That was the "Kiss Kiss", now for the "Bang Bang".
Monday was another fun day of Sporting Clays. I went on Sunday with Brian and then on Monday with the boys. This weeks guest shooter was Zaemo.
He's another backline fellow. From Wisconsin. Which I found rather funny that the entire week leading up to shooting, he was complaining that if it was cold, he wasn't going to go.
Well, it was cold, and he went. And he had a great time. This time we went shooting at Island Creek Sporting Clays. This was the first time I hadn't spoken to the owner of the club directly, but rather, I ended up leaving messages with his wife on their home number. That was kind of strange. But were still able to shoot, even though the temperature was hovering around 20 degrees (-6 Celsius), as you can see in the picture to the right. I was pretty darn cold, and Maddi was the smartest of the bunch because he had purchased a balaclava to keep his face warm. After getting slightly lost, we pulled up to the club house where a dog burst through the door to come say hello. 
I never got the gal's name, but she looked like an Akita, German Shepard mix. She was very insistent on getting his belly rubbed and of course, we all obliged. She was definitely the mascot and ran along side our rental car as well as the Gator that Bob drove from station to station.We entered the club house where Bob, the owner, was waiting, we shook hands and started talking about the weather (of course) while we signed waivers. On one of the tables was a line up of very impressive guns for us to choose from. A number of over/unders and semi automatics. We each grabbed one. Maddy and I being more traditional, grabbed the over/unders while Mel and Zaemo grabbed semi autos. Bob also served as our trapper and escorted us outside where we piled into our vehicles and drove out to the first station.
I must say, Island Creek is a fine facility and I'd be willing to shoot there again. Each station had two separate places to shoot from, depending on which course you were doing. Bob would tells us which one we'd be using. It was mostly determined by which traps were working. It was cold enough out that most of the automatic traps were having difficulty, so Bob was be using the manual traps.
There were 16 stations all with really fun and different presentations. In this picture, the clay came lofting in from our right.
I thought it was a pretty funny looking picture will everyone looking up and following the clay. There was even as station that was all rabbits! Often, you find rabbits running across your field of fire, but it was more difficult that usual because Bob was launching the rabbits from our left and they would run away from us. Of the 12 rabbits thrown, only 4 never made it to the bushes beyond.Another unique presentation was called a "nesting pair". Here, Bob launched a regular clay and a midi (a slightly smaller clay) at the same time in a throw called a "teal". In a "teal", the targets are basically thrown straight up and then straight down with little or no arc. With a "nesting pair", the second target is thrown behind the first, so you won't see it until you break the first target. And since the second target was a midi, the shot was just that much more difficult. Unless, you got lucky and broke both targets on the first shot, which I did a couple of times.
Here's a video I took from behind Bob while he was throwing targets for Maddi. This is called a report pair. Bob throws the first target and then throws the second one after Maddi fires. Unfortunately you can't see the clays because the video is so small, but one clay flew in front of a tree and the second flew behind the tree. Another fun presentation.
By the end my toes were pretty well frozen, but I didn't care, I was having a great time with the boys. It took us about 2 and 1/2 hours to complete the 16 station course, and I was fortunate enough to hit the most clays with 55. Seems I shoot better in the cold. Bob told me his brother was the same way. He shoots mid 80's in the winter and by the summer he's lost 10 clays. At least it's not just me.
Once again, however, Wayne let us down. He's really not fairing well on these shoots.
...
No comments:
Post a Comment