I've recently gotten back into the shotgun sports after a 30 year break (although it doesn't seem like that long since I was a teenager!!). I purchased a 12 gauge Browning O/U - the gun I could never afford as a teenager and have really enjoyed it.

My new bride of 4 years, who has never shot a gun in her life, mentioned a couple of weeks ago that she would like to see if she could hit some clay targets. Since she was a little on the slight side, I didn't want her to get pounded by the 12, so I located a Beretta 20 ga auto at a local gun store and put a couple of hundred down on it to put it on layaway.

Well today she calls me as I'm driving home from work and says that she would like to go shoot some targets after I got home (Wow! There's something I'm not used to hearing!). I went by the gun store, got her 20 out of layaway and off we went to the skeet range.

She listened well to all of the basics - starting with safety and ending with follow through and, believe it or not, actually followed what I had told her (there's a first!). We spent about an 30 minutes at the #7 stake, at first repeatedly shooting the low house and then the high house. Then she graduated to the #1 stake, again shooting at singles.

When the outing was over, I hadn't kept score, but she probably shot about 30 rounds before her arms started to get tired. I would guess that she hit probably 12-15 targets. She was thrilled! She told me that she only expected to hit one or two!

On the way home she says, "I think I can do this!!! When can we go back??"

Life is good!

JDS

Jds, that is great to hear. I heard a neat trick to teach a newcomer to start breaking the birds at station 8. Start at 7 and shoot the high house and then move two or three steps and do it again. Take some time and a few boxes of shells and she will be powdering them from the normal station in short order. You need a skeet field where you can have it to yourself though for this to work.

That's a fantastic idea! It's so simple, though, that I never thought of it!!

I'll give it a try when she's ready to tackle it.

Thanks!

JDs