spending time taking Kaitlynn my 11 year old to her first ever 4-H rifle meet and then her first soccer game of the year. Kaitlynn has been hounding me for a couple of years about getting into the 4-H shooting sports. When my parents' house burned in April of 2006 she found a box with some of my old shooting trophies that had been in the attic and began asking questions. After explaining the benefits of the program to her she became very interested. Unfortunately due to dad not getting off of his tail we missed the deadline for signup last year. This year however, I made sure that the deadline was not missed. The program started back at the beginning of January. On January 18-20 Kaitlynn was invited to attend a clinic hosted by our home county and conducted by the United Stated Army Marksmanship Unit (USAMU). The unit sent two individuals who are both worldclass marksmen, one of which has been the World Cup moving target champion. The knowledge that the shooters gained while at the clinic was phenomenal. The greatest thing is that there was no charge to attend the clinic. Although, Kaitlynn is only shooting in the prone position this year for competitions she got instruction in the standing and kneeling positions as well. Hopefully this will put her ahead of other kids in the future. I have included a few pictures of the clinic as well as a few of some targets to show here improvement. She has gone from shooting in the 40's out of a possible 100 to shooting in the high 70's to mid 80's on a consistent basis. The results of her first meet were as good as I could had hoped for despite shooting poorly on her last bullseye of each of her 3 targets, on her first target she shot a 3, on her second a 4, and on her last she had a 0. Her totals for each target were 77,83,73 for a total of 233 while finishing fourth. Needless to say she was very excited and so was I. She did set a goal of shooting a 250 by the end of the season which is April 25-26.
Here is a group shot of the line as the instructors are helping each one individually. I would hate to think of the $$$ that are tied up in shooting equipment in the building at the time of this photo.
Here is Kaitlynn getting her first instruction in prone.
Here she is getting help with her kneeling.
Here she is showing her standing form. Not bad for an 11 year old.
Here are a couple of targets that she has shot. The first one is from when she started in the program where she scored 41. The second one is from a practice session last week where she shot an 86. She has shown great determination to improve and to do the best that she can do and I must say that I am proud of her for that. The last target shows a 5 or 6 shot group that she shot while sighting in as well as showing the .008" dot that is considered a "10".
The last picture is of all the participants in the clinic as well as the instructors. The young man right in the middle of the picture that has the yellow and black shooting jacket on shot a perfect 200 out of 200 in his prone during the little match that was conducted on the last day of the clinic. I believe that he is 15 or 16 and is nationally ranked by USA shooting amongst all shooters.
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Here is a group shot of the line as the instructors are helping each one individually. I would hate to think of the $$$ that are tied up in shooting equipment in the building at the time of this photo.
Here is Kaitlynn getting her first instruction in prone.
Here she is getting help with her kneeling.
Here she is showing her standing form. Not bad for an 11 year old.
Here are a couple of targets that she has shot. The first one is from when she started in the program where she scored 41. The second one is from a practice session last week where she shot an 86. She has shown great determination to improve and to do the best that she can do and I must say that I am proud of her for that. The last target shows a 5 or 6 shot group that she shot while sighting in as well as showing the .008" dot that is considered a "10".
The last picture is of all the participants in the clinic as well as the instructors. The young man right in the middle of the picture that has the yellow and black shooting jacket on shot a perfect 200 out of 200 in his prone during the little match that was conducted on the last day of the clinic. I believe that he is 15 or 16 and is nationally ranked by USA shooting amongst all shooters.
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