A few weeks ago, Caleb told me he’d be down in Frostproof, Florida to shoot the 2011 Pro-Am Shooting Competition so I met up with him for dinner on Friday, then went to watch him shoot on Saturday. His squad featured a few other well known shooters like Jessie Abbate, Randi Rogers (Randi, call me! I can make you a website!), and Brad Engmann of Top Shot Season 1 fame (Brad, call me! I can make you a website!). As I’ve not shot anything more than from a lane in over a year, there was no way in a hot hell I was going to compete, so I brought my other shooting tool – my camera. I got quite a few great shots.
Now, there is something I readily admit – watching shooting (if you’re not trying to take pictures) is about as exciting as watching golf. It takes a hell of a camera crew and a lot of editing to take out all the boring things such as walk-throughs, resetting of the steel plates, and the various arguments about the buzzer not going off (more on that later). However, what really started to suck was watching and realizing I wasn’t going to be doing any shooting myself.
Then the depression started kicking in.
I’m jealous of Caleb, Jessie, et. al. They get paid to shoot. They are phenomenally good (Caleb cleared 20 plates in 13 seconds with 0 misses at one point) due to the fact they do this day in and day out.
I am not a bad shot. There were a few people there that I probably would have battled for last place with and had a blast doing so, but that didn’t happen of course. I’ve focused more on the politics of guns than the actually shooting of said guns. My only range time has been to do ammo & pistol reviews for GunsForSale.com because honestly, my life is not configured for the type of shooting I want to do, and this is why I’m kind of down in the dumps.
First off, like I mentioned the other day, I don’t know any place locally that I can practice shooting like what would be required for competition. Shoot Straight is an indoor range that doesn’t allow double taps, firing more than 1 shot every 2 seconds, lanes only, and you can’t use reloaded ammo. Tenoroc is outdoors, covered, no rapid fire, and I do not believe they allow drawing from the holster because if they did, you’d nail the benches. Wyoming Antelope (which is a haul as it is) also has the 2 second between shots and no holsters rule. So, places to shoot are an hour away at least which cuts into the amount of time I have.
Time, of course, is one of the things my life doesn’t contain enough of. My wife isn’t supportive of my hobby, and I don’t say that in a bad way. She’s just not into guns or shooting, so any time I make to go shoot is time away from her and the family. I am a family man, with two beautiful daughters, and if I want to go shoot, it takes up a huge chunk of a day, especially if I have to drive a long way to do it right. Oh, I hit the indoor range from time to time, but that burns through ammo which costs a lot of money and doesn’t give me the trigger time I need.
Which brings me to the 3rd issue – money. While being a computer developer is a decent paying gig, it’s not like I’ve got tons of cash to spare. As you know, the Mrs. and I are Dave Ramsey Financial Peace University graduates and thus are debt free, minus the mortgage. We do budgets weekly now, and while everything is well covered, there’s never much ‘free cash’ left over. What is left over is going into an emergency fund so that if something bad were to happen, we’d have at least 6 months of expenses covered. This blog tends to pull in a little money from time to time, but unfortunately logic dictates that it goes to the family, not me.
Speaking of needing money for stuff, to compete, I’d really need an entire change of gear. My Para runs great now, but I don’t want to compete with 8 rounds of .45 ACP. I love my Smith & Wesson M&P 40 and wouldn’t mind competing with that, or even my Glock 20. As I reload ammo, I can keep costs down a bit, but that really only comes into play for practice. I’ve found that at competitions, it takes too much effort and time to try to recover your brass. I ended up spending more time doing that than trying to figure out what I missed or where I screwed up. Thus, it would be better to compete with ammo that is readily available and doesn’t require Lines of Credit to purchase. I could see purchasing factory ammo for competitions and reloading for practice which brings up the next point.
My Lee Classic Turret press works fine for 50 to 100 rounds of ammo, but it simply is too slow and cumbersome to really crank out what one would need to for the right amount of practice. I really would like to have a Dillon progressive press for that with all the right feeders, but that’s another $1,000 worth of gear (see money, lack of).
And more gear I’d need. If I were to really start going whole hog again with shooting, I’d need a spare gun or two. I’ve been at competitions where my only gun shat itself and only through the grace of others (who realized I was no threat to their standings, I’m sure) was I able to complete the day. It’s very difficult to spend money on things that I don’t actively use, but it’s necessary as things break. I have plenty of .45 mags, but only 2 for the M&P. So, a dozen or so more would be prudent. Plus all the accoutrements like mag holders and holsters.
It’d be nice to get sponsored to have some of the costs taken care of, but firearm and firearm accessory manufacturers don’t stay in business by sponsoring poor shooters who run blogs. And I’d still need to find the time and money to do what I need to do.
Don’t know if that’s ever really going to happen. Maybe when my girls are a bit older my lack of presence at home wouldn’t be such an issue (Kari doesn’t like the single mom life that she has to lead when I’m not home for a whole day or more), but by then I’m going to be in my Mid 40s. There were shooters at the Pro-Am who were much older, but I’m thinking they’ve been shooting for a lot longer and didn’t just start.
There’s probably a way to do some of this. I don’t know how. I’m sure there is outside work I could do that maybe I could barter for gear, but that tends to bring in actual cash instead which goes to the family. I have twangs of resentment about that, but that’s childish and immature as I took on the responsibility of being a father and a husband and I will take care of my family first, come hell or high water. I just need to figure out how to balance it all correctly so I get more trigger time and in a way that makes me a better shooter.
If you need me, I’ll be over in the corner pouting.