Skeet! Skeet! Skeet!

I think I found a new hobby. A new, probably very expensive hobby.

Today, Wayne, Maddy and I drove 3 hours up to the Sandanona Shooting Grounds in upstate New York. Granted, it's not way upstate, but from southern New Jersey (aka Philadelphia) it was still quite a haul. We went there to do the Sporting Clays course.First, a little history of the place. Sandanona is the oldest permitted shooting club in the country. It was founded in 1907 by... Ah nevermind... If you want know the history, read it here.


When we entered the lodge we met a nice lady who set us up with 12 gauge shotguns (a $3400 gun if I was going to buy it), 110 shells, and a carrying bag. We also met Andrew, a ginger headed fellow in his early 20's who would serve as our trapper. Which basically meant he pushed the button that launched the clay disks we were going to shoot. He was also a knowledgeable shooter, and gave us pointers when we went to shoot our 10 practice rounds. Here's a photo of Maddy squeezing off a couple of practice rounds with Andrew giving him pointers.
I didn't quite know what to expect. I had seen skeet shooting competitions on ESPN in the past. Wayne had been to Sandanona before, so he was our unofficial guide and cheerleader. What we did was technically not skeet shooting, we shot sporting clays. The best comparison I could come up with was golf. We basically did 10 holes of golf over a two mile course.

Sandanona I think had 17 shooting stations. Like the one picture above (That's me shooting by the way). Each station was representative of a different way you could (if you were a hunter) encounter your prey in the wild. You stood in a little gazebo like thing, and from different places, Andrew would launch the clay targets. Sometimes they came from the right. Sometimes the left. One station even had them fly out from above you.

I don't remember all the terminology used, but I remember that when two disks flew at the same time it was called a "true pair", and when one followed another after you shot at the first one was called "on report". I thought the "on report" was nifty because it reminded me of one of the fireworks we have in Hawai'i for New Years called a "ground bloom flower with report". We didn't know what the "with report" meant when we lit the first one. It meant at the very end of the firework show, it would explode with a really loud bang, leaving little shards of paper everywhere, very hard to sweep up at the end of the night.

When you stepped up to the shooting area, you would say, "New shooter in." Andrew would yell something from his little hide where he was launching (I could never hear him, I had earplugs in). Then you'd load two rounds, one in each of the two barrels, lock the gun into place and get ready to shoot. When set, you say, "Pull!" and Andrew would either send a "true pair" or "on report". You would get 5 "pulls" of two shots each, for a total of 10 shots at each station. Once you shot your 10, you yell, "Shooter out". If you were the last shooter, after you stepped out, and "broke" your gun (opened the barrels up to reveal it was empty) you would yell, "Line is clear", and Andrew would come scurrying out from his hide and escort us to the next station.
Here's Wayne shooting. He was the best shooter of the day with 68 of 100. I did okay with 51 of 100, and Maddy shot 56 of 100. On a couple of the stations, I was great, on some of them I sucked. But what I really good at was forgetting to turn off the safety on the gun. I can't count the number of times I would say, "Pull!" and as the targets flew past I squeezed the trigger, only to realize, I had the safety still on and got to watch the disks fall safely on the course. "Sorry, I had the safety on!" I would yell and Andrew would yell something back. I still couldn't hear him because of my earplugs, but I'm sure he was yelling, "Moron!!"

All in all, a great day. The drive was nice. We had a special guest on board the rental car, Maggie, the GPS. She was very patient with all of our wrong turns, never once yelling. Always saying in her calm voice, "Please proceed to the highlighted route," or "When possible make a legal U turn." She was really nice, and helpful. She made sure we knew two miles before anything that we were two miles from anything. Count it off Maggie!

The trees in upstate New York are starting to turn the bright colours of fall, but we were still a little early for the great show. Perhaps next week in West Virginia, I'll get some good shots.