Adventure #25- "Are we killing animals??? I can't do that!"

All the girls were able to decipher from my clues that our latest adventure would involve shooting big guns... the question was, at what?? Jessica, in particular, was relieved to find out there would be no bloodshed... hopefully... as we would be shooting clay discs, not living creatures.

We drove out to Powder Creek Shooting Park in west Lenexa and met our incredibly patient, knowledgeable and trusting instructor, Jack. I don't know what Jack may have envisioned when he booked a group lesson for "six female adults," but I doubt his vision included matching outfits with hot pink detailing and lipstick emblems.  He asked us what other adventures we have done lately and I told him our last one was a cooking class (cue Jack's sudden look of understanding).... but, I quickly assured him that we haaaave fired handguns in the past... one time... a few years ago... it went well. Promise.

All smiles at the Shooting Park

After going over Jack's bio and signing waivers, we made our way across the parking lot to the sporting clays course. We heard loud gunshots coming from the trap area of the park, where people of all different ages, genders and sizes were practicing. The loud bangs caused varying degrees of uneasiness amongst us. Alli and Jessica said that they felt like they could puke at any moment. I felt the urge to drop and cover on more than one occasion. Becoming acclimated to the noise and comfortable in its presence definitely took some time. 

We gathered at the first station on the clays course and Jack went over safe gun handling and park regulations.  He then gave us a basic tutorial on stance, posture, positioning, aim and execution of firing the 20-gauge shotgun he brought for us to use. After our lesson, Jack decided Jessi was the first one up! Considering she struggled just to get her earplugs in, I'm not sure why he thought that would be the best place to start (love you, J), buuuuut nevertheless he promised this would be easy and said, "I've never had anyone not hit one on their first try." Oh Jack... I thought you had us figured out. He helped Jessi get into position then stepped back. She yelled "Pull" and Jessica pushed (ironic, huh?) the button to trigger the clay disc to go flying through the air. Jessi tracked its progress with the barrel of the gun, fired annnnnnnnnnd..... missed. She tried again; and again; and nothing. Jack was probably thinking it was just beginners nerves, but I had a feeling this was going to be a common occurrence for us.

Luckily, she looks pretty badass with a gun in her hands, so it wasn't a complete wash....

Next up was Amy who also fired three shots. The result: 3 misses. Sorry, Jack.

Then came Lisa. We all had high hopes for Lisa as she has always excelled at our adventures that involve weaponry. Sadly, we still had yet to see one of those orange discs explode after Lisa's three shots. She did however, appear to be the most comfortable with the gun and unintimidated by its deadly power.

I was up next. I'll admit I had very little faith in my success at this adventure to begin with, and my self-doubt was exponentially higher after seeing the other girls fail to hit a target. My first shot was a miss, but somehow, someway, my second attempt hit the clay right in the sweet spot and blew it to smithereens! Jack was so excited (maybe moreso than I was), and told me to do it again! Welllll, that didn't happen. One out of five isn't great by any means, but so far, I was the only one to accomplish the task... I'll take it.

After me, was Alli who was unable to connect with any of her five shots.

But, when it comes to proper carrying of an unloaded gun, she nailed it...

Finally it was Jessica's turn. She was probably the most apprehensive of us all. A couple of her shots chipped a little piece off of the discs, but she couldn't quite hit them in the right spot to cause them to completely break up. We're going to give her partial credit for hitting them though!

Most importantly, she was able to brush her fears aside and establish a congeal relationship with the shotgun...

After we had all taken our turn, Jack asked if we wanted to move on to the slightly more challenging skeet course or if we wanted to stay with the clays course.... really Jack? We're shooting 1/25 at this point and you think we need more of a challenge?!? His naivety optimism was cute, but we decided to stay right where we were, so off to the next clays stand we went. At this point in time I was feeling a little more confident and was itching to get my hands back on that gun. I could hardly wait my turn, I wanted so badly to prove that wasn't just a fluke at the first stand.  So of course, I proved just the opposite. Didn't hit a single one. Neither did Jessi, Lisa, Jessica or Amy. Alli was the only one to hit a disc at this stand, so we left this station with an accuracy rate of about 2/60.

We did however, have better luck with entertaining ourselves with goodies and gadgets from Jack's box of tricks...

Jessi got to wear his cool yellow Aviators- Elton John would be jealous

While Alli played in the golf cart...

... and made cleanup fun with his nifty magnetic shell picker-upper

During our time at the second stand, Jack recognized that Amy kept favoring her dominant eye and closing her right eye.  He had made it clear that we were supposed to use both eyes to view the target, so Amy was punished aided by having to wear an eye patch of sorts that Jack made out of a bandaid. Jack said, "now you girls can't make fun of her," to which someone either replied, or I just thought, "that will never happen!" :)

Work it. Own it.

Our third and final stand was a little different as the clays were flying towards us, rather than away from us.  Jack once again promised that everyone would hit a clay on this stand. Alli went first and blew up her very first target! We all cheered with excitement for her, but also for our own potential, as she had so far proven Jack right about this stand. Lisa was also able to obliterate one disc from this stand, but Jessica, Jessi, Amy and myself failed to before we ran out of time. Wah wahhhhh. 

In case you've lost track, we hit a total of four clays (plus a few chips) over the course of two hours, three stations and approximately 100 attempts. Lucky for us, our perception of fun is not dependent on our success, and as often happens, everyone claimed to have enjoyed themselves much more than anticipated.

A few things we learned/observed from our shotgun shooting adventure:

1. The kickback from the gun is so much less painful and intimidating than we all imagined.

2. There are 400-500+ pellets contained within one shotgun shell!

3. Sometimes 400-500+ pellets aren't enough (see above accuracy record).

4. The top sharpshooter in the world right now is a woman! #girlpower

5. You can shoot in mini skirts and high heels... we saw it with our own eyes!

6. Trying to visualize a target and aim a gun with both eyes open is much more difficult than one might imagine.
7. We all need to work on our upper arm strength.
8. Golf carts are always fun, no matter how old you are.

I thought these pics were cool because they captured the empty shells being ejected from the gun:

25 adventures down, so many to go... Looking forward to an escape in June!