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Thanks to my brother I got to go trap shooting for the very first time with his Berreta 20 gauge semi-automatic shotgun at a great shooting club in upstate New York while he demoed our guide’s similar 12 gauge. We had a great trainer for three hours guiding us through different scenarios and flight patterns in multiple settings from open meadow to woodland. But for a “warmup” we actually first went to the rifle range to try out my brother’s .270 bolt action deer rifle. I was not ready for that! I figured, okay, you’re a hunter, in the woods… everything is stealthy and quiet. Man, this rifle had a bark! You might be laughing, but I had never been near a high powered rifle before this. After my brother fired it a few times it was my turn. Even with it resting on a sandbag I thought it was going to jump back and hit me in the face. I still manage to get a good three shot grouping at 75 yards and to hit a round metal kill zone target at 100 yards on my first try. I still wasn’t used to the bark, but now had some basic confidence in moving on to our shotgun lessons.

The first trap scenario was a slight gully in front of us with a hill sloping up showing sky behind with trees on either side. This trap shot the clay straight up and I was told to lead slightly ahead and shot just as it started to slow before the height of its trajectory.

The next one was looking up a cleared hillside with heavy woods left and right. For this one we had to shot twice. The first clay winged out quickly close by from my right and flew away up the hill almost immediately followed by a second clay further out on the left crossing to the right about half way up the hill with maybe just a two or three seconds between shots. That was quite a challenge!

Our third scenario was an open field with lots of sky, with the sun in our eyes on the left shooting at a clay traveling to the right and at a quickly rising clay on the right making a slight arch to the left.

All in all it was a great morning and I even got two compliments from our guide. A great experience that encouraged me to continue, and with the 20 gauge, very little punishment. I was just a little bit sore the next day, but pleasantly so, if you know what I mean, but ready to go for my first day hunting with a shotgun! I’ll save that story for my next post.