22! I didn’t think about anything, just reacting to the flight of the target…when I shot with my friend in high school, I think I missed everything I shot at! Then, I was focused on trying to figure out what amount of lead to allow – this time I just watched the target itself – everything else happened on auto-pilot…

I had a lot of fun that day and decided maybe this was something I would like to pursue…I began a new adventure – taking my typical approach of doing as much research as I could in an effort to really learn about the sport, and glean as much information as I could from those with experience…

I shot at my local range, joined a local club, and went up to monthly tournaments in San Bernadino – at those events, you paid entry fees that were used to pay off winners and placers of the events – I won and placed several times, and collected a few hundred dollars along the way…several months later in the summer of 2014, I went up to the California State tournament and won one of the events there, also taking a 2nd and a 3rd and hauling in over $1,000…

I had learned a lot of good lessons during that experience, and thought I might write a booklet, or primer, to share my new-found wisdom – maybe to publish it so that it might pave the way for others…I started it, and wrote quite a bit, as well as at least outlining everything I wanted to touch on – it is not done, I got distracted with something else as usual…maybe I’ll go back and finish it one day, but what I did get down is here…