On Sunday September 27th, my grandparents and I
went sporting clays shooting at the Spring Mills Fish and Game Association. Spring Mills holds a shoot
once a month, six times a year, and is located about 30-40 minutes outside of State College.
For those who do not know what sporting clays is, it is a
category of competition for shotgun shooting.
This category allows for the most variation of the targets as there is
nothing set in stone about sporting clays, unlike Olympic trap, skeet, five
stand...etc. These other categories of
shotgun shooting follow a specific order, and anywhere you go to shoot these
disciplines should be within given parameters. Sporting clays is meant to simulate hunting,
and the course designer is at liberty to adjust target speed, trajectory, have them curve, go behind trees...etc, they try to surprise the shooter with each new target.
Spring Mills is not a full time sporting clays location; the
closest one is Hillendales, which is located about 40 minutes from State College. The targets at Spring Mills
were defiantly the most interesting targets I’ve ever shot at. Since, their events are simply a fun thing to
do, and not a major business for them, they have the liberty of making certain
stations pretty difficult.
In our shooting group at the event were my, grandfather,
grandmother, Mick and myself. Mick is a
master class sporting clays shooter, which is the highest rating given in the
discipline. Mick was having trouble as
well at this course, which is a testament to the course.
The course was made up of eight stations and fifty bird,
comprised of minis (small), midis (medium), regular and rabbit targets (bounce
along the ground). Also at certain stations the trapper (person
who clicks the button to set off the targets) was at liberty to mix up the
targets. So no person shoot at the same
fifty targets.
Our group shot two rounds of fifty and the first time
through my score was much higher I even beat my grandpa(who has multiple world championships in NSSA Skeet Shooting), second time through
not so much. I am not making excuses but
I will say I went 0/6 on the second station in the second round and that was
the difference. That station was one of
the ones were you never knew what was coming, and I did poorly.
Max
|
Grandpa
|
Grandma
|
Mick
|
|
1st round
|
39
|
38
|
21
|
41
|
2nd round
|
32
|
38
|
23
|
42
|
Penn State actually has a Trap and Skeet club, which I will
be joining next semester. Funny thing is
on their website Mick Markel is in the picture on the left as a coach, and on
the right is Mark Saucer who I also know.
I had not looked at their webpage until writing this blog, but I have
talked with both coaches. This club is
open to anyone, you do not have to be an experienced shooter or have any
experience at all. They hold practice on
Sunday at Shenacoy. I know they are a pretty active club and go to multiple shoots a year. Along with fundraising to cover the cost of ammo.
This is my first time visiting your blog, and I am happy I did! Although I am not a trap shooter myself (my dad is actually very big into it), I still love the idea for this blog. I find that sometimes I wish I had something to do around here that doesn't scream COLLEGE, and your blog opens that door for me! Great post, I look forward to next week!
ReplyDeleteCool blog, dude! I love that you went on this trip with your grandparents, included pictures, and gave us the score breakdown. Very well done.
ReplyDeleteI noticed a couple errors that I thought I should point-out: "definitely" was misspelled, and when you mentioned about the instructor's inability being "a testament to the course," I would suggest that you put an adjective in there, so the instructor's inability "was a testament to the DIFFICULTY of the course." Hope this is helpful :)