I've shot in a lot of benefit shooting events, but none was more fun than the first Saline Home Builders Sporting Clays Tournament Friday at Remington Gun Club.
Representing Merchants and Farmers Bank of Dumas, my team consisted of Rusty Pruitt, John Bethel, Jeff Patrick and Ray Tucker. The tournament's purpose was to fund scholarships for students at Benton's Career Technical Education Center.
The course was moderately difficult and featured a wide array of presentations. Our group deemed one target to be unhittable. It was a right-to-left target on a straight crossing pattern. It started low, and after a quick initial rise, was in gradual descent for its entire path. Since we were the last team on the field, we all shot at it after our time at that station was through. We fired many rounds and did not hit it.
We might have shot better all around, but we had too much fun joking around and poking fun at each other. Judging from the volume of the mirth at the other stations, it's fair to say most of the other teams enjoyed the same experience.
Someday I am going to master hitting rabbit targets. Those are the ones that roll along the ground. Just when you think you've got the right lead and are about to pull the trigger, the target hits something and jumps about 3 feet in the air.
I have always been told to aim high on the rabbit targets. I hit more than usual Friday, but most got away. It doesn't help that the second target is always a flyer. You have to be really quick to hit a slow rolling target and then swing quickly on a flying target.
The first rabbit we encountered flustered Tucker so badly that he shot about 10 feet in front of it. His shot plowed a trench through the mud, and he was not allowed to live it down. Tucker got the last laugh, though. His low score of 8 won him a pair of Costa sunglasses valued at about $260.
I used a 1973 Browning Citori, a first-year production model featuring a semi-beavertail forend and 26-inch barrels with fixed Modified and Improved Cylinder chokes. I like fixed chokes because I believe they pattern light target and field loads better than most factory choke tubes. Fixed choke barrels are also smaller diameter than tubed barrels. Improved Cylinder and Modified are perfect for a sporting clays course, but there were two stations where a Skeet choke would have been appropriate.
Early Citoris have plain blued receivers with no scrollwork. I don't like it better than embellished metal, but it certainly does look different.
Because Pruitt had always wanted to shoot an over/under, he abandoned his Remington 11-87 after the first station and shot the Citori for the rest of the course. He shot it well.
I also brought a Remington V3 for Tucker, who I believed would appreciate a lighter gun with less recoil. Patrick's Benelli Super Black Eagle jammed with the light target loads that Remington provided, so he switched to the V3, as well. The V3 is a versatile shotgun that cycles anything you feed it, from the lightest target loads to the heaviest 3-inch hunting loads. It operated flawlessly, as it always does.
I had a Carlson's Improved Cylinder choke tube in the V3. I shot it on a couple of stations that required only an Improved Cylinder tube. It is a strange sensation to shoot a semiautomatic shotgun when you have been shooting an over/under all day. An over/recoil is abrupt and sharp. A gas-compensated semiautomatic recoil is a gentle push, but you can also hear and feel the bolt open and close. It feels like there's a lag between the first and second shot, but there really isn't.
Bethel shot a Remington 1100 with a plain modified barrel, and it was very reliable.
All in all, it was great to spend a few hours shooting clays for a good cause with some fun friends.