Drinking from a Firehose

So there I was, standing behind a juniper tree waiting to hear the words “Shooter ready? Your time starts now!” With those words began a 4-minute mental obstacle course that required me to locate targets, range those targets, determine my dope for those targets, and then manage my tripod, pack, shooting bag, bipod, and rifle while I built a good position(s) to shoot them from. What I made look like a garage sale of gear being thrown around in the moon dust of the Prescott desert looked more like a beautifully choreographed dance for the competitive shooters who had done this many times before. Four minutes may sound like a lot of time, but boy, let me tell you, it ain't. This was the first ever NRL Hunter Pro-Am designed to introduce new shooters to the sport by pairing them with a pro who could show them the ropes. I was putting the “am” in amateur, and my pro and good friend was Leupold's shooting sports marketing manager, Nik Kitlyca.

Six months prior, while visiting the Leupold headquarters and training facility in Oregon, I got a taste of what shooting in an NRL Hunter match was like. Never having shot rifles in a competitive format, learning how to take something I’ve done for years into a whole new gear of problem solving, speed, and efficiency was something I was immediately drawn to. Being a guy who’s competitive, loves to shoot rifles, obsesses over gear, and is always looking to improve as a hunter, It’s no surprise that I’m beginning to feel this sport getting into my blood.

So here’s how it went: Saturday we shot 10 stages, and Sunday we shot 6. At each stage, I started from behind an obstacle, usually a large juniper tree, where I couldn’t see the targets I had to find and shoot when my clock started. Before beginning each stage, there was a sign showing me some parameters of that stage I got to know–I was to shoot 4 targets from one position, two targets from two positions, or 1 target from 4 positions. There are many other nuanced rules to this game, but that's the core concept. I had 4 minutes to pull this off at each stage, beginning with a beep and a quick jog from behind the tree to the stage and ending with the second beep and range officer yelling "TIME!" There was plenty of cussing, fumbling with equipment, and frustrating environmentals in between those beeps, as well. 

I took all the help I could get from Nic during the first handful of stages while I got my routine and process ironed out. There was something about the sound of a beeper and my time starting that caused my brain to short circuit when trying to remember every little step like adjusting my turret between targets, adjusting parallax, quickly deploying my tripod. It was like drinking from a firehose with all of the new skills I was learning. At most stages, I ran out of time after engaging one or two targets of that stage. By the end, I was going into each stage blind. I cleaned one stage completely and was feeling a lot more confident about what I was doing. The most significant confidence I boosted, and really the whole point of this thing, was how I was going to operate in a real hunting scenario when that big buck showed himself and my clock started to get my gear into place and make a good shot before the opportunity disappeared.

NRL Hunter is putting together not just a fun competition, but a great training and testing ground for your gear and skill. I can’t say enough good things about the camaraderie among the shooters. There’s a pretty badass tribe of hunters and shooters gathering at these matches, and I guarantee that, whether you think this is for you or not, if you go to one, you will have fun, meet great people, and you will be better afterward. Plain and simple. And if you go to a match, you’ll probably see me and one of our team members there, handing out Wilderness Athlete products on Friday and shooting our asses off Saturday and Sunday.