That’s because I was absorbed enough by the shoot that I forgot fire off a few frames on the camera.

With fewer of these flying about, the world is a safer place

In one sense, it’s an example why sporting clays is a lot like fly fishing a technical hatch over educated fish; to succeed, you pretty much have to exclude the real world and embrace a sort of sporting tunnel vision.

When either event is over, you look up, blink a few times, and find yourself amazed by the fact the sun has moved, the clouds have rolled in, and the birds are no longer singing.

Time, it seems, only stopped for you.

The Bare Facts

First, the chest beating: Our team of three shooters ended up right behind the third-place team (their team average was 67.8 birds per shooter from a possible 100, ours was 66).

That’s a astonishing result given my utter lack of experience, and the fact the Older Bro had fired a shotgun exactly once prior to the tournament.

Despite losing a few birds to misfires on my lower barrel (limited to one type of cheap Remington ammo), I shot a 61, and Older Bro posted a 51.

Propping up the excellent-but-still-newbie-ish scores of the Chandler clan was bamboo rod geek Chris Raine, who has annihilated plenty of clay birds in the past.

Despite a rustiness born of a few years away from the sport, Raine posted an 86, and more importantly, he looked good doing it.

He’d shoot, pop the action open, the spent shells would eject over his shoulder, and he’d have the two new shells in the gun before the empties hit the ground (I’m pretty sure chicks dig that sort of thing).

Lacking those kinds of groupie-attracting reflexes, I was content to muddle along without shooting anyone in the leg.

We all have our goals, it seems.

The Inevitable Comparison…

Being a fly fisherman, it’s hard not to compare fly fishing to sporting clays (after all, to fly fishermen, everything is “just like fly fishing, only different”).

Both are far harder than they look, and the people that make them look easy only do so after many (many) hours of experience.

I’m tempted to crack off a smartass line (“sporting clays is just like fly fishing, only louder”), but if the two really were just like each other, I’d already be good at sporting clays.

And given my tendency to make the hard shots while missing the easy ones, I’m clearly not (though I am fully capable of whining about my hard/easy tendencies in both sports).

Later, Chris patiently explained that the modified chokes on my Browning Superposed 20 gauge probably cost me on the near, fast-moving shots, but helped on the farther efforts.

“Oh,” I said. (That experience thing.)

It’s like explaining to a disbelieving new fly fishermen that their #14 Prince nymph – which successfully worked for them on every stocked trout stream they’ve ever fished – probably won’t cut it during a hatch of #20 BWOs on a catch & release tailwater, and that yes – those tiny bits of fluff actually can hook and land big trout.

“Oh,” they say.

We Return to Our Regularly Scheduled Fly Fishing

Sporting clays was fun, and yes, it’s something I’ll do again.

Older Bro is already threatening to sign us up for next year’s tournament, and with a working shotgun, a little prior warning (and a few days more practice), I plan to send a good 3/4 of those Fido-killing orange saucers to their deaths.

I might even plump for “Team Underground,” though that’s contingent on Orvis or LLBean recognizing the extreme PR potential of the event, flying me to their wingshooting schools in the corporate jet, and returning me just in time to clean the course.

Frankly, I can’t think of a single reason why they shouldn’t do it, which is why I run a smalltime fly fishing blog and they run huge, successful businesses.

But for now, we’re returning our focus to another big, orange, flying object – the October Caddis.

Which, it seems, the trout are really, really on top of.

We’ve had a couple frosty nights up here in Mt. Shasta, and the bugs are dying. Rumor has it the Upper Sac and McCloud are both going big guns on the big dry – provided you’re fishing the right kind of water.

Of course, with the McCloud closing in less than a week, those hoping to put the steel to perhaps their biggest trout of the year (yes, it can happen) had better hurry.

Oddly – and assuming I can escape the constraints of father hood for a whole afternoon – find myself drawn not to the glamorous waters, but a small stream, hoping to get one more shot at the little trout before the season closes, and the area quietly fills up with snow.

It’s been that kind of year for me, and I can see no reason to stop now.

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...

All the caller knew is that someone had recently given me a heavily used, slightly rusted 20 gauge over/under shotgun and that I wrote some kind of outdoor blog, which in their mind qualified me to compete, despite the fact I’ve actually fired the shotgun the following number of times:

Four.

Naturally – because I am suffering from sleep-deprivation-driven hallucinations – I accepted.

And you thought fly fishing was humbling?

Sure, it’s a good cause and all, and – as my readers know well – I sometimes simply do dumb things.

Let’s be clear; me shooting a sporting clays competition is a lot like me taking on Steve Rajeff with a 7′ 3wt (and a flimsy one), but now that I think about it, it’s actually much worse.

After all, my capacity for committing mayhem with a fly rod is several orders of magnitude less than my capacity for mayhem when holding a shotgun (even a dignified Browning 20 gauge over & under).

In fact, I can already envision several scenarios involving my shotgun and somebody’s else’s brand new, gloss-black SUV, and for my own sake, I’m going to stop writing for just a minute, close my eyes, and go to my Happy Place (where there are no gloss black SUVs).

…

There. I’m better. Sorta.

Though I still wonder why nobody ever calls to offer a competition in something I do well (which could include the following Brilliant Contest Ideas):

• Falling In The River In Full View of Hot Angling Babes
• Wrapping My last Beetle Bug Around The Tail of a Now Pissed-Off Bull
• Saying Precisely The Wrong Thing At The Wrong Time To My Wife

More To Come…

But because this complex story clearly demands one (and they’re all the rage these days), I’ve compiled the Underground’s First “By The Numbers” Infographic, which you lucky bastards can now use to Quickly and Easily Digest Important Facts About This Post:

Naturally, you’ll hear and see nothing about this Saturday’s Pending Shotgun-Related Disaster unless I get on a hot streak, or can actually round up a few hundred target loads (it’s not easy when you live in the boonies) and sneak in a little practice.

See you on range, Tom Chandler.