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Instinctive Shooting With My Mom
This last weekend my mom came down for a visit. On Saturday while Lily was off doing a massage, we went out back and did some instinctive shooting. She didn't think that she'd be able to do it, but was game to try. Now, it's important to mention that my mom's 77 and very spry. In fact, she's got a lot more energy and is in better shape than friends of hers who are 20 and 30 years younger. But, she's gone shooting a total of ONCE in her life before this. (Some of you may remember the older article about this I put on the website where we're out firing the AK - her idea! She wanted to try shooting "that one I see on the news all the time")
So, I got a pair of BB guns, a pair of glasses, and some ground targets to start on. In a few minutes she had the basics of how to cock the gun, how to hold it correctly, and we'd tested for her master eye. It turns out like many people she's right handed but left eye dominant. Then we got to shooting at the ground targets from about 5 feet away. Slowly I coached and corrected her as we started to work our way back farther and farther, until we got to 20 feet and she was hitting consistently. This took only about an hour. One thing I noticed was that she had a tendency to shoot a little bit high. Some shots would miss the can but still hit the rope it was hanging on! This meant her shots were dead-center.
After a little break, we went on to shooting at aerial targets. She hit the second one I threw and then just kept hitting them one after another with hardly a miss. She thought I was just "putting her on" when I said that she really was a natural at the aerial targets but I meant it. We kept at the aerials for about an hour and she shot the hell out of the coffee can we were using as a target. She had so much fun that she wanted to do it again the next day and focus on just the aerials. So, we started off with the coffee can and it was clear after a few minutes that this was no challenge for her. So, I got a big pinto bean can and that quickly proved to be easy. Then we went down to a fruit can and eventually to a tiny mushroom can - all of which she hit with equal ease.
Since she was on a roll I suggested she try shooting a quarter. She thought that it was much too small, but I pointed out that it was just about half the size of the mushroom can and besides "the center of every target is the same size". So she relented and agreed to try. I got a coin out, threw it up into the air, and zzzzzzzzing! she hit it on the first go. A beautifully centered shot that flipped the coin high into the air. She looked at the coin with both wonder and disbelief at what she could do, how as if by magic she had become a cowgirl shootist just like in the movies of her childhood.
"Let's stop right there" she said with a smile. "We can do more next time I come to visit!" Before she left she'd taken the can-opener and cut the bottoms off of all the cans she'd hit to make a collage with, along with her quarter. I can't wait to hear how it goes when her church friends come over and see that! Again we have it, a complete novice turned expert in under 3 hours. Further proof that this is a repeatable process, learnable by anyone who will just do the drills correctly! On a funny note, you know how at a sporting event you sometimes hear somebody yell "My mom can do better then that!" at a player who made a mistake? Well, in this case it just might be true! All the very best, Pete Kautz
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American Instinctive Rifle
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