Trap Shooting

I joined up with my good friend Rick last night for something I had never done before. Trap shooting. Rick provided the shotguns, and I provided the shells. I think I got the better end of that deal.

I had never fired a shotgun, and really my only experience with a weapon is qualifying Expert with the M-16 rifle while a Marine. Apparently, the Marine Corps training does translate to the shotgun. :)

After Rick showed me the basics on how to load and eject the round and clear the weapon if it jammed, he then instructed me on etiquette I was expected to adhere to. Since you fire with 4 other people at the same time, there’s a certain rhythm that develops from the group, and he gave me some finer points on how to not look like a complete newbie.

This isn't us, but it's similar to how the range we visited is setup.

When our group was called, Rick and I were standing next to each other in positions 4 and 5 so if something unexpected happened, he could give me a hand. Honestly, my goal here was to load the weapon, fire it, and reload, and that was it. Hitting any of the clay pigeons was secondary.

25 pigeons are sent flying for you to shoot at, one at a time. They each take different trajectories and you don’t know which way they’re going until they’re already flying. I’d say you have about 1 second to get a bead on the clay pigeon, and maybe 1-2 seconds more to fire. So, this really is a very focused sport. After 5 clay pigeons, you rotate with everyone in the group so that everyone has a chance to fire from each of the 5 firing positions.

Of the first 5 pigeons that flew, I hit every one of them. I was a bit surprised to see the bring orange of the clay bursting. I couldn’t believe that I was actually hitting the little things. Rick walked by me while we were rotating, and said, “You’ve got to be kidding me! You’ve never shot trap before?”

It turns out that I hit 19 of 25 targets for my first ever round of trap. I was certainly feeling smug.

That is, until the second round, when I scored a dismal 11 hits. Clearly, this is one of those sports like golf, where you can be on or off, and it’s just going to take some experience to get better.

I expected the shotgun to have some serious recoil, but it turns out that it was very domicile. However, when I woke up this morning, I found that my shoulder has a small bruise and my cheek hurts from laying my face on the stock of the shotgun and absorbing the recoil. Obviously, my initial opinion that there wasn’t much recoil was very, very wrong.

I must say that if you’ve never tried this before, this is something you should give a go.