In fact, it usually is. I do it all the time it myself (I once wrote “sporting clays is just like fly fishing, only louder”).

It’s telling, but really only reveals the user’s frame of reference; the yardstick used to measure an increasingly incomprehensible universe.

Former world champion chess player Boris Spassky (of Bobby Fischer v Spassky fame) emigrated to France and took up tennis, and I read an interview where he said “Tennis is the sport most like chess.”

As a soccer fan, it’s clear to me that Spassky is nuts; soccer’s the sport most like chess. And so it goes.

Which is why I found myself marveling at the similarities between fly fishing and shooting, and not feeling all that weird about it.

Last Sunday, with only a few hours available  (and the local streams closed, and the Upper Sac running too high to fish well), I opted out of fishing and dragged an odd old shotgun to the shooting range.

A recent gift from an in-law, it’s an old-school Remington 870 pump gun (the shotgun found locked away in most police cars), but this one was outfitted with trap-shooting hardware: 30 inch barrel, Monte Carlo buttstock, double-bead sites, etc.

The result is an odd bird; something like a double-handed spey rod designed to fish a three weight line.

It works for its intended task, but it’s not exactly what you’d call elegant (at least not when compared to the elegant-as-can-be over/unders or specialty trap guns).

Of course, pushing it over the hump from “odd” to “interesting” was its history; it showed all the signs of heavy use, but not abuse. Clearly, its former owner (my stepfather’s dad) shot a lot of trap with this gun.

In our hyper-connected era – when attention spans are measured in picoseconds and pants are manufactured so they look used even when new – a decades-old artifact carrying the unmistakable signs of good, honest use fires up an almost chemical feeling of warmth in the back of my head.

Two small stress fractures in the wood grow out of the receiver on either side of the buttstock (evidence of of a lot of rounds through the gun), and every moving part offers a smoothed, machined appearance; the supple evidence of wear instead of the dings and divots of abuse.

I have bamboo fly rods in the same condition; a pair of impregnated Phillipsons and a just-barely-postwar Orvis rod that were all regularly fished, but because they weren’t beaten or yanked on or experimented with by some idiot when graphite “obsoleted” them, they’re eminently fishable.

And highly intriguing.

I know one of the Phillipsons was hauled out during the Henry’s Fork Green Drake hatch back when the Fork’s Green Drakes were arguably the center of the fly fishing universe.

The other has kicked around much of the Rocky Mountain west with its former owner, who fished it a lot.

I know little about the Orvis rod, so in one sense, it’s more mysterious. Imagination is a powerful thing, and I could guess at its use on some of the east’s best-known rivers at a time when the country was recovering from a terrible war, and frankly needed the recreation.

In fact, I liked it enough that when the only tip began cracking, I couldn’t stand the thought of retiring the thing – ending its history in the present – and had Orvis build two more tips.

The Remington trap gun clearly received similar use for (reportedly) a couple decades, and because it was owned by a person who circulated in a higher tax bracket than myself, was probably witness to a lot of fascinating conversations.

I love that kind of stuff for the same reason I’m fascinated by the roads and building foundations which emerge when lakes dry up and recede; they’re not just stones, they’re monuments to a recent past I can’t help but wonder at.

Which, admittedly, is the long way around (I started this essay to discuss the idea that shooting is a lot like fly fishing, and we’re not really there yet).

Done properly, shooting and fly fishing feel largely effortless, and if you’re aware of your own existence, it’s in a detached, slightly bemused way – as if you were a bystander watching things unfold instead of wondering if the onlookers are impressed or a client check will soon arrive.

In the grip of that kind of tunnel vision, you cast the fly rod and the fly drops perfectly in the seam and you know the trout’s going to rise; or you mount the gun and the bead at the end of barrel picks up the clay and tracks smoothly through it, and your finger tightens…

It’s not in the style of outdoor writers to admit that overthinking stuff largely screws it up, but it my case, it’s true.

Every fly fisherman who has false cast a long line beautifully – and then overpowered the cast on the presentation, throwing a tailing loop and almost beheading themselves – knows exactly what I mean.

Likewise, hitting every clay in the air on Friday, then missing almost half of them on Saturday, when it counts, suggests a similar effect.

Last Sunday I knocked down clay birds like bowling pins and was regularly hitting shotgun shells at 75 yards offhand with my target .22 rifle.

Either I’ve become a much better shot over the last month (without practicing at all), or I’m simply a much better shot when I’m having fun.

Which is pretty much how it plays out on the creeks and rivers; if a rising fish represents a fun challenge and potentially pleasurable outcome, I’m death from above.

If the trout represents a complex problem looking for a solution – one that brings to mind a heroic cast and the first draft of a self-aggrandizing blog post – my failure rate triples.

It seems my brain is so powerful, the mere act of thinking draws all the blood away from my extremities.

A second (more likely) option is this: It turns out the point of “Getting into the Outdoors” may simply be to “Get the Heck Out Of Our Own Way.”

See you not thinking, Tom Chandler.

Wet.

(Just say it three times.)

We started the sporting clays shoot under leaden skies; I finished it with pants so heavy from water (I foolishly wore work jeans) that I had to tighten my belt to keep the damn things from falling off.

That's Alert Underground Reader Mark - one station before the rains came.

Of course, no outdoor pursuit should be entirely comfortable – it should never be like strolling through a climate-controlled mall looking at uncomfortable shoes in the windows – but in this case, I didn’t need ugly weather to cause discomfort.

My shooting offered plenty of that (or rather, the missing),

He Shoots… He…. Misses!

With the vertically enhanced Chris Raine pretty much folded up into the front seat of the Subaru Legacy sedan (he’s big, it’s not), we rolled up to the shooting site at 7:45.

Sure, the skies looked ominous, but according to Weather Nerd Scott, it looked like we’d enjoy the protection of a big hole in the rainy stuff which was already pounding the canyon.

About one hour later, I became very aware he was wrong.

As I stood in the field and felt my pants absorb water by the pound, the limitations of weather prediction technology in an uncertain world became very, very clear.

Those who don’t wear eyeglasses will never understand The Curse of Rain in Sports Where Visual Acuity Is Critical (when it’s raining, it’s damned hard to see).

Still, I’d already felt the sting of unmet expectation; the rain was bad, but the 10-20 mph winds (gusting to 30 mph) weren’t helping (anybody).

Yet, try as hard as I could, there was no way to blame the misses (especially the easy misses) on the weather.

Turns out shooting tiny, fast-moving disks is a lot like proper fly casting; if you’re putting a lot of effort into it, you’re probably doing it wrong.

Focus is needed, as is a kind of zennish inner stillness, which I simply didn’t have – and couldn’t gain once the winds and the rain piled on.

Oddly – just like learning to cast a fly rod – it’s hugely frustrating and big fun at the same time.

In the end, I shot a 52 (from 100 birds); nine less than last year’s 61. Chris Raine shot a 72 (down from last year’s 86). The other shooters took a similar hit.

Alert Underground Reader Mark foolishly bravely showed up despite the forecast (that’s him in the picture at the top of the post), and he also posted a 52.

Older Bro posted a 47 (four less than last year), and this despite losing a couple birds to a borrowed shotgun “featuring” an automatic safety that engaged every time the over/under was broken open (note to self: never invest in technology designed to do your thinking for you).

Every fly fisherman reading this will understand what’s said next: I stalked away from some of the shooting stations white knuckling the shotgun while simultaneously laughing and calculating what I’ll do next time.

In other words, it’s possible to get all cranky about the immediate result, yet you can’t wait to do it all again (I don’t golf, but hear this from golfers all the time).

Back To Fly Fishing

The weather on the Upper Sacramento has varied widely; everything from warm, sunny days to freezing temperatures and rain (snow down to 4,000′ was part of one forecast for the next couple days).

In other words, it’s Fall in the mountains, which means the trout may or may not be on the October Caddis in a big way, the BWOs may or may not be hatching in a big way, and other fly fishermen may or may not be standing in your favorite water when you arrive.

Since my stint as Mr. Single Parent ends tonight, I plan to be on the water this week, and this time I won’t be armed.

See you on the river, Tom Chandler

After all, what I know about Sporting Clays you could fit on a page the size of the Nestle Ethics Manual, though after blasting a few targets out of the air today – and receiving several detailed emails jammed with technical hints (keep both eyes open, mark your break points, point your toes toward the second target, etc) – I think the real secret has been revealed to me:

As a sportsman, you must develop an intense hatred of orange clay saucers – as if they murdered Fido (your beloved family dog) in a previous life.

And we thought catch & release fly fishing was weird.

Murderer. Tomorrow, you die.

The Lone Gunman

In the interest of not getting it completely wrong at tomorrow’s sporting clays for charity shoot, I hit the shooting range today (abandoning the BWO hatch), and pretty much annihilated everything that was thrown in the air. Everything.

Naturally, I’m tempted to call Vegas and make book on my odds of my getting 50% of tomorrow’s sporting clays targets, yet my greed joy is tempered by the simple knowledge that all of today’s targets were headed pretty much directly away from me, and died around the 40 yard mark.

In other words, easy pickins’.

Still, there’s now hope I won’t be forced to slink from tomorrow’s contest like Ike Turner at a NOW convention. Instead, I can hold my head aloft and score one for the “I’m-in-way-over-their-head” Undergrounders everywhere.

We’ll see. For now, there are a pair of barrels that need cleaning, and lots of gear to forget to pack for tomorrow’s shoot.

Expect a report, and don’t be surprised if I beat the Vegas spread.

After all, I hate orange saucers. And this one’s for Fido.

If I'm going down, I'm going down shooting...