By Josh Motley ’12, Contributor
As Col. Kilgore says in Apocalypse Now, “I love the smell of Napalm in the morning.” Well, I don’t actually love the smell of Napalm ever, but nothing is quite as thrilling as seeing Eddy Walton shoot a pumpkin and watching it vaporize.
The Sporting Clays and Riflery Club (SCRC) is just one of the many clubs created by the class of 2010. You have probably seen our many pizza sale e-mails and heard our various announcements, but few may know the purpose of our club. No, it isn’t a CCD Militia Corps or a bunch of hicks and their guns. We want to bring back one of the skills of our forefathers that has been long-forgotten in our modernized world.
Senior Dean of Students Fred Carey explained that CCDS used to have a shooting team way back in the day. Unfortunately, riflery has fallen out of fashion and one of our club goals is to revive this lost skill. Another (and perhaps
more valuable) is to practice our aim and sharpen our skills, since someone has to protect the masses from zombies.
For those unfamiliar with sporting clay, it is a clay disc that is launched in a variety of ways to simulate a bird’s flight. The objective is to use a shotgun to hit this moving target. Because all clays lay differently, practicing with these moving targets not only improves our aim but also enhances our quick decision-making, as proper gun safety is an important concern that we take very seriously.
As members of the SCRC, we get together with other fellow gun-enthusiasts, expert marksmen (and women), and some not-so-expert marksmen to have an enjoyable afternoon practicing our rifling.
Our outing on Saturday, December 3rd was especially freeing for me. I relieved my post-SAT stress by target practicing on pumpkins. I pulled up and took a journey through time as I saw a 1900’s Colt .30 long special revolver, a WWII Mosin-Nagant, a 1970’s M1 Carbine, a 1970’s Smith and Wesson .38 revolver, a Colt .30 long special revolver from the 1900s, various makes and models of shotguns and more .22 rifles than you can shake a stick at.
For those of you who may be wondering if this club is just for men, multiple young ladies have graced our firing lines and demolished pumpkin targets with an inspiring civility and ladylike poise.
I hope that your interest has been piqued about SCRC, and I encourage all of you to talk to Mr. Carey, me, or another member about our growing club. Give us an hour or two and we’ll show you what all the “bang bang” is about.
