Shoot Report - Callaway Gardens July 16, 2006

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Entertaining Callaway Course Produces Low Par, but Most of the Big Dogs Stayed at the House.

By The Rafflemeister

Talk about Hot! You would think this was, like, Georgia.

The Callaway Gardens course setter mercifully placed almost all of the shooting stands in the shade on this absurdly humid day that reached ninety degrees before noon. One of the shooters on my squad showed up for our first station with large sweat stains on his light khaki shirt. By the end of our round, there was exactly one spot, about the size of a bar napkin right in the middle of his back, that still appeared dry. During lunch, one of the tables positioned out in the sun, was conspicuously avoided by the hungry membership. We were all bunched up under the trees like carnivorous beef cattle. If there had been a pond nearby, I'm sure some of us would have waded out and eaten our lunch while up to our armpits in muddy water.

That being said, the Callaway Gardens Gun Club course was really a lot of fun on this 16th of July 2006. One of the things I especially liked about the course was that they used a combination of automatic and manual traps. My favorite station, by far, was station twelve with its pair of rabbits bounding off a manual trap across a grassy meadow. This kind of presentation used to be pretty common, but I was surprised to hear one of my squad members, who has only been shooting sporting clays for a short time, declare that he had never seen a station like it. One of the reasons that I love presentations like this is that they simply do not allow you to fall into "groove" shooting. You have to look hard at every pair and shoot the targets you see not the targets you expect to see. With a pair of regular birds off the same trap arm, as on station 13 at Callaway, a shooter is well advised to identify the bird to shoot first as the one that allows him to simply continue his swing in order to kill the second target with the most natural move. On station 13, you could kill the target on the left with a slight left-to-right movement of the gun and a cylinder bore. Then, you simply needed to continue that movement to overtake and kill the second bird. You could only do that if you were quick on the first shot and caught up with the second bird before it started to drop sharply. Not so with station twelve. On a pair of bunnies like this, you have to rivet your focus on the first target you see, because you truly have no idea, even after the targets are launched, which one is going to be the "back bird". It's a little like shooting popcorn flying from a skillet with the lid off. You have to kill the first one and then worry about the other one. If you were lucky, you might even be the beneficiary of a "house pair" where you could break both targets with one shot. Most of us were not so lucky, however, and had to do the job the hard way.

Speaking of rodents, station twelve included one of the only authentic squirrel targets I have ever seen on a sporting clays course. This was a "rabbit" target launched directly at a tree whose roots flared like a skateboard ramp before merging into the red clay soil. Now, admittedly, everyone I saw attempt this target, approached it like a conventional rabbit directly in front of the stand, but it was amusing to watch the missed targets climb six feet up the oak tree like a squirrel fleeing a tabby cat. I was sorely tempted to wait and try shooting this target as it climbed the tree, but observation showed that not all of the presentations were lined up perfectly with the tree. The ones that weren't, raced past it and became my most dreaded of targets: the going-away rabbit. Man, I hate those things!

Station five was set up like station four on a magnified skeet field that happened to have a tree growing in the middle of it. The break points for these two crossers were at about thirty yards instead of twenty-one as on a skeet field, but you also had a little more time to make your shots. What was needed here was here were a nice, smooth swing and a good feel for leads at that distance. This was a test of classic wing shooting technique.

Station nine was probably the toughest station on the course. It consisted of a true pair thrown from a manual trap positioned in the woods about twenty yards to the shooter's left. The birds were not visible until they emerged from the foliage about thirty-five yards from the stand, causing even the quickest shooters to take the first target at almost forty yards and to attempt the second one at more like fifty. I say "attempt" because I didn't see anybody, out of two squads, break the second target. In fact, journalistic integrity compels me to report that the entire squad before mine scored a collective two on this station, neither of which was the second bird. Compared to them, my squad's seven seemed almost competent.

I very much enjoyed the Callaway course set-up for this SSC fun shoot, but I do think the course setter missed an opportunity to further deceive the shooters on the stations using manual traps. Including singles on the menu can add an extra degree of difficulty to these stations because a single bird off a manual trap travels at a completely different, though similar, speed and trajectory from either bird of a true pair thrown off the same trap arm. A good strategy is to start with a couple of singles in order to accustom the shooter to producing a gun speed that is significantly faster than will be necessary for the pairs. It takes a savvy competitor to recognize the difference in speed of the true pairs and to be able to restrain his gun speed enough to keep from blasting past them and missing in front.

There was a two-person contest for high gun in Division One between Barry Zuckerman and Ronnie Futo. Barry won by two targets with a 90, and although Ronnie was runner-up in that division, he was also among the lower fifty percent (in fact, he was the lower fifty percent) so his excellent 88 did not win him a single raffle ticket.

High overall for the day came from Division Two. Barry Jackson's 91 put him at the top of the entire field and won him three raffle tickets.

The only other 90 of the day came from Troy Peak shooting his pretty little 28 gauge auto with the hand-carved and inlaid tiger maple stock. Troy tends to have good days and bad days, and this was a very good day. Who would believe that someone who could produce a 90 on this course could have a twelve-bird handicap? Dennis Sweat also had a good day in Division three, winning the runner-up honors with his 87. I guess this will be Dennis' last appearance in Division Three for a while, because his score will move him up to Division Two for the next shoot. In Division Four, Charlie Proctor managed to nose out Larry Chadwick by one bird and harvest three raffle tickets with his 83.

Jimmy Flynn won Division by three targets over Greg Simms.

The hot weather didn't bother Tammie Ashley who won Division Six with her fine 70.

The three A's, Alam, Alston and Austin each shot well enough to take home a ticket in Division Seven.

Lunch was a nice, lean barbeque with Brunswick stew, a couple of side dishes, and a choice of desserts. Most people don't have much appetite on hot days like this, but The Social Shooting Club is not "most people" when I comes shoving grub down its cakehole, and in spite of producing a lower-than-normal par in the shooting venue, the club maintained its usual high standard of performance in the eating venue. It was also good to hear that some of the proceeds from the meal went to help fund the US Shooting team.