Phillip, don't read this

No, really, Phillip: Don't read it. Go away.

Is he gone now? Whew. OK. Now I can say it:

I shot like crap today.

The reason Phillip - a.k.a. Mr. Hog Blog - can't read this is I'm going pig hunting with him and the guys from Hunting with Jim next weekend. Yes, I'm doing my first-ever hog hunt - my first ever big-game hunt - with the the proprietors of not just one, but two hunting blogs. And all these guys carry video cameras.

I must be insane.

We just settled on the date this week, so I thought to myself, Holy cow! I'd better get to the shooting range and practice!

I've shot Boyfriend's .270 a few times and done pretty well with it, so I figured I just needed a little cramming between now and next Friday.

Honestly, I should've been practicing a lot more this spring. I actually penciled in, oh, at least four or five hog hunts since duck season ended. But life's been busy, and I've turned around and canceled them every time, and with them, I've postponed practice.

I did go to the range once during Spring Break with some former students, under the worst conditions: I hadn't eaten all day and I was shaky and somehow chugging a Dr. Pepper and cramming a Snickers bar down my throat didn't help things. Nonetheless, I did pretty well. I needed to adjust the sights, but I had a nice, tight grouping in the black on the target. And I came away with this nice photo, because the guy on the right - Andrew - is a photographer and doesn't mind putting his camera that close to flying casings.

Today was much better. I was relaxed. I ate before I went to the range. I'm happy - no more grading for three months! I was ready to polish my shooting so I could look extra impressive for Phillip, Crazy Jim and his videographer, John.

I decided to shoot a box of cartridges in three rounds: seven, seven and six. I put my nice Shoot-N-C patch on the target so I could see that burst of yellow where the bullet punches through, then returned to my station and fired off the first seven shots at a leisurely pace. Nice and relaxed.

The only problem was I wasn't seeing any yellow. What the hell?

So when the ceasefire began, I walked out to survey the damage. I snapped a picture with my cell phone and called Boyfriend. Honey! I said. I'm shooting like the bad guys in an action movie! I'm hitting everything but the target!

For the most part, I was shooting consistently high, but I didn't know how to adjust the sights - not my gun! - so he recommended aiming lower for the time being.

I went back to my station, got a Diet Coke out of the machine and prepared to blast some imaginary pigs. I was the only chick at the range this afternoon, and I really needed to not "shoot like a girl."

I loaded a cartridge, aimed low but on center, and pulled the trigger.

Yes! Yellow, at last. Die, pig! Insert cartridge and repeat six times...

The next ceasefire began and I went to see up close how I'd done. Hmmmm. Got five in the black, but they were all over the place. Not good. I needed a nice, tight grouping.

I covered the holes with black stickers and walked back to my station, tormented by visions of bad shots, bullets flying over pigs' heads so ineffectually that the pigs wouldn't even bother to run away, and all of it captured on video and webcast to the world.

What was I doing wrong?

I knew I was holding the gun steady, but I had the feeling I was flinching as I was pulling the trigger, because this gun kicks like Jackie Chan. For Round Three, I would have to try very hard to pretend that I wasn't about to get punched with 130 grains of woo ha!

It went better at first - two shots straight above the bulls eye. But then I had two off to the side, and two off the black entirely. I pulled my target off the battered plywood and trudged back.

Hell.

As I was walking back, I saw a dad come in with his young daughter, mabye 10 or 12 years old, and set up near my station.

Ordinarily, my first thought would be, Wow, that's great! Today, though, I thought, Good thing I'm done, because I'd hate to humiliate myself in front of a little girl. As I got closer to them, I rolled up my target to hide my shamefully random bouquet of bullet holes.

If I shoot pigs like this, it's gonna look like a sloppy mob hit.

Sigh.

Good thing school's out, because I'll be going back a few times before Phillip and I hit the road for Pig Country. If only my students knew the pathetic fact that professors cram too. Let's just hope that I rally as well as they always seem to do.

© Holly A. Heyser 2008

Dale Tate and the art of gun fitting

When I began working on a story about gunfitting for a California magazine earlier this spring, I knew exactly what I wanted to go with it: photos of gunmaker Dale Tate.

Dale's the guy who almost singlehandedly transformed my shooting last December after I'd spent a year coming home from the duck blind emptyhanded more often than not. My shotgun hadn't fit me properly - until Dale worked his magic on it.

Shotgun fit matters for everyone, but it's particularly important for women because we're generally smaller than the men guns are made for. Your ability to rest your cheek on the stock in the same spot every time - positioning your eye perfectly as the rear sight of the gun - depends on three things: the stock's length, its cast (left or right tilt, depending on which hand you shoot with) and its drop (vertical tilt). All of those elements must match your proportions.

Dale had already adjusted my gun in December, so I needed to photograph someone else's fitting. That's where Sarah came in.

Sarah's uncle had just given her a shotgun, and she knew it wouldn't fit correctly because she's 5-foot-2, a good 6 to 8 inches shorter than the hypothetical man guns are made for. And beyond that, she's left handed, and most stocks come out of the factory cast for right-handers.

Last week, Sarah and I took the gun to Dale's shop at the Camanche Hills Hunting Preserve, about an hour and a half outside of Sacramento, and Dale got to work immediately. He had Sarah mount the gun - my favorite part because it is so unnerving seeing someone's face right in front of your muzzle. Then he started making adjustments, sawing off a big chunk of the back end of the stock and gently filing down parts of the front of it, where it meets the action, to change the cast.


He also gave her gun a new recoil pad, but not before etching his initials into the back side of it to leave his mark for the ages.

After he put the gun back together, we went out to one of the sporting clays courses at Camanche, where Dale would give Sarah a shooting lesson and check the fit of her gun where it matters most - in the field.

But wait, you didn't think I'd go all the way to Camanche without my gun, did you? After getting Sarah rolling, Dale put us in side-by-side goose blinds, gave each of us a box of shells and told us he was going to start firing off clays randomly. Our job was to shoot them down.

It was crazy fun. At least twice Sarah and I pulled the trigger at the same time on the same clay, so who knows which one of us broke them. It didn't really matter, though, because I wasn't keeping count of what I hit, and I don't think Sarah was either - we were just having a good time.

OK, Sarah was more than having a good time. Before this day, she had never shot consistently. After Dale fitted her gun, she hit her first double ever. She was jubilant.

These aren't the best photos from the day - I've saved those for the magazine, which will come out sometime this fall. You don't have to wait that long for my advice, though: If you hunt with a shotgun and you're not shooting consistently, get it fitted. It'll cost ya, but it's worth it to hit your targets.

© Holly A. Heyser 2008

Fantastic video on Crazy Jim's first deer

If you ever look at the right column on this website, you may have noticed a recent addition to my blogroll, a video blog called Hunting with Jim.

For the most part, these guys do a lot of crazy, irreverent stuff - Outdoor Channel meets South Park. I usually giggle a lot when I watch their videos.

But today, they brought tears to my eyes with Jim's story of his first deer.

Maybe there are hunters out there who kill with glee, but I'm not so sure that image isn't just a device used by antis to generate opposition to what we do. Regardless, hat's off to Jim for candidly discussing it, and explaining why, if it's such a difficult thing, he still hunts.

© Holly A. Heyser 2008

Chew on this, antis: A new survey shows hunting for meat has broad public support

Spread the word, hunters - spread it far and wide. A survey that will be released in June shows that 97 percent of hunters (or their families) eat what they kill, and 85 percent of American adults approve of hunting for meat.

The survey was conducted by Responsive Management, a Virginia research firm, for the National Shooting Sports Foundation, which will release details at its 2008 National Shooting Sports Summit June 23-25 in Colorado Springs.

I was thrilled to get an early preview of some of the data because my strong sense has always been that most people accept hunting for meat. The problem lies in the broad public perception that many people think hunters don't eat what they kill - a myth effectively propagated by the Humane Society, which tells the public that hunters use doves for target practice and don't actually eat them.

Beyond that, HSUS and other anti-hunting propagandists cement the impression that hunters are just in it for the killing by emphasizing the "trophy" aspect of trophy hunting - ignoring the fact that most hunters eat what's south of the trophy.

And surprise, surprise: The NSSF survey shows that hunting for trophies has the lowest amount of support from the public - just 28 percent. See why the Humane Society harps on that? They're not stupid, folks - just misguided.

So what does all of this mean for hunters?

You need to talk to non-hunters about the food aspect of your hunting to dispel the myth that you just like to kill animals for kicks, because the public has no idea that almost all of us are eating what we kill.

Personally, I'm blessed to have a Boyfriend who loves to garden and hunt and cook and bring all those pursuits together in a joyous symphony at our dinner table. That means I get to eat serious gourmet game all the time. Lucky me!

We also both believe strongly that local, sustainable, organic food is not only best for the environment, but best for our bodies as well. We avoid factory-farmed meat as much as possible, eating mostly hunted meat, and supplementing it occasionally with pastured meat.

Beyond that, wild game just plain tastes better than the bland, corn-fed whatever that factory farms turn out these days. Have you noticed that a pork chop and a chicken breast don't taste or even look so different anymore? Man, that's a sin against nature and good taste.

Why do you like game meat? What do you do with the game you bring home? Talk about it, folks! Non-hunters need to hear it.

Now, there's one other interesting thing about this news. Responsive Management has done research on women hunters and found that the No. 1 reason women hunt is for the meat. Even though men obviously enjoy eating the game they bring home, they're half as likely to cite meat as their primary reason for hunting.

Why does this matter? Two reasons. First, women are a growing proportion of hunters, and though our numbers have been hovering at around 1.2 million for the past decade, there is a huge bubble of girl hunters coming up through the ranks, meaning we're likely due for a substantial increase in the coming decade. (Click on that chart if you want to see the detail.)

Second - and I've said this before - women have tremendous potential as ambassadors to the non-hunting world. People listen to us because we're unusual, and they're not as quick to write us off as drunken bubba poachers. When we talk about food, people will listen.

I love connecting the food I eat to the hunts I've enjoyed. That pintail Boyfriend and I ate the other day with the most fat I've ever seen on a wild duck? That was the one I got when I took my friend Hellen to Delevan to observe her first duck hunt. When we did a mallard tasting in February to compare the meat of birds with four different diets - acorn, rice, grass and corn - I was proud to say the winner of the taste test was the grass-fed mallard I got on my first hunt with my friend Dana. Thats the first photo in this blog post.

There is a story behind what we eat. The story is part of the natural cycle of life on earth. Plants and animals alike, we are all born. We all die. Our remains nourish others, whether it's the predator that took our life, the worms that aid in the decomposition of our bodies or the plants that grow from soil we become a part of. I refuse to follow the naive souls who believe humans should remove ourselves even further than we already have from this natural cycle. Far from it, I embrace this cycle completely.

© Holly A. Heyser 2008

Chicks with guns - it's a beautiful thing

It took me about 10 minutes Sunday morning to get grumpy. It wasn't that I was exhausted from Saturday's striper fishing trip - my third consecutive guided outing this year with nothing to show for it, and my first trip of the year under a blazing sun.

No, it was my computer. When I turned it on at 6:45 a.m. and checked for cool stories on hunting and comments on my blog, there it was. Someone had told me about a fun annual squirrel hunt in October. I'd said, Hey, I'll be in that state in October. Maybe I can go. He responded overnight, No, it's men only.

Really.

Well, thanks for letting me know about it, I thought. If I grow a "Y" chromosome by October, count me in.

I could go on at greater length, using vivid language, about how this made me feel, but as luck would have it, the reason I was waking up at that hour was that I was heading out with my friend Hellen and her friend Lucrezia to a women's shooting clinic at the True Sportsman Club in Amador County.

Our day.

I don't know exactly why men need their own outings, though I'm guessing it has to do with free-for-all farting, frank discussions about the knockers they saw on some chick the other day and complete freedom to express their doggy nature.

But I can tell you why women need our own outings: Because we've been shut out. Rich, the True Sportsman Club instructor who kicked off the day Sunday with a basic lesson about firearms, even apologized for it. "If you go into a sporting goods store, chances are you'll be treated with a little less respect than men," he said.

Beyond that, we're pretty intimidated about learning to shoot around men because we don't want to look like we "shoot like girls."

Rich assured the 34 or so women at Sunday's event that women in fact make fine shooters because of our generally strong hand-eye coordination. And today was the day they could put that to the test, shooting a wide range of firearms for the first time, not just without fear of looking stupid in front of men, but with the knowledge they would be surrounded by women, who have a tremendous knack for supporting one another.

These women came for a variety of reasons: Some were afraid of guns and wanted to conquer that fear. Some had always wanted to learn how to shoot.

Hellen and Lucrezia came to take their first shooting lessons ever because they want to learn to hunt. Hellen is my colleague, the English professor, who learned that I was a duck hunter when we were at our university's graduation in December and promptly announced she wanted to hunt ducks too. (Click here for that story, and here for all the steps she's taken since then.)

Lucrezia, Hellen's friend from San Francisco, had inherited a shotgun from her grandfather and wanted to learn how to hunt with it.

Lucrezia's biggest fear going into Sunday's clinic was not shooting well. She's a perfectionist. She really wanted to nail it. I hear you, sister.

Hellen feared recoil. She'd already tagged along on two hunts to see if she was OK with the killing part of hunting, as well as the grime and early hours. She'd even bought waders, a jacket and a blind bag. But she's tiny, and she worried that guns were going to smack her around too much.

The women were split into three groups that would rotate through stations: shotgun, rifle, handgun. Our group started off with handguns, which was a great disappointment to Hellen, who had no interest in them at all.

Until she started shooting. Check this out. To see more clearly what she's doing to the knock-down targets, click on the photo to see a larger version.

So, yeah, she was pretty excited about that. And she liked it even better when she shot the paper targets, because now she has something to tack up in her office at the university. Late with your homework again? Really...

Lucrezia was pretty fantastic with the handgun, too. After Hellen brought back a paper target with some excellent groupings, Lucrezia brought one back with two bulls eyes.

Wah, I don't want to shoot handguns. Indeed.

After that, we all sat down for lunch at picnic tables under a mulberry tree, and wow, was it cool watching the transformation in the women. They'd arrived in the morning looking not so much nervous, but closed-down, faces not revealing anything. Now everyone was smiling, excited and relieved. They didn't suck! They weren't afraid anymore!

Next was rifle shooting with all kinds of .22s - lever action, bolt action, peep sights, scoped, the works. Lucrezia was a madwoman. When other women were retiring to the shade - Lord, it was HOT - she kept jumping up over and over again to slay the targets.

Back in the shade, Hellen and I sat near a mother and daughter who'd come out together. "Your daddy would be so proud," mom said. Daddy used to be an Army sharpshooter.

"I've always wanted to go shooting with him," the daughter said, "but he's never taken me."

In unison, the women around the table said, "He will now!"

Finally, it was time for shotguns. The women in our group would be shooting trap. The club provided a variety of 12-gauge shotguns for right-handed shooters, but Hellen is left-eye dominant, and she worried about the kick of a 12-gauge. I'd brought my gun, a 20-gauge that has been adapted for left-handed shooting. It would be too big for her - I'm six inches taller than she is - but I figured it would be better than a bigger, right-handed gun.

I watched her walk up to the instructor and get her first lesson on mounting a shotgun. I was beaming with pride and brimming with excitement. There's something delicious about watching someone go through that initiation (which I suppose is why veteran hunters sometimes get a kick out of my newbie hunting stories here).

Then she said it for the first time: "Pull!"

The clay shot out. She fired way too fast and missed it. Most people did that on their first shot Sunday. Then the instructor gave her some more pointers, and pretty soon she was hitting clays.

Now, if it's hard shooting trap with a gun, it's even tougher shooting it with a camera, but here's a sequence I caught with Hellen following the target then absolutely shattering it. If you'd actually like to see the clays in the first two images - not just the arrows - click on the picture. But it's hard to make out the clays at any resolution in the third shot - that's how hard Hellen broke that thing.

That was it - a fine ending to a fine day. Hellen and Lucrezia had fired dozens of dozens of rounds. They'd gone from trepidation to exhilaration. We thanked Kathleen Lynch, the organizer of the event, and piled in my car to head back to Sacramento bathed in blessed air conditioning.

We talked about almost nothing but the shooting for the hour-long drive home. Lucrezia, who had come here because she wanted to use her grandpa's shotgun, had fallen in love with rifle shooting. Hellen was jubilant not only that she'd hit targets, but that the recoil of the shotgun hadn't hurt her. Now she knew for sure that the money she'd been earning on extra assignments at school would be going toward her own shotgun.

Now both were ready for the next steps: hunter safety training, more shooting lessons, and ultimately, their first hunts.

And I was feeling a little better about that "no women allowed" squirrel hunt business. In truth, I don't mind that men need a little space to be themselves. And besides, we don't really need to tag along with the men to have a good time hunting and shooting - we actually do quite well on our own.

* * *

Next women's shooting clinic: NorCal women, if you missed this shoot and would like a chance to try something like it, California Waterfowl is offering a women's and kids' shooting clinic Aug. 16 in Morgan Hill. Click on the image below for a printable image of the flyer.

© Holly A. Heyser 2008