Posted on 05/26/2014 7:49:30 PM PDT by ButThreeLeftsDo
The shooting range was quiet Saturday morning as Jason Kelvie unlocked the gate, raised the faded red flag and began unloading his truck.
Then the teenagers pulled up.
The Lakeville South High School teammates bounded onto the Suburban Sportsman Club’s field, its grass still soaked with dew, scarfing doughnuts, joking with coaches and filling their vests with ammunition.
“Are you ready?” Kelvie, the head coach, asked Stone Swanson, a junior.
“I was born ready,” Swanson replied with a raised eyebrow.
Trap shooting teams like this one, part of the Minnesota State High School Clay Target League, are reawakening aging gun clubs across the state. To make room for Minnesota’s fastest-growing high school sport, clubs are expanding hours, building fields and installing new target throwers.
Still, with 6,100 students competing, many clubs are maxed out. Waiting lists are growing.
(Excerpt) Read more at startribune.com ...
Nebraska had 2,394 student participants in the May, 2014 state meet. A new record and never an injury or incident. All must take the hunter safety course as a prerequisite.
See www.cornhusker-trap.com for more details.
My teenage son, who is a trapshooter when he's not with his Army unit, just bought his first pistol and today spent his Memorial Day refinishing the 1942 Mosin-Nagant he bought with his last training paycheck. Yeah, he's got access to guns :)
I think so. I’ve just watched but my husband and son who have been shooting all their lives started Trap & Skeet with my grandson and he smokes them. I think you really have to have the talent, my BIL has shot them all his life and buys 20K shotguns and my grandson smokes him too.
He went to a shoot in AZ and he beat most of the Master shooters even though he was still a D level shooter because he hasn’t competed in enough sanctioned competitions.
The reaction and awe he gets from the old guys has made me know how hard it is.
My wife is a natural with a shotgun. My son couldn’t hit anything. Paid $60 for a lesson with a guy at the trap range. He pointed out about three things my son was doing wrong and my son (18) fixed them. He was hitting 15-18 out of 25 the four rounds we did after that! Really amazing with just a few pointers from an expert. I can shoot okay at trap (20+), but don’t know how to teach it.
They rent shotguns for not too much I think (we use our own). A decent used semi-auto 12 gauge is around $400. A round of 25 was $4 or so for the range fees, and about $3.50 for a box of shells. So not cheap for the two of us for four rounds. But not too bad, and lots of fun! Good people too.
There may still be places were you can go and shoot on your own with your own hand-thrower or the store-bought trap machines. Nothing like that around my neck of the woods though. As a kid we had a few gravel pits and vacant fields we would frequent. When I was a newlywed my wife and I would go to the state wildlife area (New Jersey!!) that had an open field used for home-made trap shooting at no charge.
Hmm....written by the Star & Sickle. Good for them but I hope they learn pistol and rifle roo. They are gonna need it more later.
That is too bad because it really gets the boys to participate and even some of the girls.
Thanks!
I was on my high school’s rifle team. Not -all- that long ago, back in the 70s. I think the team was still going strong at least into the 80s. Not sure what happened. We had a set of bull-barrel model 70s (small bore), owned by the school, and some of the kids had their own. We kept the school-owned guns in a locker in the science teacher’s lab. Every day we’d carry them out to our cars and go shoot at the local armory. After shooting we’d clean them in the science teacher’s classroom (he was the coach) and put them away.
We shot in competition with some other high schools, but mostly against college teams and the Army team from Fort Lewis. Mostly because that’s who there was to compete with.
Yeah, the good old days...
Some people are naturals at this little game. The rest of us have to work REALLY hard at it. It’s still fun and it really improved my pheasant and duck hunting skills.
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