Shooting in Korea

I am once again, channeling "Julie the cruise director". Yesterday I organized the big shoot for our stay here in Korea. I had done a lot of ground work to get a big shoot while we were in Paris, but I had Nicole, and there's a whole lot of sightseeing in Paris. So shooting in Paris never materialized.

In Korea, there's no real sightseeing to do. No Eiffel Tower, no Louvre. So shooting became a real mission. Better than that, the hotel we're at has a concierge willing to help (there wasn't one in the hotel in Paris). So setting up a big shoot was fairly easy to organize. They called the place, got the rate, and set up a taxi. There was, however, still a bit of a language barrier. They couldn't tell me if there was someone there who could speak english, if it was a sporting clays course, and how many shots we got for the price (40,000 Won or 40 bucks). So it was still a bit of a crap shoot (no pun intended) as to what we were in store for when we arrived.

The hotel arrange for a jumbo taxi, which is basically, a mini van capable of fitting 6 people. The valet suggested that we have the taxi guy wait while we shot, since we were so far out of the city, there was no guarantee we could get a cab back. So for 10,000 Won an hour, the guy was going to wait. We didn't know how long we'd be, but for 10 dollars an hour, we figured better safe than sorry.

It was about a 45 minute drive out of town to the place known as "Eastern Castle". It was rather strange because on the same campus was the South Korean military academy, a number of public shooting ranges, and a children's amusement park. Merry-go-rounds and shotguns, don't mix in my head, but I guess it's all good in South Korea. The driver kept slowing to read different signs and we could figure out most of what was going on. 10 meter pistol range, 25 meter rifle range, we kept driving to the very end of the road and towards the recognizable loud popping of shotguns.

We parked and walked towards the noise. There we found something like a trap field. There was a covered walkway and shooting position. And stretching out before it was a large field with a wide tarp covered trap house. And next door to the entrance was a little booth with a little window and a little Korean woman. The taxi driver had followed us in and poked his head into the window and said something to the lady. She nodded, and he turned to us and made a gesture as if to say, "Belly up to the bar boys and drop some cash." So I stepped up and she held up a calculator with the sum of 40,000 typed in. "I guess is 40,000 Won per person boys," I said, "Fork it over."

I handed the lady 240,000 won, she counted it, nodded, and then a little Korean man wearing an over sized visor and a neckerchief (like a dew rag, but tied around his neck) appeared with a shotgun and six boxes of shells and waved us to the shooting house. He set the gun down on a rack, plopped the boxes of shells down on a table and then motioned to a rack of shooting vest as if to say, "Hey dudes, put those on." I, myself, had my own vest and ear and eye protection, as did a couple of the boys. Maddi and Willy grabbed a vest and modeled it for us. I don't know what it says (anyone reading this read Korean?), but they were definitely well worn vests.

I grabbed a box of shells and stepped to the line. There was already one Korean guy with an instructor shooting, so I set up in the station next to him. Loaded the gun, and said, "Pull". It felt good to have a shotgun in my hands again. Not to mention, I can now say, I've shot a gun in a foreign country. I get the feeling that where we were shooting was the practice range of sorts. Like the children's amusement park next door, this was sort of the adult amusement park. Drop the kids off at the merry-go-round and then come up here and try pistols, rifles or shotguns. At 40,000 Won (about $40.00 U.S.) it was probably the most expensive shooting I've done thus far. But it was still a lot of fun, and rather challenging since I hadn't been shooting in over a month.

The scenery was nice, and the targets should have been easy, but it always takes a while to get used to a different gun. 25 shells was not enough and I went back to the booth and plopped down another 40,000 for another box while the boys took turns. There was 6 of us and only one gun. Although when the Korean fellow next to us finished, they let us shoot that gun as well. So at times there were two people shooting. Here's Maddi and Mel up at the line. Everyone went back for another box and some people went back for a third. The people were super friendly, always smiling. By then end, we all had smiles too. It's nice that there a common bond with us, that we can all go out and relate to something other than the show we're working on. And we all get to say, "I shot a shotgun in Korea and broke clay".

Here's a quick little video of the targets going out. The first two are broken by Wayne, the second two by Maddi.



When we got back to the hotel, the total for the cab ride was less than 100,000, or 100 bucks, divided between the 6 of us, it was 20 bucks each, including tip, which most taxi drivers won't take, but this guy did without question, which was fine because we had a good day.

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