State Championships and Cheap Shots

This past weekend, instead of camping in the great outdoors, or more like taking a shower with my clothes on in the great outdoors, I was competing in the State Sporting Clays Championship.  I competed in and won my first shooting competition when I was a mere 16 years old. Since then, there's been years where I couldn't seem to lose, and others where I couldn't buy a win if I had all the money in the world. I have shot tournaments the size of what seems like a bunch of buddies going out to "shoot shit" in the woods all the way up to the National Championship.  I have shot tournaments in nearly every western state.  While competing I have had some very interesting and unique experiences ranging from drag queens on the River Walk in San Antonio, TX to spending the night in a tent in Mount Vernon, WA.  However, what happened this year at my State Championship has never, and I hope never will again happen to me.

After shooting very respectfully the first two rainy days of the competition, I was only a couple targets down from the lead. As is tradition at these competitions, groups of shooters usually get together and go to dinner then out for a couple drinks, this weekend was no exception. Plentywood and I joined up with a group of shooters that had come from Washington and Idaho to compete in the out of state category.  We had a good dinner at a relatively new restaurant and then after the group thinned a bit decided to hit the local watering hole for a couple after dinner drinks.  We naturally went to the closest place which happened to be where Plentywood and I ended up the night before. We had one drink there and decided it was time to move on to a bar where we fit in a little better - Off to the old Horseshoe.  When we arrived there we were sadly disappointed, the band that was scheduled to play that night had cancelled, well more like they decided not to show up.  Oh well. Drinking and bullshitting it was then.

As the night progressed we were having a grand old time and Plentywood seemed to be getting along great with all my shooting buddies - usually a rare feat when it comes to them interacting with women.  Then it happened.

All of a sudden one of the guys that was out with us went crashing to the floor behind me. As I turned around to see what happened there was a local guy with his chest all puffed out saying "there's plenty to go around for everyone." Next thing I know I'm surrounded by cops and people asking me if I'm okay. When I turned my head back to my table of comrades, the local decided it was a good time to sucker punch me - well in this case it was an elbow, knocking me out cold. I was out for somewhere around a minute and half to two minutes.

I've been knocked out before, and on some of those occasions it was by my own doing. I have, however, never been knocked out from one blow that I didn't even see coming.  While I don't really mind the fact that I got knocked out, the thing I do mind is that there were no words exchanged between this guy and anyone from my group, other some of us asking what was going on.  I filled out all the necessary paper work saying I was fine, gave my account of the experience to the cops and sat down at our table to regain my composure and sense of what was happening around me.  After about an hour longer we decided it was time to call it a night.

When I woke up in the morning a short 6 hours later for the last round of the competition I was greeted with a headache and a somewhat uneasy feeling of not knowing whether or not I was going to be able to even finish out the competition.  I gathered up my belongings from the hotel room, left Plentywood to sleep in for a while longer and headed off to the range.  When I got there I saw everyone from last night and we exchanged the obligatory "how are you feeling today?" questions.  I decided it was probably a good idea to try and shoot some warm up to see how it was going to feel and see if I could even think about shooting the final 100 targets.  After the first warm up pair I shot, I knew that I was in for a long day and decided to save the punishment for the targets that mattered.

We all headed out to our respective starting stations and began what is hopefully going to be the most painful and un-enjoyable round I ever shoot.  All throughout the round I kept having to tell all the passing squads my account of what had happened the night before. It might be because I'm fairly well known in the shooting circle, or it might have been for some other reason, the the story seemed to have spread like wildfire amongst the shooters. I did get a couple comforting remarks from some of the shooters that seemed to be very impressed that I was even attempting to shoot after the night I had.  I managed to struggle through the final round of the competition, shooting mediocre at best. I no longer needed to stick around in the hopes that I was going to end up in a shoot off after the afternoon rotation had finished. Once off the course, I loaded up my gear, said goodbye to a couple of shooters I won't see again until late summer and started the drive back home.  Guess I'll just have to wait until next year, and stay out of the bars, so I don't ruin my chances of taking home another State Championship Buckle.

Cody Club Challenge

This past Saturday I finally started my competitive shooting season.  I typically start in late January to mid February depending on how the weather here in Montana decides to cooperate. This season it had nothing to do with the weather, it was due to the awesome scheduling skills of my manager (read: sarcasm).

The day before competitions I usually spend most of my time getting all my equipment in order, making sure my beautiful Kreighoff K-80 is in pristine condition, shooting glasses are clean and in their case, shells are lined out in the perfect mix of loads and shot sizes, and that my vest along with my gun sleeve are neatly folded and tucked away safely in my shooting bag waiting patiently for me to use them.  However, this is not how I spent last Friday.  I spent my "prep" day working the god-awful closing shift at the airport. While normally the closing shift isn't terribly hard or all that bad, this one was particularly not fun because it started an hour earlier than the usual closing shift.

I know you're probably thinking "why didn't you just do all your prep work before work?" I would have done that but I was spending that time visiting my mom since she is leaving tomorrow for her European vacation. That also meant that I had to spend 90 minutes driving to get back for work. Well, it usually only takes 90 minutes.  On the way back I was fortunate enough to have to wait somewhere around 25 minutes in a construction zone so that the workers could paint a mark every foot on a 300 foot bridge, all the while restricting traffic to one lane servicing traffic in both directions. I luckily left 2 hours before I needed to be at work.  It's a good thing that I managed to plan ahead somewhat and planned on just going directly to work instead of having to go home and change.

The day at work was nothing special, few reservations here and there and one or two cars left to return after the day shift was over. I sat patiently waiting for the next flight and my next customer to arrive when the dreaded phone call came through. The flight from Minneapolis was delayed and wasn't scheduled to depart until 10:40pm which meant it wasn't going to arrive until close to 1am, and I would have to stay for it.  When that flight did arrive the passengers were very grateful, which was a nice change from the usual late night arrivals. All said and done, I ended up getting out of the airport somewhere around 1:15am. Perfect.

Once I got home I half-assed my way through getting everything set for the next morning. I didn't want to risk having to get everything ready in the haze that would come a mere 4 hours later and forget a crucial piece of equipment, or even more importantly my checkbook to pay for the shoot. Thankfully, I was not the one that was driving, which meant I would be able to get a little more sleep on the way down.

--The Shoot--

We arrived just in time for registration, and after signing up and writing the check for $95 - yes shooting is extremely expensive - we headed back to the Tahoe to get our equipment lined out for the first round of 100 targets.  The first round was less than impressive on my part, and it was quite evident that I had only shot one practice round for the year.  I won't even tell you what I shot because it was that poor. However, once the scores were all in for the first round I was sitting in second place a mere 3 targets behind the leader.  We had a quick lunch of beef brisket that was provided to all the shooters while they reset the course for the afternoon round.

We all headed out to our respective starting stations, and began to try our luck at hitting the new targets. The courses, both morning and afternoon, weren't particularly hard other than the fact that the weather could really affect the presentation making the shots either very difficult or very easy.  Cody had provided us with its usual windy conditions, but also decided to throw in a rain shower here and there, just to keep things interesting.  I shot the second round much better than the first, I was on pace to most likely take over the lead and even make it nearly impossible for the shooter ahead of me to do anything but tie me and hope he comes out on top in the tie breaker.  Then I got to my last station.  I have become used to being presented with more difficult shots due simply to the fact that I am left handed. It's not usually top of mind to accommodate or even consider the left handed shooters for the target setters. While my last station wouldn't have been bad, by the time it was my turn, the wind had picked up to the point where it made the first shot all but impossible for me to shoot.  I'm not usually one to make excuses about my shooting, nor complain about targets, but this station, was not a fair target.  I'm sure you can sense the bitterness, it was because of this station that I blew my very respectable, even great score for the second round. I don't know how I ranked after all the scores were tallied and the final results came out, and to be honest after that last station, I don't really care.

The State Championship starts Thursday, I won't be shooting until Friday morning. I don't know how I'll do this year, based on the limited amount of practice I've had leading up to it. I can tell you that I will be up there not hoping, but expecting to win myself one more belt buckle to add to my collection. Wish me luck.