About 17 or 18 kids braved a steady drizzle and a ton of mud to get to our first Pack 462 Shooting Sports event in a decade. Literally. I looked it up. We haven't done this since October 12, 2013 when my oldest was a Wolf. He's now Senior Patrol leader for Troop 434 and my youngest is a Wolf. But now that we have 3 trained Rangemasters in Jack Garrett, Bill Volovnik, and myself (Chris Hatton), we'll try to make the ranges available more frequently. Ideally for Fall Camping when we are already at Camp Garrison.
This time we opened up archery and BB gun ranges side by side. I stuck to the archery side because that's all I'm certified for, while Jack and Bill ran the BB guns or bounced back and forth.
Some kids seemed to gravitate to one skill or the other, while others thrived at both. We started out with the archery targets up close and then faded them back a bit when the kids had it all figured out.
As you might suspect, the older kids were more independent faster, but even the Lions had a good time and got the most out of it. This was purely fun and learning, we didn't want to make it overly competitive, but some kids were asking us to help score their better rounds. On the archery side, I know Jacob Hutton (Lions) got a bullseye. I know lefty Leo Rostand scored in the 30s at least once (each round had 6 arrows), and Ian Rains was first to move his target back because he was making it look too easy. On the BB gun side, I can only tell by the ravaged center areas of their yellow targets, but I think it's safe to say that William, James, and Leo were marksmen extraordinaire.
For more photos, see the historic Photo Gallery.
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