Women are shooting sporting clays for fun
Date: Sep 22, 2006 8:55 AM
PUBLICATION: Calgary Herald
DATE: 2006.09.22
EDITION: Final
SECTION: Real Life
PAGE: C14 / Front
BYLINE: Robin Summerfield
SOURCE: Calgary Herald
DATELINE: CARSTAIRS
ILLUSTRATION: Colour Photo: Jenelle Schneider, Calgary Herald /
(Shootingveteran Val Carter takes aim at a clay pigeon at Silver Willow
near Carstairs), as Terry Reynar readies her shotgun.; Colour Photo:
Jenelle Schneider, Calgary Herald / Shooting veteran Val Carter takes
aim at a clay pigeon at Silver Willow near Carstairs, (as Terry Reynar
readies her shotgun.); Photo: Jenelle Schneider, Calgary Herald / Terry
Reynar, who has 15 years of shooting experience, takes aim at a clay
pigeon at Silver Willow near Carstairs.
WORD COUNT: 1131

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Annie gets her gun: Women are shooting sporting clays for fun, a
challenge and the sheer thrill of blowing discs to bits

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Terry Reynar raises her 12-gauge shotgun to her chest. Her right index
finger rests lightly on the trigger and she focuses her attention off in
the distance.

She yells, “Pull!” and out from a shed below her vantage point a black,
palm-sized disc flies up above the field.

It’s easy to lose the target in the mix of sun and clouds. It’s even
easier to miss the clay disc as it arcs across the sky in a
24-metre-per-second blur.

She misses, repeats the call, shoots off a few rounds and then the
56-year-old clips a target, which shatters to pieces and falls to the
ground.

“It’s a great time out from the world,” says Reynar, after bringing
her
gun down at Silver Willow Golf and Sporting Club, just west of
Carstairs, an hour’s drive northwest from Calgary.

“It’s an absolute stress relief. You don’t think about anything else.”

She’s right. With a gun in hand, there’s no room to let your mind
wander. After all, you’re brandishing a loaded weapon and trying to hit
a puny target winging across the sky.

Reynar, a real estate agent from Cochrane, is one of an increasing
number of women taking up arms, so to speak, and learning how to shoot
sporting clays for fun, exercise and the bragging rights of a great
shot.

Sporting clays — think of it as golfing with guns — is an emerging
international shooting sport that is also gaining popularity in Alberta.

The Alberta Sporting Clays Association — the governing body that
sanctions shooting events, oversees provincial championships and
officially ranks shooters — has 600 members. Ranges are located across
the province, where shooters of all skill levels can shoot a round, take
lessons and enter competitions. (See www.asca.ab.ca.)

Sporting clays shooting is social, competitive and challenging. And it
is distinctly different from trap and skeet shooting, which have been
around since around 1830, according to the Trapshooting Hall of Fame and
Museum in Vandalia, Ohio.

In trap shooting, clays are released in five predictable flight
patterns.

In skeet shooting, clays are released from two different throwing
machines situated in two different positions.

Sporting clays uses different sized clays, flung at different velocities
into the sky and along the ground. It’s meant to most closely resemble
actual hunting of ducks, pheasants and rabbits, and originated in
England in the early 1900s, according to the National Sporting Clays
Association, based in San Antonio, Texas. The sport first came to North
America in the 1980s.

Here are the basics:

In this sport, the disc-shaped targets are called sporting clays or clay
pigeons (the latter term is used less often these days). The clays come
in different sizes and have different flying properties.

The “house” is the firing post, sometimes a lean-to structure, where
clays are flung into the air by a throwing machine. A “puller” is the
person controlling the target release from a remote-control panel near
the shooters.

In a round of sporting clays, shooters walk from station to station,
much like golf, where they fire at clays varying in size, speed and
trajectory.

The 14 stations are situated in such a way that all the shooters are
standing inside, if one can imagine, a large inner circle of sorts.
Everyone shoots outward from that core. (Stations can be added, taken
away or repositioned to make the course more difficult and to keep
shooters on their toes.)

As shooters walk from station to station, shotguns are unloaded and left
pointing at the ground. Eye and ear protection are always worn; some
wear padded vests to protect their shoulders and armpits from the
repeated recoils of shooting.

After the target is launched, the shooter must line it up with the
shotgun, predict its speed and size, factor in wind velocity and then
pull the trigger with the gun pointed ahead of the target, but in time
to hit the clay.

Like golf, it takes concentration and superb eye-hand co-ordination to
shoot with precision and hit the flying target.

Unlike golf, shooters want a high score as each point represents one
clay hit.

Many women, like Reynar, get into the sport because their husbands or
partners have been shooting for years and it’s a pastime that can be
enjoyed together. Then, women stay for their own reasons.

A group of five women ranging in age from 17 to 56 and out for a casual
shoot at Silver Willow offer many reasons for learning to shoot.

Some love the thrill of competition; others just want to challenge
themselves to get better; and others still just love getting together
for the camaraderie of a round of sporting clays with their friends.

As regular Samantha Beland, 32, says: “It’s definitely something you
never get bored of because it changes all the time.”

And here’s a news flash: Women are good with guns.

“Women do better than men the first day because they don’t have bad
habits, they listen better and they’re more flexible,” says Stu Carter,
52, past president of the Alberta Sporting Clays Association and a
certified shooting instructor for the past decade.

Andrea Day, the provincial women’s sporting clays champion for two years
and counting, says: “I think we can really be good at it and in some
cases better than men because of the way we’re built and our balance is
up top.”

The 17-year-old grew up with the sport and has been shooting longer than
she can remember. Her father, Don Day, who owns Silver Willow, holds too
many titles to list and is the 2006 men’s provincial sporting clays
champion, a win he earned last month in Grande Prairie.

“It just as much can be a woman’s sport, but (women) write it off as a
man’s sport because they think it’s about violence because of the guns,”
says Andrea.

Like men, women are ranked based on their results from sanctioned
association shoots. Ranges offer fun shoots or sanctioned shoots where
every shot counts toward a ranking that ultimately places shooters in
one of seven classes. Pairs or teams, mixed or same sex, walk a sporting
clays course over about a two-hour period. At each station, scores are
kept on a card.

And the costs aren’t prohibitive. At Silver Willow, for example, a round
of sporting clays or 50 clays costs $28, juniors 18 and under pay $14,
and a husband and wife team pay $42. More clays can be bought. For
beginners, guns are available for use, without cost, on site.

Enthusiasts can pay up to $1,500 for a shotgun, but cheaper-yet-sturdy
versions can be found for a few hundred or so. Just like golf, the
better you get and the more you like it, the more money you can spend.

At Silver Willow, the club actively encourages women to give shooting a
try. Case in point: Last summer, the club hosted a women’s
learn-to-shoot clinic where $20 bought instruction, the use of a gun and
lunch.

Thirty-seven women enrolled.

The clinic started in a classroom to cover gun safety, among other
topics, before students headed outside to practise stance, to learn how
to load, hold and shoot, and to take in target know-how.

Then they opened fire.

(While there are no more women’s clinics planned for this year, private
or group instruction at Silver Willow costs $40 per hour.)

Meanwhile, with 15 years of shooting experience, Reynar is considered a
women’s veteran in the sport.

“The first two years I was just happy to hit anything,” she says.

Today, she shoots year-round, about three times a month, often with her
husband, Greg, who introduced her to the sport.

Reynar admits she isn’t competitive and shooting is more about
self-improvement. And that’s good enough for her.

“The more you shoot, obviously, the better you get at it — just like
golf,” she says, offering up one last admission.

“Oh, I could be better if I practised, but I don’t really.”

- For more information visit the Alberta Sporting Clays Association at
www.asca.ab.ca, where ranges are listed.

- For more information about Silver Willow, visit www.silverwillow.ca or
call 337-2490.