Hunter Wivell at the National Shooting Competition 2011

 by Hunter Wivell

Hello, my name is Hunter Wivell from York County and I competed in Air Pistol at the National Competition in TX with Clint Peters who is also from York County.  Going to Texas for the National Competition was great. Clint and I learned new rules, met a bunch of friendly people, and shot in competitions we never heard of.
 
Both Clint and myself previously had only shot in our local club and at Penn State for our State Competition during State Achievement Days. In the National Competition, they have rules on everything. The first day we went to shoot we were informed on how wearing our cowboy boots was considered cheating. Their reasoning was because they gave ankle support. Also because a lot of people use CO2, every time we shot there was a 10 minute prep period so that you could refill your canister, insert a new one, and discharge air to make sure everything was working right.

We met a lot of friendly people. The day we checked our guns in, Clint and I were dumbfounded when the guy asked how we were planning to shoot rapid-fire with a slow-fire pistol. Luckily the lady working with him told us that she would see if she could find us a gun to use for that event. She turned out to be one of the Line Officers all week. Every night they had practice for the next day and she had no problem coming aside and telling Clint and myself the rules we need to follow and how it is done in her local club. If it wasn't for her, we would have been lost. We also met a very nice coach from Wisconsin. She allowed us to borrow a rapid fire pistol. She told us it wasn't the most accurate but Clint and I didn't care we were there for fun.

Clint and I both had fun shooting in the competitions that we don't have here in PA. These competitions are Silhouette and Rapid-fire. Silhouette we shoot in our local club if we get done before air rifle, but never really as a competition.  It’s just for fun. They consist of a chicken, pig, turkey and cow. You shoot at 1 type of animal at a time, so there are 4 stands. Two rows on a stand, five animals on the top and five on the bottom for say ten chickens total. You start on the bottom left and shoot one pellet at the first animal (hit or miss you move to the second with the second shot and so forth) after you shoot at all 5 on the bottom you had to wait till they said to shoot the next bank. In this competition there was almost no requirements on the pistol, so there was people with scopes bigger then what I currently have on my rifle.  The last Competition we shot in was the Timed-Fire & Rapid-Fire. These two competitions were back to back because they were the same thing basically. The only difference was in Timed-Fire you had 20 seconds to shoot five pellets, but in Rapid-Fire you only had 10seconds.

Overall I had a great time in Texas. Clint and I both would like to go back for Small-Bore pistol (.22) but we don't have that as a state competition so we are not quite sure how we could make it.  As next year is my last year in 4-H, it would be nice if we could offer that type of shooting at SAD so I could continue my shooting skills while in 4-H.