Were you a Natural at shooting?

[NV_Dmax]

No

 

[hillbillydruggist]

Wingshooting for me was kinda natural. Started as a kid shooting doves by the swamp

 

[Intheshop]

Yes,and still at it.

Started with a 62A Winchester and a single shot .410 when old enough to shoulder them. Got my first real trad bow @10. Instinctive archery really helps with discipline,and is what I keep recommending to folks with young kids. Yes,their hit % will be higher with a compound but that's what firearms are for(sights). Teach a kid to hit foam targets thrown in the air with their trad bow and you've got them hooked for life on shooting sports. And forget the formality with this equipment,better to go stump shooting at unknown distances with some long range thrown in. Plenty of time later to shoot spots(target archery). Old soccer balls kicked and shot is entirely too much fun. Nine y.o. Gdaughter last weekend at a bow shoot.

 

[NorCalMikie]

Back a few years I couldn't see thru a scope. Dead eye out to 100+ yards using peep or iron sights. Us to piss the guys off shooting bug holes at distance. Now, a 36 fixed power scope is my friend.

 

[JSH]

I won’t say a natural but was able to shoot well. Dad being born 2-14-20 didn’t see shooting as recreational or a sport, every shot better put meat on the table.
What initial training I got was a whole bunch of reading and diagrams. Model 67 Winchester five cartridges, don’t recall the distance but they could all be covered with a nickel. Forward a few years and a 75 Winchester arrived. The 75 made it easy it seemed.
Still have them both. They shoot as good as ever, I don’t,lol.

 

[Richard Coody]

Well i may not have been a natural but i started young and where we lived us kids had thousands of acres to ramble on. Off the school bus and into hunting clothes every day of hunting season. Turn those bird dogs.loose and start right behind the house. In summers it was .22 rifles and playing along the creeks fishing and shooting snakes.

I shot cases of shotgun shells and bricks of .22's. Don't mean to brag but i was pretty good with those young eyes. Plenty of practice though.

 

[bluealtered]

When you start shooting and enjoy it you will want to get better because it is fun to place the bullet where you want it. Some of us will be able to keep it in that context and some won't. If you get good enough to place 5rds in one hole at 100yds then you start wondering if you can do the same at 200yds, and then if you can ... well we all know what happens after that.

As for being a natural, some people are it seems. When you go to the range and there's a father or mother and young son or daughter there who are drilling holes at 50-100yds and dad or mom has a grin on their face that just won't quit, that's a natural. For the rest of us we work our butts off and maybe get good enough to beat the guy at the next bench on a good day and go home feeling pretty good.

I go to the range just to have fun, the problem is that if i'm having a good day i can't leave it at that, simply because if i'm having a good day at 100 or 200yds, what kind of day is it at 300 or 400 or 500yds?

You see whatever you choose for a hobby, if you are in the least bit competitive it will never be "good enough".

 

[Leo Smith]

After 45 years I'm still a novice..But Cheek placement and trigger pull is now second nature.

 

[Steve Ladino]

I started out as an o.k. shooter, not bad not great but o.k. Marine Corps taught me a lot about rifle shooting and academy more about pistol shooting. Nothing fancy just basics and that counts for a lot IMO.

I've seen shooters that were very good and it's something that came natural and always amazed me. They really couldn't explain fully how they did it but they just had all the basics down without thinking about it.

So how did you start out, were you just naturally good or started o.k. and worked your way up?

Thanks to my Dad back when there were no Malls nor huge grocery stores He would stop at a corner grocery store in town to buy bread and milk for his children, which we cared not much about but the box of Peters .22 short ammo was another story. My brothers and I were escorted by my Father and his Winchester model 96 pump gallery rifle to where we could shoot. We traded off the rifle among each other until the whole box of shorts were fired. I seemed to do better than the others when it was my turn and that was the beginning of a life long love affair with shooting.....Thanks Dad !

 

[KMart]

I don't think that I was a natural. I just started early and was able to shoot a lot. My earliest memories of shooting was around 5 or 6 squirrel hunting with my Dad and a good squirrel dog. I shot his hand me down 67 Winchester and the stock was WAY too long. Just had to adapt. To me, he was the best natural shot I have seen.
We shot firearms to put food on the table. I soon got a BB gun and every time I could get a nickle for a tube of BB's I was shooting road ditch minnows, tin cans, birds, frogs etc. Everything was a target.
We hunted just about everything in season. Doves and quail with a single shot .410 is not an easy target even for an accomplished shot. Starting a young shotgunner with a .410 is great for recoil management but it can quickly remove confidence from the young shooter when they don't hit much.
At the time, 22 shells and shotgun shells were expensive and we had to make them count. But dad was always patient with me. We were constant hunting and fishing partners up through high school, then life started changing.
I went into the Marine Corps and he was proud. He was a veteran of 3 island landings in with the 3rd MarDiv. There I got my first formal training with a rifle. I guess that was where I started to see that I was pretty good at it. I shot platoon high on pre-qual and qualification day with an M-14. Found out later that I was second in the company.
After the military I got into shotgun shooting and started to compete in ATA Trap. Everything I learned there was self taught, but it seemed easy to learn. AND I HAD VERY GOOD EYE SIGHT. 20/13 master eye and 20/17 in the other at age 40. I played that hard for 30 years but by then it was turning into work, but I had some success. Made the state team 9 time and the All American team in 1987.
Now I can shoot my rifle sitting at a bench and enjoy myself.

 

[338 Mollett]

I'm a natural at shooting my mouth off !

 

[muleman69]

Yes,and still at it.

Started with a 62A Winchester and a single shot .410 when old enough to shoulder them. Got my first real trad bow @10. Instinctive archery really helps with discipline,and is what I keep recommending to folks with young kids. Yes,their hit % will be higher with a compound but that's what firearms are for(sights). Teach a kid to hit foam targets thrown in the air with their trad bow and you've got them hooked for life on shooting sports. And forget the formality with this equipment,better to go stump shooting at unknown distances with some long range thrown in. Plenty of time later to shoot spots(target archery). Old soccer balls kicked and shot is entirely too much fun. Nine y.o. Gdaughter last weekend at a bow shoot.

View attachment 1159711

This is cool, going to shoot bow course with grandsons today and tomorrow.

 

[muleman69]

Started out dialing in accuracy throwing rocks and horse turds at each other then went on to BB guns .22's then got a mod.94 win. when I was 12 to hunt with and man did that ever teach a kid to flinch(cresent butt plate) Marine Corp taught me the most for sure

 

[Paula Marie Hamilton]

I put a bb gun in my son John's hands at 6. He would sit between my legs and plink. By 7 he knew safety well enough I felt good about him going to the barn to shoot pigeons. By the time he was 10 we paid his youth license and paid him a buck per pigeon, they spread disease in dairy cattle. He almost broke the bank that year, but my bard and silo were clean. When he was 13 he was shooting turkey free hand. Three years ago he failed to make the all stars in baseball so one of the parents ask if he wanted to shoot on the new rifle team. Now he is shooting fairly good in NJROTC, and beyond. Yes I believe he is a natural shot. I was pretty good at hunting, so maybe it runs in the family.

 

[skeeljc]

I started shooting with dad's Stevens 84C in the back field. He built a backstop out of a steel plate and we had a 75 yard range. I was 9 or 10 years old. In 1962 I joined the small bore Rifle Team in college and lettered all four years. I began reloading center fire rifle in 1965.

 

[Nature Boy]

My daughter is

 

[Lucky Shooter]

I think I might have been a natural with a shotgun------after about 20 years.

A. Weldy

 

[Liven The Dream]

Never shot a Rifle till the Army got me at age 20 1967 .
They but a New Winchester M-14 in my hands . I made Expert at the pop up targets to 750 meters four times.
At that point in my life a Game.

When I got off Active Duty saw some Guys Shooting a Match at a local Club. They had what looked M-14's ?
The beginning of the end for me. I got hooked.
Camp Perry 13 years , Rifle Building , Small Bore , Match Rifle , Palma Rifle , High Master Classification .
Now at the Young age of 73 F/Open and still liven the Game.

 

[Tommie]

Nope. Not even close. Accuracy has always been about concentration, practice and muscle memory for me. I’ve only known two “natural shooters” in my life.

 

[BoomDeBoom]

Like others, I started shooting when I was very young. Started with a Western Arms single shot 22 cal. when I was six. I was all in after that. The theme that runs through most of the posts in this thread is that we started our love of shooting when we were young. It would seem to me that bringing young girls and boys to the range or another place where they can start shooting will help grow our sport. All of us who love to shoot can have a big impact on creating new shooters whether they will be natural or not. For most of us, like me only a mediocre shooter, the love of shooting was created early, and for me continues 70 years later. I am happy my father and neighbor helped me get started.