My name is Taylor Schroeder. I am a 12-year-old from Arizona and have been a member of 4-H for five years. In those five years, I have always been a part of the shooting sports program.
Shooting sports have been part of the Olympic program since 1896 and a project in 4-H since the 1980s. 4-H shooting sports activity targets precision shooting using ranged firearms like shotguns, handguns and rifles. This program focuses on positive youth development and safe firearm handling, as well as helping to address social issues related to STEM: healthy living, marksmanship and civic engagement. Additionally, it helps to get kids active that are not necessarily athletes. Shooting sports in 4-H benefits kids from the ages of eight through 18 by encouraging them to develop new and important skills.
What are the benefits?
Shooting sports will boost your mental strength when it comes to many different activities and develops your physical strength and stamina for physical activities. It also increases your work ethic when it comes to sports. It will help you expand your concentration level and help you learn how to lock in on one thing in your brain all by itself.
If you get easily distracted, shooting sports may be the sport for you, as it hones in on your attention to detail and focus. Some people may get easily distracted, like stopping to pet their cat, or something like that, while they are trying to complete an action. Shooting sports helps people to ignore distractions. I would say that it takes 90% mental skill and 10% actual physical skill.
Why shooting sports?
Shooting sports take plenty of mental and physical discipline to get good at shooting. Shooting is a team and an individual sport, so it will help you improve your independence while also showing you how to work with a team. Shooting sports takes a lot of time and effort if you want to shoot competitively. If that is not how you would like to shoot, you could still shoot casually and go to the competitions just to have fun and hang out with others. It’s the most well-rounded sport, since it takes plenty of mental and physical skill while still being enjoyable.
4-H shooting sports has seven disciplines. Below is a breakdown.
Shotgun
Shotgun is one of our many disciplines in 4-H, with 12-gauge, 20-gauge and a .410 bore. The three shotgun competitive events are trap, skeet and sporting clays. All involve using circular frisbees called clays that shatter on impact. Trap is when the competitor stands still and shoots clays that are flying away from them. Skeet is when the competitor moves from station to station around a semicircular field shooting at targets from across their field of vision. Sporting clays are used to simulate hunting.
Muzzleloader
Muzzleloader uses an older style of shooting in which the gunpowder, patch and ball are separate. The saying is, “Powder, patch, ball, or no fun at all!” You need all three of these components to shoot. Muzzleloading events include critters, bottles, bullseye and silhouettes. Critters are when you shoot a piece of paper with animals up to scale. It will usually be five critters with two shots in each animal. Bottles are when you fire at a piece of paper with bottles up to scale. It is usually a stack of bottles with five on the bottom, and it goes up to one at the top. You will get two shots in each scoring bottle, which are the bottom five. Next there is a 50-yard bullseye match that consists of four targets in which you shoot five shots each and are scored as a normal bullseye target. The final event is silhouettes. They are shot left to right, five shots per bank.
Rifle
The .22 smallbore rifle and air rifle are another one of the seven disciplines. The .22 and air rifle events are silhouettes and three-position bullseye. There are four different rounds, 10 shots and four different silhouettes. Three-position bullseye is when you shoot at a small bullseye target from the kneeling, standing and prone positions.
Pistol
Air pistol and .22 pistol consist of rapid-fire bullseye, slow-fire bullseye and silhouettes. Slow-fire bullseye consists of shooting at a target for 10 minutes and getting 10 shots off, four times. Rapid-fire consists of shooting five shots in 10 seconds. In silhouettes, you shoot left to right, and any shots shot out of order are considered misses. Only pistols have rapid-fire and slow-fire stages.
Archery
The 4-H archery bows include compound and recurve. The events consist of FITA, field and 3-D. Field is when you shoot at known and unknown distances ranging from 5 to 60 meters. FITA is when you shoot at known distance bullseye targets ranging from 10 to 60 yards, depending on your age division. In 3-D, participants shoot targets shaped as animals and at unknown distances.
Hunting Skills
Hunting skills is one of the more complex disciplines, using shotgun, rifle and archery skills in addition to animal identification and map traversing (usually with a compass). Shotgun, archery and rifle are mainly used for the hunting side of it. All the targets for each of these events are animals. Animal identification will consist of your project leader laying out a plethora of different animal hides and animal bones, and they will have you figure out the different animals in addition to knowing how to use the hunting rules for each state.
Next is map reading. Your project leader will give you a map and ask you some questions about it. Next, they will give you a compass and give you directions to follow. You are graded on how well you follow those directions. Hunting skills is fun because it is the only discipline where you get to make food from Dutch ovens, and you can track blood trails and make a fire.
Western Heritage
Western Heritage is like cowboy action shooting. It uses two revolvers, a rifle and a shotgun, all from the 1860 to the 1900s. For shotgun, it must be a cowboy-style break barrel. Also, you only use steel targets when you shoot these events. A fun fact about Western Heritage is that you dress in period wear, like old Wild West-looking outfits. You can even create your own persona if it fits into the time period. Western Heritage is new to our state, and we are all excited to dig into it.
I hope this article makes you more excited to join your local 4-H shooting sports project. If you don’t know where to start, come shoot with us in the Maricopa Sidewinders.
Learn more about CMP at thecmp.org.
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