Youth Shoot

[Hawks Feather]

We had a youth .22 shoot at the Fish and Game last Sunday which was a really good time.  Not as many youth as we would have liked but it was billed as a time to work on accuracy and not a time to see how many rounds could be sent down the range.  We always start with the safety aspect and then go over sight picture and let them start.  We keep an eye on them and help them some, but nothing major.  This time, after the normal intro, we talked about more ways for them to improve their group.  We had one boy that had never shot a firearm before and I took him.  I put an empty case in the chamber so that he could dry fire the rifle and get an idea of trigger pull and the other things that we had talked about.  I then put in a live round and he hits about 5:00 and about 3/8th of an inch from the center.  I am going, "Great shot, now just do everything the same.  Way to go." etc.  So he puts the next round touching the first (front rest, open peep sights, 30 yards, indoor heated range).  This is followed by the next 10 or so shots expanding the hole that could be covered with a nickel.  We kept shooting and I finally said that I was really impressed that he was shooting this well since he had never fired a rifle before.  He said it was Tour of Duty, to which I said, "What?"  Seems he has been playing the video game Tour of Duty and that is where he learned to shoot.  I have never played many video games, but this one sure worked for him.  He ended up being the best shot out of all the kids we had.  I realize that he obviously had some natural skill, but I was somewhat amazed.  I had other adults go and ask him how he got so good so that I could watch their face when he told them, Tour of Duty.  We (the adults) think that we may need to get Tour of Duty to practice our skills.

While their shooting was done with CMP Savage Club rifles, I also took out a scoped .22 and let them take turns shooting aspirin.  It is really fun to watch them as they shoot a "safe indoor" exploding target.  Take a dark sheet of construction paper, put drops of glue on the paper, put the aspirin on the glue, let it dry, and you have exploding targets.  I usually line off the paper with one inch lines and glue an aspirin at each cross of the lines.  I cut the paper into fourths and can get 24 aspirin on each quarter sheet of paper - yes I have been described as AR (not the rifle type AR).

While this was not a spray and pray type shoot, each of the kids did end up shooting over 300 rounds each. 

Jerry

[FinsnFur]

  Tour of Duty! LOL

Mmm Hmm...
So they might even start training our snipers and government sharp shooters with these

LOL