“Mas Vale Tarde Que Nunca”

It’s August. I realize the last thing you want to do is to go out to your local clay target range and shoot targets. It’s hot and the air conditioning feels so good.

If my memory serves me correctly, however, it ain’t gonna be cooler on September 1st when dove season opens up. Early teal season is just around the corner, and even though you might be standing in some water, it is still going to be hotter than nine hells.

Now would be a great time to get your hunting stuff out and check it over. The kids are out of school and this would be a great time to get them involved in early season prep for dove and teal season.

A trip to the range, or at least shooting some skeet or sporting clays together, accomplishes several things. You know whether or not your gun is still in good working order. If it is not, take it to your local gunsmith and get it fixed now before the late-season rush.

If you are hunting with your kids, (and if you are not, you should be!) check their gun fit. Right around the time a kid comes of age where they become a true participant on a bird hunt, they inevitably hit their major growth spurt. Guns that had to be shortened so they could be mounted now have to be lengthened. Again, get this done now so they have time to go to the range and practice with it.

I realize that I probably sound like a broken record about this practice thing, but it is more important than most people understand, especially for the kids. If the hunt is not a success, it will become harder and harder to get them out into the hunting fields.

Kids have so many things to do these days. You must go out of your way to get them in a successful hunt in the beginning to hold their interest. Perhaps the worst-case scenario would be to take a kid on a dove hunt where there are lots of birds and he or she cannot hit any. The only thing they will remember is a sore shoulder, frustration, and massive failure of not harvesting any birds. Go to the range and practice or go take a shooting lesson.

I can already feel people in the background thinking, “I didn’t take a shooting lesson before I went on my first dove hunt and I still go hunting!” Regardless of how true that is (and it’s true in my case as well), we didn’t have T-ball, soccer, video games, and cable TV as alternative pastimes. We had yo-yos, tops, maybe a wagon or a bicycle with some playing cards close-pinned to the frame so it would sound like a Harley when you rode it! 

Kids today have a lot of things to choose from that eventually compete with hunting or fishing. Of the two, hunting is by far the hardest to become proficient at. Hunting is also the most dangerous from a safety standpoint. Nothing can replace time spent at the clays range when it comes to proficiency with a shotgun and safe handling with any firearm. Technical expertise is always preceded by experience.

You can intellectually understand how to swing a golf club, and can even understand club selection, but you probably wouldn’t take your son or daughter to play golf without first taking some lessons, or at least going to the driving range and hitting some balls. You can point a golf club at someone and not be unsafe!