Shooting

    About a year ago I wrote a lament over the current state of skeet and sporting clays and attributed the decline of those games to what I called a “mania for score.” I’ve thought about it since and, though I haven’t changed my mind about the concept, I think I might have sounded too harsh toward those who do choose to shoot primarily for scores.
    There are two reasons to play any sort of game. One is competitive, whether based upon team effort or individual performance. Regardless, it all comes down to the same thing: Someone wins and someone loses. Winners earn approbation, losers a stigma. The competitive element permeates everything—or at least it does when we insist upon quantifying experience by reducing it all to numbers. It certainly is convenient, available at a mere glance, and when your main concern is who won and who lost, it’s really all you need.
    The other reason for playing is a sheer love for the game, and that cannot be reduced to numbers alone. Numbers alone cannot tell a story. As one who firmly believes in stories, I can’t be satisfied with numbers. I want to know who pulled off a brilliant play, hit a magnificent shot or otherwise made the difference. Was the win a fluke or a solid performance? Numbers can’t tell you.
    Let’s say you shoot a round of skeet. The only thing recorded is a series of Xs and Os on a scorecard. Were the Xs solid dustballs and complete shatters or an ugly round of chips and splits? And what explains the Os? Were you not feeling well; had you lost your job; was your marriage falling to pieces; were you shooting in high wind, bitter cold or sweltering heat; and on and on? Did you feel as if you were scuffling and scrambling for every hit? Were you, in other words, distracted by something that robbed the experience of the simple joy of swinging a gun on a moving target? Any of those distractions is a story you cannot read in mere numbers.
    For a couple of years during the time when I was becoming a serious skeet shooter, I kept a journal—date and scores, nothing more. As I could shoot any time the shotgun fields were open (and as my companions were fond of pointing out, I didn’t have a “real job”), I was firing an average of 5,000 cartridges per month, and I filled many pages with scores. It was a way of measuring progress from where I was to where I wanted to be. But it was not really a useful way, because there was no context for evaluation.
    My friend and mentor Jack Mitchell finally provided the perspective I needed. Do not, he said, question why you hit a target or a bird, but always question why you missed. If you understand why you missed, you can learn something and possibly do better next time.
     Here again, numbers really don’t tell you much. I can go back to my skeet-shooting journal, endlessly pore over everything I wrote, and not learn anything from it. I simply didn’t write enough.
    I teach much the way Jack did: watching the shooter and not the target. If I see a good setup in stance and posture, a proper ready position, a crisp swing and mount, and no sign that the shooter looked at the gun instead of focusing on the target, I often ask if he connected. The answer usually is yes. Sometimes I get a look that makes me wonder if I’ve sprouted a second head. “Didn’t you see?” they often ask.
    My answer: “I’m not here to teach targets how to fly. I’m here to teach you to shoot.”
    It’s not hard to understand why hitting or missing can become so vital. To the casual eye, it’s the final measure of success.  But it exacts its price. To my thinking, even the slightest concern with score is a distraction all its own—gotta win, gotta win, gotta win—and the better you’re shooting on a given day, the more distracting it becomes. I’ve shot with people who’ve assured me in the most solemn tones that they shoot solely for fun—but then run to the scorekeeper at the end of a round.
     The bottom line is that I don’t really give a damn why anyone shoots, only that they still love to shoot. Maybe it’s for score, maybe for glory, perhaps to impress others or perhaps for personal satisfaction. I don’t care. I know why I shoot, but it isn’t my place to judge the motives of others.
    Except . . . . (There’s always an “except,” isn’t there?) To me, the act of hunting and possibly killing gamebirds leaves no room for scorekeeping. This is an excursion into holy ground, to be performed with reverence and respect. Not with diffidence, mind you, but certainly with reverence and respect. If you see it as something completely unimportant, you shouldn’t be out there. I’ll do my best to kill any bird that flies up in front of me, not always successfully but always with an honest effort. Hitting one makes me feel successful and remarkably humble all at once. Those are feelings that go well together.
    In my academic teaching days a hundred years ago, a little group of faculty got together and built a trap field on campus. With 700 acres, we had plenty of land to work with. Some of the details took a while to evolve, but it was a good field and we had our fair share of fun shooting on it. We even established a league and invited other local teams to join us. As trap shooting has always been popular in northwest Missouri, we had no dearth of shooters willing to do so. They were for the most part good people, good shots and keenly conscious of gun safety, which was about all we asked.
    In fact, only one guy truly put me off—not because he behaved obnoxiously but rather because he seemed so consumed by score that he allowed it to spill over into bird hunting. It typically started in September, when the dove season opened, and lasted all through the fall. Every bloody week I overheard him tell someone about his latest heroic exploit, and it always went the same way: “Went dove huntin’. Got muh limit.” “Went quail huntin’. Got muh limit.” “Went pheasant huntin’. Got muh limit.” “Went goose huntin’. Got muh limit.” On and on and on, always followed by a sly-looking, coyote-like grin.
    I have no clue to this day what he was out to accomplish, whether to impress someone that he was a mighty hunter or the greatest shot in the world. I don’t know what his hunting prowess might have been, because I wouldn’t have gone with him if he’d paid me. And I knew from watching him shoot trap that he was no particular wizard with a gun. I guess it was all about numbers—whatever the bag limit for a particular bird happened to be. I never heard him speak a word about spending a lovely day afield, about getting cold or wet, or skunked. “Got muh limit” seemed to be the sum total of his experience, at least in his mind.
    I can’t leave this subject without a few words about shooting in South America. Shooting there is different from shooting here. There it can be a game of numbers, and the birds—primarily doves and pigeons—exist in nearly unimaginable quantities. They are a dreadful agricultural scourge, capable of reducing grainfields by as much as 30 percent in a growing season. The farmers simply cannot sustain that kind of loss.
    Some lodges award a certificate to any shooter who kills a thousand or more doves in a single day. The Argentine government at one time paid a bounty on the birds.
    The bird boys are encouraged, possibly even required, to keep score for their particular shooters. For many shooters it is a festival, their form of bragging rights. It never has much appealed to me, but with a resource in such staggering abundance, I can’t object with any real conviction. I did once fire a thousand cartridges in one day just to learn how the experience felt, and that day I killed a confirmed 734 doves. I fell into bed that night utterly exhausted but happy with the thought that I never had to do such a thing again.
    As I said earlier, I’m a word guy, not a numbers junkie. I love experience and love being able to sometimes render it in imagery however well my feeble command of our language allows. I often fall asleep at night telling myself stories in my mind, not rehearsing the multiplication tables. Going down into the welcoming darkness with a story is usually the sweetest sleep of all.

    Michael McIntosh is the author of such books as A.H. Fox, Wild Things, Best Guns, Shotguns and Shooting and More Shotguns and Shooting. His latest book, Shotguns and Shooting Three, is available for $25 (plus shipping) from 800-685-7962; www.shootingsportsman.com.