Having a blast - Off Duty, Sports, Hunting, Fishing - Navy Times

Having a blast

After I missed the third of three targets, shotgun shooting expert and coach Geoff Leighton got right in my grill and put his sport into pithy perspective.

“Stop aiming, you’re not in the Marine Corps anymore,” he said. “This is not about aiming. It’s about pointing. So point!”

With that, he mounted his own gun, barked “Pull!” to one of his colleagues, and instantly blasted a fluorescent-orange clay pigeon to smithereens. A cloud of lead shot slammed into the clay target 40 yards up and to our right, just as Leighton had planned — and pointed.

“Look at your target,” he offered with an English brogue as he spit a still-smoking red tube from the shotgun’s chamber. “Stop lining up the gun.”

After applying that essential truth — and forsaking years of precision marksmanship training — the afternoon got markedly more fun.

“Pull.” BLAM. “Pull.” BLAM. “Pull.” BLAM.

The only thing better than seeing the clay carnage: listening to the distinctive metallic sound of the shotgun cocking.

Shuuuk shuuuk.

Call me hooked.

Fast learning, rapid rewards

If you’re looking for a new off-duty challenge, shotgun sports are worth a try.

They’re fun, exciting and relatively inexpensive — better still, your local morale, welfare and recreation team may have a range on base (or post).

Don’t expect a familiar distance-range-type experience. Forget the running and gunning, too.

Whether it’s skeet, trap, sporting clays or another of the many games — and yes, they are each unique — shotgunning is not precision marksmanship, nor is it a combat course.

“It’s a dynamic, reactive sport,” Leighton said. “It’s like a lot of ball sports. It’s as much mental as it is physical.”

It’s also a sport in which nearly anyone — even those with physical handicaps — can quickly gain some level of competence. Others will rapidly excel. Rare is the shooter who follows instruction and shoots Maggie’s drawers on this range.

The hurdle any novice must quickly get over is the fear of the unknown. The roar of a 12-gauge can have that effect on you.

“You can come in absolutely raw and we’re going to quickly get you comfortable with the gun and hitting targets,” said Leighton, a former Vietnam-era Royal Air Force flight lieutenant. In addition to being a defense contractor, he’s a competitive shooter and teaches safety and shooting classes at the Bull Run Regional Park (Va.) Shooting Center in suburban Washington, D.C.

His fellow coach, Dennis Peacock, is retired and a former soldier. He’s also a competitive shotgun shooter. But this is anything but an old guy’s game.

“You do not have to be a hunter to have fun and excel at this sport,” Peacock said. “We get all types, sizes and shapes. It’s addictive.”

Those who muster the moxy to hit the range are quickly rewarded for their courage.

“Initially, you’ll miss a lot of targets, but you’ll get past it,” Peacock said. “Pretty soon you’ll be competing.”

Read and react

Lesson No. 1: Call it “shooting clays,” not “skeet shooting.” That’s because skeet is skeet, trap is trap and sporting clays are best described as golf with guns.

After an hour of familiarization and instruction, I was soon busting clays on the five-station, single trap house range. The trap machine — covered by the trap house — oscillates left to right within a 35-degree arc, and you never know where in that arc the target will emerge. Waiting for and watching the clay “pigeons” as they come slinging out of the trap house will send your adrenaline soaring and force you to act as much with instinct as technique.

Therein lies the beauty of the sport.

“It’s not like simply looking at the rear site and the front site and squeezing the trigger,” Peacock said. “You’re forced to look at the target, not line up the gun. ‘Marksmanship’ is not a term we use out here.”

The terms they do use, however, are motivating.

“Be aggressive,” Peacock urged with a wry, knowing smile. “Be instinctive. And go kill those targets. Kill ’em!” Ë

Lessons learned

• Don’t mix ammo in your pouch.

• Over/under guns are more accurate — and more expensive.

• Your belly button should face square with the target.

• 70 percent of your weight should rest on your front foot.

• There’s not a lot of lateral movement. It’s mostly vertical.

• Follow-through is key.

• Lead is everything.

• Choking is not a bad thing in this sport. A choke is the device that sets the pellet spread pattern.

• A semiautomatic gun has less recoil and is ideal for beginners.

• Double-barreled guns are the bomb.