- My maternal grandfather was a gunsmith.
- I own firearms, and started shooting around age eleven.
- I am strictly a target shooter.
- I am NOT an NRA whack job. In fact, they really piss me off.
You’re all caught up. Yay, you!
It’s the time of year for me to start thinking about signing up for my local gun club’s summer trap league. It’s a low-pressure, six-week league, and I had a decent enough time doing it last year that I think I’ll do it again this year.
For those of you not familiar, trap is a shotgun sport where a squad of five people rotates through five positions (or ‘posts’) on a field at a specific yardage, shooting five targets at each position for a total of twenty-five in a round. The targets are clay pigeons, thrown from a central location known as the ‘trap house’, or simply, the ‘trap’.
Traditionally, there are three events in a trap shoot: singles, handicap, and doubles. Singles and doubles are exactly what they sound like — you shoot one target at each post, or you shoot two. Handicap pushes you back two to three yards from your singles yardage depending on the rules of the league or club. As an example, if you shoot your singles at sixteen yards, you would shoot your handicap from eighteen or nineteen. Hey! You learned a thing!
Anyway, back to me and signing up to shoot again this summer — or not.
As a woman shooter, I have found that there are three types of men at a gun club — any gun club. There are the ones who sleaze all over you, the ones who ignore you, and the ones who are genuinely delightful. Let’s start with the easiest ones to catalogue, the Ignorers. The Ignorers aren’t necessarily ignoring you for any particular reason, they are simply there to shoot and not socialize, or to shoot and socialize with the shooters they already know. They will be cordial in passing, but otherwise will leave you to your own devices and carry on with their evening. I take no issue whatsoever with the Ignorers. They do their thing, I do mine, we all go on our merry way, the world keeps turning.
The second set I call the Sleazers. Does what it says on the tin, really. These are the guys who sidle up to you and make some comment about your shooting stance as a thinly veiled hint that they were ogling your ass, or ask, “What’s a nice girl like you doing here all by yourself?” They offer to buy you drinks at the club bar*. They talk your ear off. They mansplain and manspread and ask you questions only to answer them themselves. They’re awful. No joke, I literally had a Sleazer last year ask me, “Why are you here?” I was like, “Um, to shoot? You know, that thing that you do at places like this?” (I got the feeling that the answer he was looking for was ‘to find a man’, and it took every ounce of restraint I had not to clock him one right there in the clubhouse.) In the spirit of total honesty, one of my favorite things is when a Sleazer thinks I can’t possibly know anything more about my gun than the basic load-point-shoot-repeat. Oh, that’s the best, because then I get to hit them with all the specs of my Remington 1100, plus the modifications my grandfather did to custom fit the gun for me, and watch their jaws hit the floor and their man-parts deflate. Do not aim your dick-slinging at me, Sleazers. Mine is bigger.
(Also, you’d think that the Sleazers would have the sense to realize that they’re sleazing on a lady at a GUN CLUB, which usually means that she has a GUN, and, if provoked, could happily add ‘Gun Club Jackass’ to her list of acceptable targets. Just sayin’.)
The last group is my favorite. It is generally comprised of the over-fifties demographic, most of whom have kids or grandkids my age or close to it. They are true gentlemen. They don’t ogle, they don’t catcall, they don’t talk over you, and they don’t make assumptions. They open doors, they temper their language in your presence, and they treat you like a lady even when you’ve managed to smear gunpowder down the side of your nose and not noticed it. (True story.) They are a delight. They remind me of the gentlemen in the league I shot in with my dad and grandfather when I was starting out. They’re happy to have you there, and if they do flirt, it’s in the sweetest, most non-threatening way possible.
Boys, take note.
It’s this last group that’s making me want to sign up for the summer league again this year. I waded through the Sleazers on my own last year and came out unscathed, but it definitely tainted the experience as a whole. I would shoot with the Gentlemen, have some lovely conversations with them between rounds, then go back to the car to run the old bore-snake through the Remington and lock it away before heading to the clubhouse for dinner, where I would more often than not get set upon by a Sleazer. The obvious solution, of course, would be to skip dinner since I have no built-in buddy to eat with, but that’s just allowing the problem to exist without it extending to me, really. I mean, it’s supposed to be a fun evening out. Shoot, eat, enjoy. Would it kill me to miss dinner? No. It’s not terrible, but it’s certainly not Michelin Star quality. And it’s included in the league fee. I mean, come on. Dinner I didn’t have to cook and dishes I don’t have to do? Yes, please. But at the cost of my comfort?
Maybe this year I’ll just bring Tupperware and take my dinner to go.
*Yes, some gun clubs have bars. It’s an honors-system set up whereby shooters are expected to wait to have their drinks until after they’re done shooting for the day, and is enforced by vigilant club officers. Drink and shoot? Banned from the club for life. You make the choice.
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