Reload!

OCTOBER 1999 NEWSLETTER
© Bruce Buck, editor

FAIRFIELD SUB-GAUGE SHOOT…

The Travelers Shoot Machine is an awesome thing to behold. Each month
Al Anglace pulls the switch and, like the Toonerville Trolley, it
chugs, burbles and clanks into life. All the engineers know their jobs
and go about their duties efficiently. It’s a thing a beauty and a
marvel to behold.

However, any machine needs some downtime for maintenance. In this case
the entire staff of Reload! took the past month off to go camping in
the Rockies. You should have seen the Judge, Miss Manners and the
Technoid all trying to squeeze into that pup tent. According to the
Technoid, Jolt Cola is excellent for starting fires, but Twinkies plop
into the fire when you try to toast them on sticks. Miss Manners
decried the absence of linen napkins at the cookouts, but enjoyed
making squirrel sushi with her new fifty blade Swiss Army knife. The
Judge had ample supplies of vintage port brought in by bearer and was
content to ruminate on natural beauty and the lack of flush toilets.
Reload!’s mascot, the little white poodle Brûlée, successfully held
off the bears and blue jays.

Of course, a Reload! sabbatical doesn’t really do anything to affect
the shoots. Actually Reload! doesn’t do anything at all. "We don’t
make the news, we just report it." as the hair-sprayed talking heads
are wont to report. But we do try to tell people what happened after
it is all over. At least most of the time. But not this time.

While the Reload! staff was out hunkering around the primordial fire
in the wilderness, unabashedly shirking their escritorial duties,
their betters gleefully exercised their little guns at Fairfield. So,
other than the barest details and the scores Al and Cyndi sent us, we
don’t really know what happened. Of course, ignorance is nothing new
here at Reload! In fact it is a way of life.

The 119 Travelers who did attend know what happened. Those of you who
didn’t make it aren’t going to learn a whole lot from us. So there.
As we have said here often before, never rely on the maggots of the
media. Remember when we told you that the "next few shoots will be a
lot easier" this summer?

A few hurried phone calls supplied us with the following information:
As is always the case with Fairfield Fish and Game, it was a good
shoot and perfectly "sized" to the sub-gauges. Members responded in
the right spirit as we were told that only a few of the 119 entrants
used 12 gauge guns. That’s the spirit! Everyone seemed to come up with
something sub-gauge.

The standard Technoidally-derived Travelers sub-gauge handicap system
was strictly adhered to. Over time it has proven surprisingly fair.
For reminders, the sub-gauge handicaps, which apply at this and all
other Travelers shoots, are 12 ga=0, 16 ga=3, 20 ga=5, 28 ga=10, 410
bore=20, SxS and pump add another 5. For some, there was a great deal
of calculating and scheming as to what would give the biggest
advantage. For others, it was simply quail and woodcock gun time.
There were surprisingly few skeet tube sets in use.

The course was "friendly", but not so friendly that it was boring. It
was the kind of course that you could do well on if you could
concentrate and not let the easy ones slip away. If ever the axiom
"Shoots are decided by hitting the easy ones, not by missing the hard
ones" was true, it was here. Of course, when you are trying to rattle
a five pound .410 pump, nothing is "easy".

And now to the winner. If basic math holds, Lavert Cypher’s score of
102 with his 28 gauge would normally be considered remarkable on a 100
bird course. Obviously Lavert shot really well and the 10 bird 28
gauge handicap put him over the top. Still, a great performance. The
shoot average was a 70.8, well above our three heart-breaking
performances earlier this summer. We must be getting better. If there
are any errors in the scores as reported here, please mention it to
Cyndi Dalena for correction. There were some slight differences in the
awards score sheet and the record score sheet. Of course, that has
never happened before and will never happen again, the Travelers being
the efficient organization it is.

Next month we hope that the shoot review will actually have something
to say about the shoot. Thanks for bearing with us.

HOA LAVERT CYPHER 102
410 Champ Steve Dalena 96
28 Champ Preston Moore 100
20 Champ Joe Maresca 93
16 Champ Emile Dorizzi 92

I-1 Gene Csicsak 98
I-2 Bruce Galotto 92
I-3 Kevin Goodspeed 89
II-1 Ed Moritt 94
II-2 Richard Cook 80*
II-3 Paul Fostini 80
III-1 Tom Gransowski 91
III-2 Peter Wicker 89
III-3 Rob Busha 85
IV-1 Alex Jesudowich 83
IV-2 Bob Kimmel 81
IV-3 Don Hutchinson 80*
V-1 Erik Bausch 68
V-2 Walt Fell 67
V-3 Andy McEvoy 65
VI-1 Jack Buchmiller 57
VI-2 George Kaiser Jr 56
VI-3 Heather Guay 48
Ldy-1 Gloria Marwell 70*
Ldy-2 Cyndi Dalena 70
Ldy-3 Fran Gallogly 63
Vet-1 Gordon Forbes 92
Vet-2 John Lawlor 90
Vet-3 Al Anglace 82
Jr-1 Rocky Cotoia 62
Jr-2 Mike Soltes 59
Jr-3 Luke Sproviero 58
Jr-4 Sal Renzuella 57
Jr-5 Paul Hughes 56
Guest Larry Prather 82
* decided by tie breaker

FALL TRIP TO CANADA… October 8,9 and 10. You already have the Canadian
trip flyer from the last momentous Pulitzer Prize-winning issue of
Reload! so you know all the details and contact telephone numbers.
This is just a very last minute reminder, hopefully getting to you
before the actual event.

VINTAGERS SxS SHOOT… The Order of Edwardian Gunners, aka Vintagers, is
well known to most of you. Indeed many of their members are Travelers.
They gather one day a month to happily duplicate the excesses of an
Edwardian shooting party. With sporting clays or game shooting as the
background, everyone dons period clothing and shoots period shotguns.
They finish up with a walloping grand dinner, usually bringing their
own chef. The idea has certainly caught on and half a dozen chapters
have sprung up in the US.

For the past three years the Vintagers have also sponsored a September
grand shoot and exposition. The past two years have been at Addieville
and this year it was at Orvis/Sandanona. Venders row has everyone who
is anyone in the upper-end gun world. If you attended the Sandanona
shoot last month, you will know all about it. If you didn’t, we can
only urge you to consider it for next year. Purdeys, Ferarris, bespoke
shooting togs, it’s all there. Next year it is same time, same place.

If you are interested in the Vintagers, contact Ray Poudrier at
413-339-5347. Like the Travelers, the group is low key and devoted to
shooting fun. You will fit right in.

MISS MANNERS AND PARTIAL JUSTICE... Raul Slithe was born a cheat. Not
real cheating like draft dodging, adultering and perjuring, but a
cheat nevertheless. Frankly, he never had the nerve to cheat in a big
enough way to amount to anything.

As a small child he hid things from his playmates and later claimed
them for himself when he "found" them. In college he developed the
ability to read upside down and was able to plagiarize enough term
papers to get through. In his business life, he devoted considerable
effort to cheating on his taxes. He always felt a little rush of smug
satisfaction when he got away with it.

In his free time he played sports, but he never played ones he
couldn't cheat at. He just loved golf. He had his golf trousers, the
ones with the little embroidered whales, fitted with a pocket with a
hole in it so he could drop a ball when needed.

But he liked sporting clays best. There was so much room to improve
one’s score. Furthermore, cheating gave him a real edge because so
very few other people in the game did it. They probably weren’t
bright enough to figure out how to get away with it, he thought as he
squared his shoulders and sniffed.

As all cheaters do, Raul thought himself quite clever. He adapted his
particular method of influencing his score to the situation. He always
tried to shoot on a "chips" squad of like-minded friends and
relatives. Sometimes he would "see" a chip for one of his pals and
loudly proclaim so to the fifteen year old referee. "I saw a chip. He
hit it. He hit it." he would say as he pointed and danced about. The
kid didn’t care one way or the other and wanted to avoid any conflict
with armed and agitated adults. The favor would be repaid a little
later on when his pal would see an imaginary chip for him.

Slithe knew that sporting clays is the only clay target sport which
actually encourages onlookers to influence the referee. In the hard
core FITASC shooting game a shooter has about as much success
reversing a ref’s call as a baseball player does. The FITASC rules
makers figured that good and bad calls even out over time, so it
worked out as long as the referee was consistent. Raul was glad that
English sporting hadn’t figured this out yet. It gave him
opportunity.

Some shoots didn’t have regular referees so that they could keep the
costs low. This encouraged more people to enjoy the sport. It also
encouraged Raul. If Raul wasn’t on an understanding squad, he simply
brought his wife along and she volunteered to keep score for everyone.
This offer was always happily accepted because keeping score is a
pain in the neck. Raul’s wife, Verity, always made the right call out
loud on his birds, but sometimes mistakenly wrote in a hit where a
miss had been called. As Raul’s daddy once told him, "Ain’t no excuse
to ever lose when you keep the score." Raul would never disobey his
daddy and his wife would never disobey him.

All of this worked very well for Raul because he was actually a pretty
good shot and he never had to influence his score much. A couple of
birds was usually plenty. Unfortunately, sporting clays had one major
flaw in that Raul often didn’t know what the competitors were shooting
so it was hard to add just the right number of points. Sometimes Raul
guessed wrong and didn’t add enough. Sometimes he added too much. He
didn’t want to overdo it. A couple of times early on he tried erasing
parts of his score card and rewriting the "right" answers. Too risky
though. Still the suckers congratulated him and shook his hand
anyway. They obviously didn’t have a clue.

All went well until he ran up against LaRue Geetle. LaRue sold body
parts. Real body parts. No one ever asked him how he came by them. No
one wanted to find out either. LaRue liked sporting clays, but always
shot alone. No one wanted to squad with him, especially after two of
the trap boys disappeared at one shoot. Raul was not intimidated in
the slightest and saw LaRue as a mere bump in the road on the way to
another win. LaRue viewed Raul as an organ donor.

One day they shot together in a squad of two. LaRue Geetle was not a
bright man and it took him three of four stations to realize that Raul
was had not yet missed a bird. At least his score card had all "X"s,
some of them a bit smudged. Of course, Raul was constantly seeing
chips, fussing with his score card and brow-beating the teenage
scorer. LaRue Geetle loathed cheaters. He began to take notice.

On the next station, Raul clearly missed a bird by a foot, but still
claimed it. "One foot." thought LaRue as Raul’s scorecard was marked
with an "X". The trap boy called the next bird lost, but Raul exploded
"Use your eyes, kid. Can’t you see that I hit that!" "Eyes" noted
LaRue as the "X" was written in.

And so it went station by station. "Let me give you a hand, kid. I’ll
write that score in for you." "Use your head, boy. You know I hit
that." "I hit that one right on the nose, didn’t I?" "That was a slow
pull. Shake a leg." Raul’s perfect score continued, but so did his
comments. LaRue remembered it all.

After the shoot when the cards were handed in, the scorers gasped when
they saw Raul Slithe’s perfect 100 straight. However, he failed to
appear at the awards ceremony. They asked LaRue Geetle. "I guess that
shooting a perfect score just plain used him up", said LaRue
cryptically as he lugged a heavier than usual shooting bag back to
this car.

No one ever saw Raul Slithe again and, frankly, no one cared. LaRue
Geetle was suddenly able to buy that antique English Best Smythington
Chutneygout he had always wanted. Someone once asked him how he found
the parts to keep the old gun running. He replied "Don’t worry. I can
always get parts. That’s what I do."

[The above article was previously printed in The Clay Pigeon. Clay
Pigeon is a monthly magazine devoted to the news and technical
interests of sporting clays shooters. A subscription is only $12 per
year. Call Neil Chadwick or Debbie Phillips at 570-296-5768 and use
your credit card. Nothing easier.]

THE TECHNOID AND OOSOOM...

[This is a re-run of a 1996 article. Perhaps it will make more sense
now than three years ago. Perhaps not. Consider the source.]

It has often been said that there is no one shooting technique that
suffices for all possible target presentations. The usual shooting
approaches are Pull Away, Sustained Lead, Swing Through and Spot Shot.
To this arsenal, you might consider adding the Out Of Sight, Out Of
Mind (OOSOOM) variation. No kidding. Trust the Technoid and read on.
OK, but read on anyway.

The Out Of Sight, Out Of Mind technique is really more of a starting
position variation than it is a totally new shooting style, but it is
different enough to merit mention on its own. It is called Out Of
Sight, Out Of Mind because the muzzle of the gun is kept down
completely below the sight of the shooter until the very last moment.
The gun butt is often positioned at mid chest level and the entire gun
is held parallel to the ground.

In most usual shooting styles, the muzzle of the gun is started
somewhere on the anticipated flight path of the target. When the bird
emerges, the muzzle is moved in the proper relation to the target.

Once the muzzle is moving properly and the correct muzzle/bird lead is
obtained, then the gun is raised to the face and the shot delivered.
The only real variation is whether the muzzle starts behind, on or in
front of the bird.

In the above "normal" approach the shooter is keenly aware of the
bird/muzzle relationship at all times. This is how he sees his "lead"
and knows when to pull the trigger. This is the way that most of us
shoot most of our targets.

Assume, for example, that the target presentation is a fairly standard
35 yard right to left crosser. Most shooters would start their guns
about half way between where they could first see the bird and where
they intended to break it. The butt would be under the armpit and the
muzzle would be raised up to the anticipated flight line. This is all
very standard stuff.

To use the OOSOOM approach, the set up would be the same, except for
one big difference. Instead of having the muzzle elevated up to the
anticipated flight line, the muzzle would be held quite a bit lower
and parallel to the ground (but not drooping down), perhaps as low as
mid-chest level or even lower. The important part is that the muzzle
would be completely below the line of sight of the shooter. The
shooter can not see any part of the gun. He watches only the bird.
When the bird emerges the shooter simply fixes his eyes carefully on
the bird and pivots his body as he follows target. He then raises his
hands to the appropriate place in front of the target and fires. If
this last sentence seems vague, it will be clearer in practice.

The advantage, and intent, of the OOSOOM approach is that it
completely prevents "aiming" (and thus stopping) the gun. The gun
muzzle starts completely below the shooter's line of sight so he could
not aim if he wanted to. The shooter cannot see the barrel at all
until the very last moment.

An additional advantage of OOSOOM is that the target is seen more
clearly because the gun is not up in the shooter's face to obstruct
the view. The shooter's head will probably be carried more erectly,
also improving eyesight when compared to what is seen when crawling a
stock. The OOSOOM approach relies entirely on the natural pointing
instinct- a muscle and motor memory which is quite reliable in even
the most sublethal of our shooting brethren.

In the final instant, of course the gun goes have to come fully to the
face, but unobstructed vision of the target has been so strong up to
that point that the shooter really feels that he is only moving his
forehand to the bird, not the gun. One really concentrates more on a
sensed hand/bird relationship rather than a visual eye/barrel/bird
relationship. Clear yet?

Roger Silcox (the current dean of English shooting instructors) is a
big proponent of this low muzzle shooting style. He probably was not
the first to use it, but he does teach this method and feels that it
is quite helpful for certain shooters. Roger has too much dignity to
saddle the style with the OOSOOM acronym, but the Technoid lacks all
dignity and has no such compunction.

While OOSOOM probably can be made to work on every type of shot, it
really shines on the long, arcing birds where aiming almost always
causes a stopped swing. The long, looping quartering incomer seems
ideal for it.

There it is, Junior Technoids. Another cartridge for your belt.
Don't you just love it.



*** 1999 CONNECTICUT TRAVELERS SHOOT SCHEDULE ***

OCT 17 MILLBROOK R&G- OKTOBERSCHUTZENFEST
NOV 21 FRIAR TUCK- CLUB CHAMPIONSHIP
NOV 28 EAST MOUNTAIN- HAROLD KOEHLER SCHOLARSHIP BENEFIT
DEC 12 MID-COUNTY-CHRISTMAS PARTY SHOOT


***OTHER SHOOTS OF INTEREST***
ALWAYS, ALWAYS CALL AHEAD TO CONFIRM

OCT 3 MONEY SHOOT AT PECONIC, NY (516-467-3965)
NOV 13,14 SCI/FITASC-STYLE REGION 1 AT PEACE DALE, RI (401-789-3730)
NOV 20,21 FALL "3 SHOT" AND OPEN CH AT PEACE DALE, RI (401-789-3730)



GOING TO A SHOOT? WHY NOT ASK A FELLOW TRAVELER TO JOIN YOU? ALL THE
NAMES AND ADDRESSES ARE IN THE TRAVELERS GUIDE BOOK.

If you know of any area shoots which might be of interest to your
fellow Travelers, get in touch with RELOAD! and we will post them to
the world.


CONTACTING THE TRAVELERS...

CTSCA Home Office: Email <AAA738@aol.com> (by far the best way) or
telephone (860) 354-9351 if it is urgent.

Membership and Shooting Class status: Contact Cyndi Dalena at (860)
584-1083 between 9:00 AM and 5:00 PM. Leave message. Or Email
shotguncyndi@prodigy.net

Reload! To place an ad or post a shoot date, contact Bruce Buck at
203-454-1080 or <bbuck@juno.com>.



**** THE UPCOMING TRAVELERS MONTHLY SHOOT ****

SUNDAY, OCTOBER 17, 1999
OKTOBERSCHUTZENFEST
MILLBROOK ROD AND GUN CLUB
MILLBROOK, NY


This year’s Connecticut Travelers’ Oktoberschutzenfest is going to
have even more Gemütlichkeit than ever. We’ll have barrels of fun.
While our Münchenbewohner German cousins enjoy their barrels of foamy
fun, we will derive equal pleasure from barrels of a different sort.

It’s all the usual drill. Show up at 9:00 AM and check your name off
on the big score sheet. Enjoy some high test kaffe und strudel while
you cinch up your lederhausen and get your bockdoppelflinte ready to
shoot. The tab for the day is US$55 and your paid reservations must
be in our hands no later than Thursday, October 14 or you will be
kaput. Sub-gauge guns get the usual handicaps. Drillings get an extra
handicap if you use the rifle barrel.

Millbrook has a great course, somewhat in the style of Fairfield. A
"woodsy" course is absolutely appropriate for fall with its helles
Oktoberlaub (bright October foliage). Gäste sind willkommen. (Guests
are welcome.)


Directions to Millbrook Rod and Gun Club, Millbrook, NY:

From Taconic parkway, take the NY Rte 44 (Millbrook) exit. Take Rte 44
heading East for about 1.6 miles to Rte 44-A. Bear Left onto Rte 44-A.
Go 2.1 miles (you will pass Sandanona’s driveway) to Stamford Road on
Left. Turn Left on Stamford Road and go .8 miles to Millbrook R&G Club
sign on right.

If lost, strayed or stolen, the Millbrook R&G Club telephone number is
914-677-0029.

REMEMBER, EYE PROTECTION IS MANDATORY AT ALL TRAVELERS SHOOTS.

Internet readers: The Connecticut Travelers is a membership club. Our
membership roster is closed for 1999. A waiting list has been drawn up
for admission in 2000 depending on space available. The shoot notice
above is included for the benefit of our members.