The Big Shoot.

I've been with my wife too long. How do I know? I'm starting to plan events.
Well, in all fairness, this was an event I wanted to organize.

Our guest shooter program was getting out of hand. Many people were asking to go, and frankly, time is running out. Wayne will be back soon, and once he returns, the quartet is complete. The guest shooter program is closed, thank you all for coming, please proceed to the nearest exit.

So I organized an event at Deer Creek Sporting Clays. Deer Creek is an hour north of Tampa, and as it turned out, we had two days off there. One day I spent hard at work (see previous post) and the other day, I went shooting (of course). It was an event for sure. And I had to do more than just call the place and set up a time. I posted signs around the venues for weeks beforehand and started a sign up sheet. I collected money and told the stoners and drunks not to do either the night before or they will be kicked off the course and their fee was forfeit. I then collected more money to pay for lunch, seeing as it was an all day thing. I got the okay to use one of the tour buses and got extra ice for the cooler.

The morning of the shoot, I was the first one on the bus, I cleaned, I filled the coolers with ice and beer. I divided the money I collected into envelopes for the team captains (I organized that too), and got out the waiver forms and instructions for the captains.

17 of us shot that day, including a professional from New Hampshire. I didn't take pictures the one day we shot the 5-Stand in New Hampshire, but our trapper for the day, Ed Fallon, happens to be on vacation down in Florida. Well, his wife is on vacation, he's been out shooting. He was actually in a two day tournament the weekend before he shot with us. That's three whole days of shooting! Sounds like heaven.

We also had one parent shooting with us. The father of one of the lighting crew had flown in that morning, a red eye flight from Seattle, and he shot with us too.

At 10:00 AM we piled on the bus and headed for Deer Creek. Cathy and Roger, the owners of Deer Creek met us at the club house. What great people. After lunch, Cathy gave us a speech about the rules and regulations for the club as well as a brief history of Sporting Clays. She said something during her speech I will never forget. She compared her club to Disney World in Orlando. "We are both in the entertainment field," She said. Sporting Clays is a fun enjoyable time, it just happens to be done with a shotgun. Neat.

After the speech we broke up into our four teams and headed onto the course. I won't bore you with details. Best to say it was a really great day. And I think Cathy thought so too. We were supposed to only shoot 100 rounds on the "White" course, which is the easiest of the three sporting clay courses they have. But Cathy saw how much fun we were having, that she offered to open up part of the "Blue" course which is the mid level course for anyone who wanted to try something a little harder. Of course my team took the offer, as did the team with our resident pro, Ed Fallon. So by the end of the day, most of us shot 150 rounds.

Everyone had fun, even today, people are still talking about it. Almost everyone thanked me for putting it together. And unfortunately, it did nothing to assuage the guest shooter program. As Cathy, the owner of Deer Creek told me at the end of the day, "I think you created a bunch of Sporting Clays addicts!". Great.

I'll end with some pictures of the day. Because we were divided into teams so I was unable to get pictures of everyone shooting. I had to stick with my team or we'd slow the process down. I was able to snap off a few of the other teams.

Here's Chad "Dead Eye" lining one up. He was one of 4 of us (Chad, Willy, Ed and myself) who shot at least one perfect 10 on the course. Ed, our resident pro shot three 10s! I wish I was in his group to see that!Here's Willy shooting. Mark is trapping and Lyle (back to the camera) he's just being sexy in his shooting vest.Deer Creek had many very easy targets that floated in. Here's a shot of Sean Kelly with a nice high incomer. The White course was definitely the easiest.OBSERVE AND LEARN PEOPLE. Here's our resident pro Ed preparing to shoot. Note, he does not have the gun mounted to his shoulder, looking very relaxed and cool.PULL! Ed identifies the target and brings the shotgun to his should and leads the target. What a pro!Not so pro, here's Jason. If you click on the picture and look at it larger, you'll see the target dead center and lost in the trees. Lots of foliage on the course.Here's Don shooting one of the extra stations on the Blue course. This was a tough one. If you blow the picture up, you can see the clay coming in from his right and skimming the top of the brush. You can also see the tree in front of him where people have been trying to get an early jump on the target and just put the lead into the trunk.

THE RESULTS OF THE BIG SHOOT:
(All totals are from 100 targets. Any person with two numbers, the second number is the total from 150 targets)

Ed Fallon (Resident pro) - 81/121
Dan Boland (hey that's me!) - 73/106
Lyle Harris (The Big Winner!) - 63
Willy Williams - 62
Larry Brownlee (Resident parent) - 60/88
Don Livingston - 60/82
Chad "Dead Eye" Zaemisch - 58/82
Maddi Schieferstein - 57/83
Rick McCollam - 52
Mel Dorough - 49/68
Rick Berger - 48
Drew Welker - 43
Frank Schweitzer - 42/64
Jason Bowman - 40/65
Mark Haynes - 40
Sean Kelley - 40
Dave Lopriore - 36
Wayne Boehning - 0/0 (geez)

Standing (l to r) - Rick M., Dave L., Jason B., Dead Eye, Willy W., Mark H., Mrs. Lyle, Lyle H., Maddi S., Mel D., Ed Fallon (pro)

Kneeling (l to r) - Larry B., Sean K., Rick B., Drew W., Frank S., Don L.

Squatting like and idiot - Dan (that's me).

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