Joe Charnigo resides in the rural community of Lodi, Ohio, and competes in trapshooting, flyer (live pigeon) shoots and, occasionally, sporting clays competitions around the globe. His outstanding shooting resume and warm, friendly personality have made him famous in the trapshooting world, where he is affectionately known as “Ohio Joe.”
“They’ve called me ‘Ohio Joe’ for a long time. It came from shooting flyers,” Charnigo recounted. “We travel all over the country. I would go to Pennsylvania a lot and there would be three or four Joes over there. So, they started calling me ‘Ohio Joe.’ And it’s just kind of one of those things that stuck. So, I put it on my vest and I wear it everywhere.”
At the age of 37, Charnigo is already something of a legend in the Ohio trapshooting community. In 2022, he was inducted into the Ohio State Trapshooting Hall of Fame. He has won multiple honors at the Ohio State Trapshooting Championships, including High Over All Champion (nine times), High All-Around Champion (seven times) and Doubles Champion (11 times). Also, this for the first time, he won the Ohio Singles Championship.
Beyond Ohio, Charnigo has a long list of trapshooting accomplishments on his shooting resume. He has been named to the Amateur Trapshooting Association’s All-American team 14 times—12 times on the Men’s team and one time each on the Sub-Junior and Junior teams. He has also accomplished the ATA’s Grand Slam (200x200 Singles, 100x100 Doubles and 100x100 Handicap) from the 27-yard line three times.
Charnigo was the 2015 Doubles Champion at the Grand American World Trapshooting Championship in Sparta, Illinois. Then, in 2019, he ran 950 straight singles targets and was crowned the American World Clay Target Champion at the Grand.
Charnigo has several sponsors that he proudly represents including Blaser, Baschieri & Pellagri, Rhino Chokes, R.E. Ranger, Wenig Custom Stocks, Gun & Trophy Insurance, Ultimate Shooting Accessories and Castellani.
While he is satisfied with these accomplishments, Charnigo is focused on the future and helping to make the shooting sports fun and exciting for today’s shooters and the next generation. He actively works to get others engaged in trapshooting and is concerned about the growth of the sport.
As with his shooting accomplishments, Charnigo started at home, literally in his own backyard. Charnigo built a trapshooting range overlooking the lake behind his house. It started as a place to practice with his wife, Mandy, and have a few friends over to shoot. He has also used it as a place to introduce people to the sport of trapshooting. Now, they host a trapshooting league with 35 shooters who compete on a weekly basis for prizes, fun and bragging rights.
Mandy, who was Ohio Lady Handicap Champion in 2014, took some time off from shooting when she had their son, Cooper. Now, Mandy is shooting on the backyard range and at local clubs as she gets back into trapshooting competitively.
Shooting has always been a family affair for Charnigo. He started shooting with his father, Steve, when he was only seven years old. His father and some friends were shooting clay targets on the family farm in Medina County, Ohio. Young Joe was shooting at the clay targets with his slingshot. He started breaking clays consistently, so his father decided to let him try a shotgun instead. He shot at a clay target while his dad held the shotgun for him and broke the first target that he attempted. That was the start of what has become a lifelong sport for him.
Charnigo’s father still competes and his brother, Josh, has also started shooting in their backyard trapshooting league.
These days, however, the Charnigo that gets the most attention at trapshooting competitions is Joe and Mandy’s son, Cooper. The three-year-old is with them at most shooting events where they schedule squads so they can be with him, and also have a plethora of trapshooting “uncles” who enjoy hanging out with Cooper while his parents shoot.
“It’s really cool and he enjoys it. Everybody loves seeing Cooper,” Charnigo said. “It works out well. I can go shoot and somebody’s always willing to keep an eye on him. He’s grown up around it. He loves it.”
In fact, Cooper dusted his first clay target with a .22 smoothbore that Joe held for him while the younger Charnigo lined up the target in his sights.
Charnigo believes that educating Cooper and other young people about shooting is important for the sport and for children.
“A lot of people want to keep kids away from guns and everything else,” he said. “And I think it’s the wrong thing to do to shelter them from. You need to make them aware of them and let them know the dangers of them, and the responsibility that they need to have around firearms.”
Charnigo also emphasized the importance of introducing young people to firearm safety and basic safety rules: keeping the gun safe, always pointing it in a safe direction, keeping your finger off the trigger until ready to shoot, and always keeping it unloaded until ready to shoot.
“If you shelter them from it, they don’t know the difference between right and wrong,” he said. “I think it’s a very important thing to teach at a young age.”
In addition to his focus on youth education, Charnigo is dedicated to the future of the sport, especially ensuring its growth.
He wants to bring some of the fun and excitement back into trapshooting and believes that providing better rewards for shooters could help attract new participants, especially younger ones.
“We need to think outside the box to revive the sport is my feeling on it … we need to have something where there is a little bit of added money,” he said. “Because when I talk to my friends that are in their 20s, 30s or 40s, I can’t persuade them to come spend the money that they’re going to spend when they have nothing at all to win or gain out of it. You want a chance to win something or get paid for your investment.”
Earlier this year, Charnigo approached the Ohio State Trapshooting Association about conducting a new event after hours at the Ohio State Championships. On Friday, June 21, 2024, the first “Back Fence Shoot Out” was held. The non-registered event started immediately after the Handicap event and featured a cookout for all participants. The event was sponsored by a number of companies which enabled them to provide prizes, including a Beretta DT11 shotgun donated by Beretta, Shamrock leather bags and even a belt buckle to accompany the cash awards.
The goal was to make it a fun event where people would stay after the main events ended. It was designed to make it possible for more shooters to win prizes and cash. Multiple prize purses helped to put the entry fees back into the shooters’ pockets. Additionally, a portion of the fees were donated to the Ohio State Trapshooting Foundation, which awards scholarships.
To give more competitors a chance to win the Beretta DT11 shotgun, a number was drawn at the beginning of the shoot. If a shooter’s score ended with that number, he or she was included in a shoot-off to win the gun. They had to shoot 100 targets from the 27-yard line in a last-competitor-standing competition format.
Charnigo said he was hoping for 150 people to sign up and shoot. He ended up with 263 and mentioned that he was thrilled with the results.
“When we put that shoot together, we wanted to have a shoot where it kept everybody there,” he enthusiastically explained. “Afterwards, we had the shoot-off. It was cool when we were there. The most people I saw in the crowd for the whole week of the Ohio State shoot was that night, with people waiting around watching the shoot-offs and enjoying it. And that, to me, is more what shooting is about. It’s having everybody around, with people enjoying the camaraderie and having fun. Instead of just shooting, and then receiving a trinket that you don’t really care about.
In addition to helping build a brighter future for trapshooting, Charnigo still has personal competitive goals he would like to accomplish. He would like to shoot 100 perfect scores (breaking 100-straight) in trapshooting Singles and Doubles. To date, he has broken 23 100-straights in Singles and 95 100-straights in Doubles competitions. He would also like to win either the High Over All or High All-Around at the Grand American and some day be inducted into the Amateur Trapshooting Association’s Hall of Fame.
Winning the Ohio Sporting Clays Championship is also on Charnigo’s bucket list. However, that competition conflicts with the Grand American, thus, he won’t be able to accomplish it unless he cuts back on trapshooting. Which is probably good news for sporting clays shooters.
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