Looking for some family fun? Well, look no further. You can take up Shooting Sports as a family activity that will get you out-of-doors. There is something for every age. Shooting Sports will have you picking up a bow and arrow and flinging arrows down range at either a paper target or maybe a 3-D target that certainly resembles that 4-point deer you want in your freezer!
Not into archery? No problems. You have handguns, rifles, black powder rifles or shotguns to look at. And you can go to a shooting range and have an afternoon of fun and competition. The competition can be against yourself to make you get a better score! My husband made sure to teach me how to shoot a handgun when we first married. He was an accomplished shooter. We would go out and practice and one time, when he was paying more attention to what I was shooting then his own target, my score was better than his!!! I still have not let him forget that!
Civilian Marksmanship Program
There is what is called a Civilian Marksmanship Program. As with every shooting sports venue this program starts with teaching safety. Every time anyone picks up any firearm safety is number one. This is a shooting program that has different levels of competency in which the shooter is competing against himself to keep improving his skills. There are around 10 different “levels” of compentency for each discipline. The first level is always considered easy enough that the beginer shooter can accomplish the goal and get the patch to sew on their coat. Then each level builds on the previous level.
Even though you are striving to improve your skill level and can work on this by yourself, this is also a program that can be used with other shooters. The Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts shooting programs can have their participants work on this. Also, your 4-H shooting sports clubs can also follow this program.
How to start learning how to shoot
Look to your state game and fish wardens, they will be able to point you to a shooting program so you can learn. You will learn about safety and handling the gun or bow in a safe manner so that there are no accidents. If you have a 4-H program in your community there are shooting sports programs. When my son was growing up he was very interested in all aspects of shooting sports. We enrolled him in the 4-H program and he grew with that program.
There are some shooting programs in our local schools which offers another option for you to explore. The high school I attended had a ROTC program that was available to the boys. They would shoot .22 rifles.
Learning and growing in your knowledge of Shooting Sports
Let me talk a little bit about the 4-H program because, as I said, my son grew up learning how to shoot in that program. This was something he could excel in. There were trained instructors every night when they practiced. Safety was covered every night. And since the instructors were not Mom or Dad he seemed to listen to them. Does that sound familiar???
We met weekly from late spring until early fall. We would practice shooting at paper targets and besides learning how to shoot that firearm we also learned how to score the targets. Now, shotgun is easy to score because you are shooting at 4″ round clay targets and when you hit your target it “disintegrates” or changes the course of trajectory and that is a hit.
Shooting an air rifle or a .22 rifle is a little bit different. After shooting the course of fire the shooter goes up and retrieves his target. He then checks the holes in his target and adds the totals for his hits on the paper. After our shooters got a little bit better at hitting the paper the Mom’s who volunteered to score the targets would make mistakes on purpose and the shooter learned to scrutinize his target and challenge the score if he felt his score was higher than what the Mom recorded. This paid off when they went to the state competition and added 1 or more points to his total score.
Shooting Sports has paid off in lots of family entertainment
In conclusion, Shooting Sports has been an activity that my family has participated in through-out the years. We have done it as a family and learned how to work together when we are trying to solve a problem (why am I missing the target???) and just having time away from the house to bond and build those relationships. And, because of safety being so important growing up we have NOT had an accidental shooting or accident. We have enjoyed our time out-of-doors shooting at paper targets.
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