SHOOTING WHERE WE LOOK WINGSHOOTING

RANDY LAWRENCE

My daughter Ashley doesn't like guns. Sure, she's a fan of grilled grouse breast, and she understands that guns are a part of that experience. Ashley knows how much fun her brother has shooting clays and notes her mother's growing interest in the sport. But for now, she'll pass. Shotguns are loud and scary, she says. Though she has not firsthand proof of this, she imagines that it hurts to shoot them, too.

On top of that, redheaded Ashley is 13 years old and good at it. She has mastered the eye roll, the shoulder shrug and the not-so-quite audible rejoinder of her generation: "Whatever!" To paraphrase a note she wrote to a friend (and forgot in a pair of jeans headed for the washing machine), she has been sentenced to hard time under the dumbest, most unjust despot alive. That would be me.

I'm no better. During our most heated moments, I catch myself believing that all adolescents should be mercifully freeze-dried and stored until they return to humanity at about age 17.

We had begun spending a good deal of our time sulking in neutral corners, the lines of communication down and nearly out. Or at least that's how it was before the broken curfew, a b race of BB guns, and a Texas quail hunter named Leon Measures.

Against explicit instructions otherwise, Ashley stayed for a late move at our local shopping mall. This involved an extra trip for her mother across town and a nervous, after-hours wait in a poorly policed parking area, one still shadowed by the unsolved murder of a young girl several years ago. Stiff sanctions were in order, but while Ashley's fate was under advisement, I had a conversation with the aforementioned Measures. Suddenly, Ashley's mother and I had a better idea.

We outlined the standard punishments of being grounded and having Ashley's phone privileges curtailed for the remainder of the century. Or…she could work off her sentence in half-hour increments. Call it community service, spending time with me learning to shoot flying targets with a BB gun. Desperate to avoid incarceration and fiber-optic isolation, Ashley opted for the air gun.

Maybe you've seen Leon Measures' "Shoot Where You Looksm" students perform their air gun wizardry on ESPN. What you don't know about are the dozens of clays shooters and whitewing dove devotees who've slipped up to Measures' back door, hat in hand, shotgun confidence in tatters, and left with a Shoot Where You Look kit. You don't know about them because they're sitting smug in a pile of target dust and game feathers. Mum's the word.

But the air gun practice is really no secret. The method is based on military training that used BB guns as introductory tools for instinctive point-and-fire methods. Measures' adaptation for wingshooting got its start in a church Boy Scout troop if the troop finished its merit badge work. Measures promised to teach them to shoot. He was as good as his word, and since then, his program has proved to be an ideal activity for 4-H clubs and other youth groups looking for a fun, safe skill activity.

Besides improving a person's shotgun swing, Shoot Where You Look features plenty of applications toward personal responsibility, teamwork, and goal-centered commitment. For Ashley and me, it offered even more.

But let's talk about shooting first. Certainly three of the biggest roadblocks to becoming an accomplished shotgunner are cost. Finding safe areas to practice, and jaw-jumpin',cheek-crackin', shoulder-bangin' recoil. Enter the air rifle.

One of Measures' Daisy guns, sans sights and stocked high enough so the shooter looks over the barrel, is not a big-ticket item. Thousands of rounds of ammo cost but a few dollars. The targets are milk jugs, tennis balls, and tin cans. Graduates of his course practice by puffing aspirin tables out of the air, but heck, the generic brand can be purchased in bulk for cheap.

Well-fitted safety glasses are absolutely mandatory, as is a safe area to shoot. But where a shotgun requires large-area considerations for field of fire, shot fall, and noise, air gun practice can be done almost anywhere there's an appropriate backstop and careful consideration of BB ricochet. Measures has given dozens of demonstrations in high school classrooms, gymnasiums, and trade show auditoriums. With a tarp backdrop and adequate lighting, some of his students fashion nighttime practice ranges in their backyards or garages.

And finally, there's that feisty rascal we used to call kick. We know that recoil hampers consistent technique and wears on a shooter's stamina. Therefore, if we're starting a shotgun, a gas autoloader, open choked in 28 bore or bigger and maintained to perform reliably with the terrific new light or trainer loads, is the scattergun of choice. Custom-molded plugs under stout, well-fitted muffs provide cost-effective defense against recoil associated with muzzle blast. Providing the beginner with a variety of appropriate targets keeps the focus on the eye-hand-target relationship, dampening buttstock punch through the adrenaline rush of success.

But there may be an easier way. The air gun is recoil free. It is lightweight, effortlessly lifted over and over for dry mount practice and shooting. Measures' entire kit - sturdy, wood-stocked gun, a comprehensive video and companion manual, two pair of safety glasses - comes delivered under $170.00.

The bottom line is that any student willing to commit quality practice time to the Shoot Where You Look system can manage the staggering number of correctly, successful repetitions that groove fundamental technique. Graduates make an almost seamless transition to the shotgun, jump-started to a performance level that would have cost many hundreds, even thousands of dollars to reach by a conventional approach.

So if air gun introduction to wingshooting is such a great idea, why don't we see more of it? Lots of reasons, first of all, a BB gun just isn't very sexy. It's perceived as a kid's toy, a gimmick, and a comedown for an adult. Shortsighted, cynical folks might even see it as a drain on the traditional gun and ammo market. They need to take another look.

Many more adults with little or no shooting background now want to try shotgunning. Three of my newest students are city-bred, young professionals drawn to wingshooting by the allure of fine over-unders, notions of pretty dog work, even the tug of game dinners provided by an afternoon afield. I'm convinced that if Hollywood ever gave us the shotgunning equivalent of a River Runs Through it, The game of sporting clays-scenic courses, imaginative targets, elegant equipment, bloodless kills-would surely boom in the same way catch-and-release fly fishing has over the last five years.

Along with these newcomers are the old hands who've found sporting clays to be an honest way to keep a bird gun hot when the seasons are closed. Count, too, the more casual folks whose shotguns often have dust on them when they get to the range. Many of them have realized they can actually enjoy more consistent shooting with some directed primer popping.

But how many of these folds are dissuaded by the cost involved in practicing such improvement? How many beginners are put off shooting forever by the punishment they get from a gun they're not really ready to shoot or targets that are far beyond their ability?

On the other hand, how many people, introduced to shooting in an intelligent, success-oriented manner, are simply started for more shooting? Are eager to buy another shotgun, a good shooting vest, flats or high-quality ammo? Will join their local sporting club, attend a fun shoot, and find their way to competitive shooting? Might later buy a hunting license, perhaps a duck stamp?

There are lots of ways to learn to shoot a shotgun safely and effectively. The air gun is simply an inexpensive, easy-to-practice method for anyone willing to give it a try. Those who practice the techniques Measures demonstrates will not only shoot where they look, but also they'll hit what they see in wingshooting-and, just maybe, in life.

This is where Ashley and I come back into the story. You see, after checking out the complete kit, I bought a second air gun. Now my daughter and I practice together, long after Ashley has worked off her "community service" hours. We take turns tossing targets; we bet trips to Dairy Queen on handicapped shooting percentages. The lines between teacher and student have blurred by our common attempts to get together, and we have something more to talk about than the condition of her bedroom or whose turn it is to mow the lawn. We look forward to the time we've made together.

Her mother has gone on from the air rifle to shoot at clays with her Ruger 20 bore. But Ashley and I keep plinking away with our BB guns, learning to shoot where we look, hit what we see, and see what's good about a friendship between a freckle-faced, professional teen-ager and a clumsy dad who had found one mark he cannot afford to miss.

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Safety!! Never, ever, point a gun; loaded, unloaded, on safe, off safe, or otherwise at anything you don't intend to shoot! You will never have to say, "I didn't know it was loaded."

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Leon Measures'
Shoot Where You Look^SM
340 Pan American Dr.
Suite A-3
Livingston, TX 77351

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