Guest Shooter Program

Ever since we started doing sporting clays, many people on the crew have expressed interest in joining us on a day off for a shoot. It’s not that we are snobs and don’t want to hang out with people, but it’s just easier to go as a quartet, for a few reasons.

The first and foremost, 4 people fit in a car fine. Since most of the sporting clays courses are located a distance outside of most metropolitan areas, drives are often an hour or two to get to the clubhouse. Also, similar to golf, a quartet seems to be the best number. 5 would be to many, and you’d find yourself standing around quite a bit. 3 are fine, but the shoot goes quicker and you find yourself too early to go to dinner.

But mostly, we don’t want to stuff more than four people into a car.

With one of the original 4 shooters “reassigned” temporarily to another tour, we have instituted the “Guest Shooter Program”. On Monday, the first of our guest shooters participated with us as we went and shot the R&M Game Birds course.

As I had mentioned before, even before we finished our last shoot at Oak Tree, I had already set up our next shoot in Portland, Oregon. Technically, R&M Game Birds is in the state of Washington, but it’s only across the border. We drove 80 miles up the interstate 84, which runs along the Hood River, crossed a bridge and drove to the top of a mountain where R&M Game Birds is located.

The idiot that I am, I had forgotten to bring my camera. We were running late coming up from San Jose (Fog was so thick we had to pull off the road for an hour), that when we got to the hotel, it was a whirlwind of pulling out and pulling on all of my winter clothes grabbing my “shooting bag” and getting back down to the lobby to get in the car and head out. Hence, I forgot to pull my camera out of my computer bag.

Fortunately, our guest shooter, Lyle, brought his. Here’s Lyle, Say “Hi!” Lyle! Lyle is from Ohio and is an accomplished hunter. Inviting him at first appeared to be a mistake. But hunting and clay shooting are two different beasts (pardon the pun). So his sporting clays abilities were about on par with ours.

It was quite stunning countryside we were in. We truly were on top of a mountain. The road up was just a dirt and gravel road, which had the following sign at the bottom. Fortunately for us, we had rented a 4-wheel drive SUV which came in handy because if we had chosen to walk the course, we would have come home popsicles. The outside temperature was 28 degrees (-2 Celsius) and definitely much colder when the wind was blowing! There were a few stations in the trees so it was warmer, but the best stations were the ones that overlooked the valley.

The hardest station by far, was station 4, and also the best view. Station 4 featured a true pair (both clays at the same time) of battues that took off flat like a Frisbee, but when they got to the edge of the cliff, the wind would turn them sideways and dive straight down.The trick was to shoot ahead and below them, so that when the “presented” (turned sideways) themselves, you were in the correct position.

Of the 40 clays thrown (10 for each of us), only 4 never saw the ground. The other 36 had a nice flight and hard landing.

We were supposed to start the course at 2PM, but because we were running late we didn’t make it out until 3PM. It was twilight when we were at the final two stations. Both of which were very hard targets going away from you. It did make for a nice moon rising picture with our guest shooter in the box.

All in all, another great day of shooting. I seem to shoot well in cold weather, seeing as I had the most hits. We again kept score for Wayne. He hasn’t been too doing too well.

Next days off are in Missoula Montana, and Boise Idaho. Probably too cold to shoot at either place Although I didn’t mind it. What a handsome devil!

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