The World of Skeet, Sporting Clays, & Trap | Gun Talk Nation

Ryan Reynolds here for Mint Mobile. I don't know if you knew this, but anyone can get the same premium wireless for $15 a month plan that I've been enjoying. It's not just for celebrities, so do like I did and have one of your assistance assistants switch you to Mint Mobile today. I'm told it's super easy to do at mintmobile.com slash switch. Upfront payment of $45 for three month plan equivalent to $15 per month required. Intro rate first three months only, then full price plan options available, taxes and fees extra, feeful terms at mintmobile.com. Steve, people have shotguns and they go, this sounds great. Is there a quick way for them to kind of test fit and figure out if the gun fits them? It varies from person to person and you'll hear all kinds of advice. But one of the things that I look at is when you mount the gun is is the joint on your thumb about an inch from your nose. I'm Ryan Gresham and this this is Gun Talk Nation. Gun Talk Nation is brought to you by Torus, Remington ammunition, Eotech, CZUSA, Silent Steel, Range Ready, Vortex and FN. Hey, welcome into Gun Talk Nation today on Gun Talk Nation. We're talking with a guy who's been there and done that in the world of clay shooting, Steve Elinger. You are the one of the co-hosts of Clay Target Legends program, your guy who's been in the world of clay shooting for a long time. So we thought you'd have you come on and tell some stories and help straighten us out a little bit. I want to start off with clay shooting. There's so many different disciplines when it comes to guns and shooting and target shooting and competitions. What's something about clay shooting that outsiders just misunderstand? I think, Ryan, that of course clay shooting has been around for a long time. You know, trap shooting is probably 125 years old and you don't have to go out and get ready for a hunt. The camaraderie of shooting and then going into the clubhouse, the specialized guns, the thought of seeing the targets break when you go out there. It's just an amazing activity that also works with the family, which is really critical in my opinion. To me, we can get bogged down in the gear and sometimes the gear is fun for a lot of shooting disciplines, but you can really do this with minimal amount of gear as far as the different types of shooting disciplines go. You can, absolutely. You can take, of course, clay, every aspect of clay target shooting developed as a alternative to shooting birds. Even trap shooting 100 years ago was developed to replace bird shooting. Skeet was developed to simulate the angles of the birds that one might encounter out in the field. Sporting clays was developed to simulate the field shots that you might get in the different terrains. Every clay target discipline through the years has become its own sport and its own right, getting away from the actual hunting aspect. But they all started from a hunting aspect to emulate the shots that you would see in the field. Yeah. Then it's funny, we start out with, this is a great way to train for hunting. Then it becomes a competition. Then we gamify it and we say, okay, fine, you can start with a gun mounted on your shoulder because we all want to shoot better scores. Of course, everyone scores go up because everyone's shooting from a mounted gun. It's funny how we gamify this stuff. The scores in Skeet, where sporting clays didn't come along to the late 80s, Skeet came along in the early 1930s and was the predominant clay target shooting sport along the trap up until the advent of sporting clays. The scores in the 70s just went way up. Part of that was the reason of the one piece plastic wads that came out, which really developed better scores. It was not uncommon to see champions 100 years ago with a 98 out of 100. And today, there might be 2100s in a shoot. A lot of that had to do with the plastic wads. And as you said, a little more flexibility on mounting the gun. So the scores have gone way up through the years. And so the new technology that came around then for the wads, it just improved patterns. Is that why? Better patterns and it helped keep the shot pattern together once it left the barrel. Believe it was the Remington wads originally in the 70s that started that. Of course, Winchester came right along behind them and maybe even did it better. But it was the one piece plastic wads that really started those scores going way up. Yeah. Yeah, it's interesting how sometimes there is gear to our technology that happens that automatically can help us just be better in the shooting disciplines. Steve, what's your background and how did you get into this? Well, of course, I like a lot of us. I grew up going bird hunting with my father. And the smell of those freshly fired paper hulls on a crisp fall morning just never left me. And I always said, if we could bottle that stuff and sell it as men's clone, we'd all make a fortune. Yeah. But I just started doing that. And then I would occasionally go with him out to the ski range. Of course, again, sporting didn't exist back then, but we'd go out and we'd shoot, sporting, I mean, shoot ski, a little bit of trap. And just the camaraderie of being around the other shooters was just something I will never forget. And I love doing it. And that has just always stuck with me forever. I am an architect by profession, but I've retired. But all through my practice, I continued to shoot competitively. And it just seemed to be one of those things that never gets old to me. And I go back and as a kind of a history buff, I would read every book I could find on clay target shooting, whether it's trap or whatever, and begin to learn the background of some of these famous shooters like Alex Kerr and D. Lee Braun and some of them through the years that had just become memorable in the sport and learned everything about them that I could. Yeah, it's interesting. And it's great to have somebody who's following the history because it's a long history, probably, you know, target shooting in general as a sport has a much, much longer history than most sports that we think of. I mean, you think about basketball and football and all these things like target shooting was a thing. They would pack stadiums to see exhibition shooters shoot, right? Yeah, well, back during the trap shooting years at the Grand American, Vandellio, Ohio, clay target shooting was a major social sport. And it was not uncommon to see two to 300 spectators watching the shootoffs in the background with Skeet and Trap. And they were all dressed in their net ties and their white hats and jackets. And they really dressed up to make a statement when they were out there shooting and even the audience in the gallery, they were dressed up as well. So it was Skeet shooting especially became the sport of high society back in the 30s and 40s and even in the early 50s. Every movie starlet and movie star had to be photographed shooting Skeet or at the Gun Club. Gary Cooper and all of them did the same thing out at Golden Valley in California. And so it was the sport to be photographed doing. Do you feel like that's changed or is that coming back? I think it's changed. I think a lot of it was Skeet and Trap is, you know, guns in general kind of got a bad rep, but that's not the case. They're one of the best family activities that you can do. A lot of these shotguns are pure art in its way, but the basic premise of breaking clay target was shot coming out of a shotgun has not changed since its inception. There's just better ways to do it. There's fancier guns. There's nicer shells, better technology, but the sport is still there. But I think sporting clays especially has just really rocketed in popularity. I think when I first went to my first national NSCA championship, we might have had 800 shooters. I think this year we were pushing close to 3000. So it has really, really gone up. Skeet has kind of leveled out a little bit, but we're doing some things to try to make that even better. But sporting clays is just going, going crazy. A lot of people have gone out and shot clays. A lot of people informally, right? They're just, they're out in the back 40 with some friends. They're just like, let's go, let's go shoot the gun. Where does that difference come in when people really start getting serious about it and start competing in it? I mean, how does someone go from like a casual like, yeah, we break some clays and we shoot some guns and stuff. Dersa's like, okay, now we're going to start shooting in competitions. So the best way that I have found is if I get on the phone and call those people that are going out to the back woods, as you call it, and say, let's go out to the club this weekend and shoot. And then they're going to see real quickly that these targets are not just going away on a handtrap. These are 40, 50 yard crossers that are going out there mixed in with the simple targets that most people should hit. And all of a sudden they break a few and the smile on their face gets real big and all of a sudden they're hooked. Yeah, that's a good point, Steve. It's like the targets, if you go to a legitimate sporting clays course, it's completely different. I mean, I have the ability to go out back here and I'll stomp on a thrower and shoot basically the same target over and over and over. And it's fun, but you go, I want to go out, I'll go up to Covey Rise. We're just 20 minutes south of Covey Rise here in south Louisiana. And so I have the benefit of just being able to go up there. And yeah, you're right. You see targets that are completely different than what you're used to, especially if all you've done is a hand thrower or a simple little spring-loaded trap. I mean, the big encumbers or the different targets themselves, right? I mean, it's not just your regular standard target. You get to have a lot of different looks. The standard target was pretty much the norm and skeet and trap for years. And then the sporting clays came along in the late 80s. And all of a sudden, we had targets who were about the size of an Oreo cookie, you know? And then we have some that are totally flat called a batoo. And they will come out of the trap looking like a laser or like a razor blade. And then they will roll over and show us some face. And that's when you shoot it. We have some that are 70 millimeters called the Pro 70. We have, of course, the famous rabbit target, which is really the only one that's inconsistent because it can hop or whatever. But yeah, we have now a multitude of not only colors of targets. We have lime green and pink and black and all orange and white, but we have all different sizes as well. The colors, is there a logic behind it? There is. If you're shooting on a dark green background, you want a bright target like, say, the lime green or the orange. A lot of times, if you have more sky out there, a all black target works really well. If you're shooting a night under the lights, you want a like a white target. So there are reasons and rationales for using the different color targets. Gotcha. That makes sense. Well, I do, Steve, you are one of the hosts of this this Clay Legends show. And so after the break, you're going to tell us some stories about some legendary clay target shooters. All right, let's talk about the new Taurus TX9 series, because sometimes you want a 9mm that's straightforward, reliable, and doesn't require a second mortgage to actually shoot it a lot. The TX9 is built for the stuff that matters. Solid ergonomics, easy handling, and the kind of shootability that makes practice feel less like training and more like, hey, one more mag. If you're shopping for a new 9mm for the range, home defense, or just to do it all pistol, the TX9 series is worth a look. Looking to level up your hunt or tighten up those groups? Well, look no further than Remington ammo. Yeah, the stuff in the green box is super accurate, and they've got everything from hunting ammo, shot shells, rimfire, match ammo. So check those out. Under rifle, they've got the Premier line, the Premier Accu-Tip, the Premier Long Range, Premier Match, handgun, they've got even Coralock handgun, of course, Golden Sabre, you know it, you love it, you trust it, wheel gun ammo, shot shell, it doesn't matter if you're target shooting or hunting, they've got a lot of different options for you. And then of course, rimfire, it's kind of the go-to all in that green box, Remington ammo. One of the nice features about the E-Flex CE is a programmable sleep mode that powers down the optic, as well as shake-awake technology that powers the optic back up with just the slightest movement. The three reticles to choose from, that's kind of nice, and it's designed to fit the Delta Point Pro or the RMSC footprint. The E-Flex CE from Eotech is sure to be a great addition to any optics-ready pistol. Let's talk about the CZUSA P10C ported, because who doesn't like a pistol that behaves like it's had some espresso but stays polite? The porting keeps the muzzle flatter so your sights come back faster and your follow-up shots feel more like tap-tap, and less like tap, where'd my dot go? It's a compact size and still shoots like a bigger gun, and it's one of those setups that just makes range time smoother, whether you're training, carrying, or chasing faster splits. The CZ P10C ported. So Steve, Clay Target Legends, talk about this show and talk about some of the stories that you guys have kind of discovered there. Well, first off, Ryan, let me tell you that about two and a half years ago, I had this idea that we need to be promoting and presenting the history of Clay Target shooting because nobody has been doing this. There are a thousand videos on YouTube about shooting in gun clubs and glasses and guns and loaves, but nothing on the history of the sport. And so I got on the phone one day and contacted a gentleman by the name of Phil Murray. Now, Phil is a Hall of Fame skink shooter many times over. He was the National Sales Director of White Flour targets for many years and probably knows more about the history of Clay Target shooting than anybody in the country. He can tell you who won the 20 gauge event Class C in 1972 and what they had for lunch. He was there. So then our broadcast, there's another gentleman by the name of Matt Smith, who has a love of history as we do and then but had a broadcast to background and we had lunch one day and said, we need to go to the museum in San Antonio at the National Shooting Complex and gather some of the artifacts and start putting together these videos, which we have done. And because of that, we have actually now been named as the curators of the museum at the National Shooting Complex. And we're doing consulting work for the Hall of Fame and Museum at the World Shooting Complex of Sparta, Illinois at the amateur trap shooting Association headquarters. But it's been great because we have access to some of the most legendary pieces of equipment, guns, traps, targets, whatever, shooting vests and clothing in history of the sport. And we have sit down with some of the legends of the sport and interviewed them while we still have them and put together these YouTube videos called Clay Target Legends. I believe we have close to 60 episodes now and one coming out every week. And so one coming out this week is on Leo Harrison, the amazing trap shooter that's been around. And so that'll be coming out later this week. But the success of Clay Target Legends has been fantastic. We get so many emails and contacts from people that say, hey, I have this, I have this, would you guys like to have it for one of the two museums that you're affiliated with? And I said, absolutely, of course. And because of that, we have been invited to Winchester up in East Alton, Illinois to spend the day with them and looking around. And that has really brought up one of the most interesting segments that we have done while we were with Winchester at East Alton. One of their representatives said, by the way, did you know that John Olin's personal Skeetfield, the ruins of which still exist? And so that piqued my interest real quick. Now, everybody knows who John Olin was. He was the one that basically started Winchester and his name was synonymous with Winchester. And of course, he was one of the country's leading industrialists. And so he built his big mansion out in the area of Illinois. And so we kind of got some basic directions of where to go find these ruins. And we drove out there and we had a few gates we had to go through. My initial thought was, hey, trespassing would be okay in this case, but we didn't do that. So we found the legal way to get in there. And we had to walk maybe a eighth of a mile, quarter of a mile, and right up along the Mississippi River. And then there it was. But it was not ruins. It was actually still spandex. And this is the Skeetfield where John Olin would entertain the presidents and the Hollywood celebrities, John Wayne and all that sort of thing. And a lot of the presidents would go shoot there. And we were all of a sudden standing on this field where they all shot. And the interesting thing is, Ron, although they described his ruins with a couple of 12-boat traps and some targets, we could be throwing targets out of those houses in a two-hour period. Now, it's now in a... There were so well constructed that they are in decent shape. These weren't thrown up with two before and wood siding. These were stoned because that's the way that everything that John Olin did was first class. But very few people in the public have seen those. And we actually have a Clay Target legend video on what we call the most unknown famous Skeetfield in the country. And that was a fantastic interview. Another one that we just did back in 1967, a Skeet shooter named Ken Barnes broke the very first one, a 400 by 400 out in Los Angeles. And he was the very first one to ever do that. And after he did it, he went out in the parking lot and sit down with his four guns. And I took a picture of him that wound up on the what was called the Skeeter Magazine, which was the West Coast Magazine. Well, Ken is still around at 87 years old today. And so we took him out to the Los Angeles Gun Club, which is now called LA Clay's. And we did an interview with him. And he talked about what it was like and how he broke those targets back in 1967. Now, today, that wouldn't have been as big of a feat. But in 1967, it was considering he did it with pump guns, okay, in the rain. And so that was tough. But what was most fun is as soon as we did that, we took him out to the park, which is now a parking lot, and set him down on the same spot where that famous picture was made in 1967, and took the same picture, you know, all these years later, 60 something years later. So it was a fantastic day that we spent with him, along with Kim Rode, of course, the internationally famous Olympic Skeet and Trap Shooter. And just watching her was amazing, what we did. So we've had a lot of good programs on Clay Target Legends. That's fantastic. Yeah, I was going to say LA Clay's, I was thinking that was the home of Kim Rode. That's her home range, isn't it? That's her home field. In fact, there is one of the Skeet fields called the Kim Rode field, which is set up for international clays. And if you don't know, international targets are about two or three millimeters bigger in diameter and a little bit thinner, but they fly a lot faster and you have like up to a three second delay when you shoot. But what's really neat is the 19 or the 2028 Olympics will be held in Los Angeles, and the Skeet and Trap Shooting will be at that field. Yeah, that's right. That's right. Well, and you mentioned international, and I think that people think of shooting competitions and the gun culture as being a very United States, a very American thing. But especially when it comes to clay shooting, there's a huge international participation there. Talk about some of that of like all the different clay shoots they have around the world and these competitors that come from all over. Yeah, of course, with the Olympics and international shooting Skeet and Trap are really big in doing that. And the thing that always falls back to me is how lucky we are that we can go out and do that and take your shotgun home. A lot of the competitors in other countries can't do that. So they have very limited ability to practice. They sometimes have to leave their guns at certain places. And so here in America, we're lucky and we have to fight to keep those rights to do that. But I love watching the international Skeet and Trap in the different countries, Germany and France and Japan and all these countries out there shooting and the targets. And international Skeet is so much different than American Skeet because they're faster. You have to shoot it from a very low gun. There is a delay when it comes out. And it's tough. And of course, they don't shoot. They shoot Bunker Trap in the Olympics, which you have 18 Trap machine. I believe it's 18 Trap machines below grade in a bunker. And there's probably only nine or 10 clubs in the country right now that even have Bunker Trap because it's expensive to throw because Oxidia takes at least 18 traps where American track has won and it's oscillating. And so it's expensive. But yeah, Skeet and Trap shooter are big in the Olympics. Well, and I think I remember that Kim, obviously she's one of the most successful Olympic shooters ever, maybe the most successful. And she was shooting an event and then they did away with her event and she had to switch to shooting international, didn't she? I believe that's right. And she went to shooting the Skeet, but I think it's back. But what to me, the most impressive thing about Kim is that she started winning gold medals when she was 10 years old. Yeah, I'm not kidding. She won her first Olympic gold medal at 10 years old. And I believe she's got nine or 10 Olympic gold medal Olympic medals right now. But one of the stories I told her was, you know, years ago, I was watching late night television with Jay Leno. And all of a sudden, here's Kim Roddy on Jay Leno. And they actually let her go out back of the studio in Burbank and let her shoot. But she wasn't shooting clay targets. They were throwing ego waffles. And they would throw them up there and she would just hammer them. And so I love every time I see Kim, I like to kid her about that. And go waffles. I like this. This may be a video we have to do, Steve. Like we have to love to find that video. I think that would be great. Yeah, that's great. Well, one of the things that's also interesting to me, when we think about shooting ranges and specifically, what's talking about like these clay ranges and sporting clays ranges, the neat thing and the interesting thing is they're set up in a lot of different ways. It's not like a football field that measures a particular distance. I mean, and so because of that, we go to a lot of different places and have a lot of different looks. And so I know you've traveled all over. So after the break, I'd love to talk about destinations and interesting places that you've shot clays. Silent Steel USA. 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The FN309 MRD is an easy to rack, easy to load, self-defense pistol designed for peace of mind performance. FN also improved a legend with the next generation of SCAR series. Now, with 25 innovative upgrades and no price increase, the next generation of SCAR is suppressor capable, especially with FN's brand new forward venting suppressors, the FNQD762 and the FNQD556. Visit FNAmerica.com slash Guntalk to learn more. Steve, I know you travel all over the place to different shooting clubs. Talk about different shooting clubs and the different terrain and everything that's available out there for people as a destination to go shoot. Yeah, of course, with skid and trap, it is very regimented. They have to have, you know, the targets have to fly a certain distance through a hoop on skid and it's very regimented. And a lot of the original gun clubs wanted very flat terrain to accommodate that. But when sporting clays came along in the late 80s and early 90s, all of a sudden terrain became a big thing. And clubs wanted valleys and hills and other things that made the target presentations where you might be shooting the below them or whatever. And so a lot of the gun clubs have sprung up based on sporting now. One of the best ones, of course, is Northbrook in Illinois, which is a fantastic shooting range out there with different terrain. There's actually one out here in Good O. Texas in Brownwood, Texas, that has some amazing terrain to shoot at. But what's really great is I can go to any club in the country and shoot their course and then come back a month later and the targets are going to be different. Now, if I go to a skipe tournament, they're always the same targets. We always know what the targets are supposed to be. Now, the terrain in the background, it may be a little bit different, but with sporting, it's always different. And it's more set up like golf. In fact, the early days of sporting clays, they actually called it golf with a shotgun. But un-lives golf where all the holes are basically the same, sporting is different every time you go. So if I go to the state, shoot a New Mexico or Georgia or here in Texas, and I went last year, the targets are going to be different this year, and none of the competitors will have shot that. So it's a totally different look every time we go. When it comes to sporting clays, how does the terrain affect the shooter? Well, if you're, trust me, if you're shooting down on a target, it really throws a different complexity into how to lead and track the target. The terrain could be open sky or it can be a window shot between the trees, or it can be a rabbit running a ground across the ground. And sometimes it has to go up a hill or down a hill. The colors of the trees may be totally different in the fall. And so all the variables in nature play into the course of shooting sporting clays. Yeah, it's interesting. We don't have a lot of terrain in South Louisiana. It's marsh, it's flat. But when I travel around, it was like this, you know, at the Bretter Range Day at Shot Show, and you're shooting down on these clays that are, I don't know, 40 or 50 yards away and they're downhill. Gosh, it's a totally different look. And you're going, am I supposed to be aiming a different place here? I mean, it just changes the way you see the targets. On because you start question, do I know how to technically shoot this target? You know, talking about the terrain, you know, I was at the Shot Show when we drove on out to the club there in Las Vegas. And of course, it's Desert Mountains up there at beautiful, beautiful Well Done. But if I go east towards Louisiana or Georgia, we've got trees. And so it's totally all different. Yeah. And like you said, when they throw a clay off of your on a hill or something and it's just flying into nowhere, into the sky, there's almost like no point of reference. And you're just going, it looks like this thing is 200 yards away at some point. It's just, it's just going to keep flying and you better go ahead and shoot it. Yeah. And if the terrain background is unlevel, it can make the target flight look unlevel too. Or it can make it look level when it's not. So it can really play tricks on your eyes. Yeah, you're right. Yeah, you're right. Steve, a lot of people, I think that like clay shooting is a great way to welcome people into, to the shooting sports. If I was to hand a shotgun to a complete beginner, what's the most common mistake you see from someone just getting started and learning how to shoot a shotgun and hit clays? Well, if you take, assuming we've already covered all the safety issues before they pick up a shotgun, the biggest thing that I see is they don't follow through with a shotgun. It's like golf. You have to follow through with the swing and too many people will pull the gun up and they'll start looking at the target and they'll pull the trigger and stop. Well, that's not going to work. So you have to learn how to do a follow through every time. But one of the best things about sporting is, and what's really made it grow a lot are these is the social aspect and the events that raise funds for nonprofit type things. I was at the national shooting complex a few weeks ago and they had a benefit shoot that was put on by some oil companies and they had eight to 900 shooters out there. Now that was more than the total of the world's ski shoots that they had last year. And these people are coming out because of the social aspect and white golf, they can go from station to station in their cart and their buggy and they can talk and they can have fun and they can visit. And so the social aspect of these events is bringing a lot of people into this sport. Yeah, that's a good point, Steven. And there are so many, like you have the charity golf tournaments in social and in business settings sometimes in an industry, same exact thing, right? You have these charity sporting clay shoots and there's a good argument to be made that people say, oh, it's a good thing to learn golf because you're in business, you take people golfing. There's a good argument to be made for shotgun shooting. You're the guy, if you're the guy who knows how to go out and shoot sporting clays, you're gonna be like, hey, you go with the boss and go shoot on this team for this charity shoot, right? Yeah, there's nothing more fun than taking a couple of new shooters out on your squad and helping them learn how to break the target. And if they, well, I've bird hunted and I've done this, but that bird hunting is not the same as actual real sporting clays or skeet or whatever. But just to look on their face, when they start breaking a couple of targets and all of a sudden they've, they got a couple of doubles or something like this, it's priceless. And you know what? At that point, they're hooked. Yes, they're hooked. Yeah, there's, there's that old like that, that movie 10 cup where you hit a good golf shot and that tuning fork goes off in your loins. It's the same exact experience when you crush a clay and you go, whoa, I just did that. They did. And in fact, it's been even in a lot of movies, Over My Shoulder is a large black and white photograph. And that was from a movie called Butterfield Eight that starred Elizabeth Taylor. And in that movie is, of course, Elizabeth Taylor, but there was also Lawrence Harvey and Dina Merrill right there. And they're being coached by Wilbur Cox, who was the famous Remington shooter at the famous Skeet Club called Lordship in Connecticut. It was the Remington Lordship called in Connecticut. And it is no longer there. It was closed down in the 80s because of the environmental issues. But Skeet was used a lot as a movie backdrop and scene as they're talking. And so they're having this discussion about whatever they're doing in that movie, Butterfield Eight. But that's a picture behind me of somebody learning how to shoot. Butterfield Eight, I'll have to check that out. At Butterfield Eight with Elizabeth Taylor. Steve, you guys have interviewed so many clay shooting legends and covered them. Is there some common thread when you look at these people who have really excelled in clay shooting? And what does it take to become a legend or are there common traits that you see in these folks? Well, on almost every video that we do, we ask them what would be your 10 second piece of advice to become as legendary and successful as you are. And the answers are typically all over the place. But one of them that's consistent every time is have a shotgun that fits. Okay. Now, that would be like going out on a 10 mile hike and appear a boot that don't fit. That's just not going to be successful. So your gun has to fit. And unlike, say, rifle and pistol shooting, or stationary mostly, shotgun shooting is very fluid with a lot of movement. And so your shotgun has to fit. And then what I hear is you've got to get out there and practice. Yes, ammunition is expensive these days. But so is everything else. But you've got to get out there and practice and don't go home discouraged. You learn how to shoot that target. And the best, absolutely best approach to learning how to shoot a shotgun, if you've never done it, is getting on the ski field. Okay, there you're going to encounter probably 80% of the shots that you're going to shoot. And then on sporting, and then you just adjust for distance or things such as this. But the answers again, they're all over the place. But the biggest thing I have is have a gun that absolutely fits. And then be consistent in your practice. Someone told me that a lot of times what you ought to do when we talk about gun fit is maybe take a lesson or a series of lessons, get used to mounting the gun, looking down the gun, and then look at getting the gun fit to you. I don't know if that's, does that follow, does that make sense? Because I guess they're saying if you have a bad mount and a bad this and that, you know, don't get the gun fit before you even learn how to do any of this. Is that true? You've got to start with the gun fit before almost anything. And if you're of an average size, average height, most guns are going to fit you. When I was with Kim, Kimberl Rody in Los Angeles a few weeks ago, she handed me her Beretta DT 11 that she's using in the Olympics and says, here, go try, go shoot it. Really? I said, well, yeah. Well, I picked it up and I mounted the gun and it didn't fit at all to me because her, her comb was adjusted way up. Now that fits her and guns fit females differently than they do males. If you're a young shooter starting out, if you have a length of pull, which is the distance between the center of the trigger and the butt pad too long, it will cause a shooter to lean way back and that's not going to work. And so they make special youth model guns. I would say 80% of the population can pick up most standard shotguns if they're of adult size, height, relatively adult and go out on the course and it will fit them. If it doesn't, it's going to be, it'll be problematic, but that'll show up pretty quickly. So the best thing to do is start with a gun that fits. Then you learn foot position, how to set up to break the target. Or do you want to intercept the target? Or do you want to swing and where do you want to break the target? That's the main thing. Steve, people have shotguns and they go, this sounds great. Is there a quick way for them to kind of test fit and figure out if the gun fits them? Yeah, of course, it varies from person to person and you'll hear all kinds of advice. But one of the things that I look at is when you mount the gun is, is, is to join on your thumb about an inch from your nose. Okay. And if it's close to that, the gun relatively is going to fit you. Now, there's some old timers that would say, put the gun in the crook of your elbow. And if you're, if your finger hits the trigger, that works some of the time, some time if it doesn't, but it's better to mount the gun and see where your nose is in relation to your thumb. And if it, if it does that, you're going to be pretty close. And when you mount the gun, are you, are you naturally looking down that rib of the shotgun with your gun? The barrel, of course, you've got to make sure it's unloaded. And then once you're absolutely certain that it is unloaded, you can have an experienced shooter get on the muzzle in and look back down that rib and see if it is, if the B or whatever is in line with the eye and do they, and that typically will go a long way. Now, a common thing that we encounter is your right-handed, but left-eyed dominant. And that becomes a problem. Are you that way? Oh yeah. How do you, how do you overcome that? You know, I, I've always shot that way. I mean, I was lucky enough where, you know, my dad early on, when we're just learning how to shoot says, okay, you know, let's test your eye dominance. And sure enough, my, and my dad's the same way. He's, he's very right-handed, very left-eyed dominant. And it's, I'm very right-handed, I'm very left-eyed dominant. And so I've always shot long guns from the left shoulder. And it's just, it's just what I do. I mean, it feels very awkward to shoot right-handed for me, even though I'm right-handed. Well, ideally you should shoot a shotgun with both eyes open. Right. Because you want that depth perception. If you close one eye, you lose depth perception. Right. Now, that's a problem if you're right-handed and left-eyed dominant, dominant, but there's a couple of ways to fix that. And the easiest way, Ryan, is to take a piece of clear scotch tape and look right down the barrel and put that on your lens of your shooting glasses right where your eye looks through. That will force the other eye to take over. And yet you still get the depth perception. That is a common trick that is in the field and it works every time and it costs nothing to fix. Yeah. That's, I like the tape. I've heard chapstick, something that just kind of works in a bind. That'll work too. Yeah. Yeah. And if you have your pair of shooting glasses, the tape doesn't rub off like chapstick or something. No, it's the same principle exactly. I like it. I shoot with, just keep that tape on your glasses and they pull it off and then they shoot the gun right-handed. That's especially a problem if it's an automatic and it's ejecting in front of your eye if you're left-handed. But you mount the gun with right hand and then put the tape on your left eye and it will force the right eye to completely take over. Yet you're still getting that depth perception. And so easy fix. Interesting. Okay. That's awesome. Steve, thanks for being on this. This has been fun. Well, hey, you're welcome anytime and we would encourage people to get out and please keep our gun rights in mind and get out on the field and take to family. It is a fantastic family sport. Yeah. I mean, one of the best things you can do for gun rights is actually go shoot guns and take more people with you because they're going to have fun and they're going to go, yeah, these people are good people. This is a good sport. This is something we need to be able to keep doing. Yeah. Some of the best people I know, best friends I have are Clay Target shooters. Awesome. All right. Well, Steve Elinger, Clay Target legend. You guys go check them out. Very cool. That's it for us. We'll see you guys next time on Gun Tognation.