I began shooting in 1996 during my first year at the St. John's Campus of Memorial University. Up until that point I had shot very little, mostly with a crack-barrel pellet gun that my father got for me when I was 12 or 13, and I certainly had not received any formal training. I remember passing the Range door a few times (G-1002 it was then) and thinking that I might like to practice for moose hunting -- looking back on that now, I can't help but laugh. I obviously had no idea about what I would be getting myself into. Well, on October 10th of that same year I finally decided to give it a shot (pardon the pun) and see what went on behind that big door. Joel Hickey was my very first Range Officer -- I remember how awkward it was having him show me how to stand and going over all of the rules. I tried Olympic Style Shooting for the first time that day -- for maybe two shots before I reverted to my own "comfortable" style. But, I liked the idea of shooting and I went back two days later and tried it again. I can still see my very first target... after 25 shots (supposedly 5 per bull, although only about 4 reached the black) it looked like I'd used a pump action 12-Gauge!
Joel and Dan were my "regular" range officers... they happened to be on duty during my break times. Eventually however, I got to know pretty much everyone at 'The Range' and within a month or so I was invited to shoot with the MUN Team at a Match being held at O'Donnell High School in Mt. Pearl. I shot a 439 during that match... which constituted a Gold Medal in the Tyro division. It was the first and last time that Vanessa (who is now my wife) ever watched me shoot. She said it was like watching paint dry... only more boring. I guess it isn't a spectator's sport (at least not in the general sense of the word). During the following semester, my scores improved and I was classified as a Sharp Shooter (+480/600) at the time and I was asked to permanently join the MUN Shooting Team -- you wouldn't know but I had won the lottery I was that excited. But it was also at that time that my real training began. Gary Piercy, who was president of the club and a Range co-ordinator at the time, began coaching me on a regular basis. Along with his tutelage I learned from Joel, Dan, Jim Boone and eventually Dave Woolridge (who returned to the sport after completing his Master's Degree). People laugh and think I'm kidding when I tell them that I spent three months learning how to pull the trigger... but it's true. For anyone reading this who has any aspirations of becoming a shooter, it is a discipline which requires patience, skill, and self-awareness. But more on that below... right now, to finish relating my epic journey.
Over the next couple of years I grew as a shooter, a student, and indeed, as a person. I gained a new focus in my life and I believe that it is because of this focus that I am where I am today. That focus, I feel, was founded through shooting (or at least it helped). What I mean is that shooting is more than a sport... it's more than a discipline... it's a way of life (again, more below). Through coming to that knowledge, I rose up through the ranks of the MUN Shooting Club, starting out as a Range Officer (a job that I held until I Convocated with my Second Degree) and eventual becoming first Treasurer and then President, as well as working for the University as a Range Co-ordinator. I really loved my time at the Range, as can be seen from the log-books and the fact that I spent most of my off hours there. I found that Shooters, as a kind of sub-species of the human race, all share similar qualities (despite their seemingly outlandish differences). It's the discipline that binds us all... from the novice to the Master.
During my time at the MUN Shooting Club, I also became a member of the Newfoundland and Labrador Shooting Association (NLSA) and currently, after serving as an Executive Director for a number of years, I hold the positions of Chairperson of Grassroots Development and Executive Vice President. Keep checking back here for an updated link to the NLSA.
In addition to my positions at the NLSA, I have also been coaching the Tempest Shooting Team for the past two years. This is a Jr.Sr. High School team that I founded after just a couple of months at St. Joseph's All Grade. With the support of the NLSA Executive, especially Dave Woolridge, I managed to procure a loan of two rifles from the NLSA, convince a local business owner to purchase a rifle for his daughters to share, gain funding for gloves and targets from the school, and get permission from the Local RCMP office to set up a range in the local community centre. Because of my status as a shooter and my years as a Range Officer, I was granted permission to offer the NLSA 201 Air Rifle Course to interested students and currently twelve people are shooting with our club (myself included). While this number may not seem impressive, it is important to consider that there are only 24 students in this school from Grade Kindergarten to Level III.
The Philosophy of Shooting (at least part of it) according to yours truly.
As I said above, shooting is more than a sport, it's more than a discipline... it's a way of life. For anyone who isn't a shooter, this is undoubtedly not only strange, it sounds very... shall we say... "out there." Nevertheless, it's true. As a student of philosophy I studied many different philosophers and their ideas about Beauty, God, Good, Life, etc. As a shooter who studied philosophy, I saw that my discipline was in many ways what philosophy is looking for. That is, it is a unique experience in which the shooter finds him/herself caught up directly in Beauty, God, Good, Life, etc. The questions of what is Good and what it means to exist and others of that sort are admittedly unanswerable... philosophy isn't so much based on finding the answers to questions as it is around the struggle involved in the attempt to answer those questions. We can never really and truly explain the meaning of life once and for all... hence the fact that Philosophers have been asking and answering the same questions since the beginning of thought. We can however, as finite creatures who can (if only in a small way) perceive infinity, experience those things. It was Rene Descartes who use the metaphor of a mountain to describe human understanding of the infinite... he said (far more eloquently than I can) that we can see the mountain but only parts of it at once and although we can touch it we can never hold it. It isn't so much that we can't do it yet but rather that it is out of our abilities to do so. So, to continue and extend Descartes' metaphor, we must be satisfied to explain the mountain insofar as we are able to experience it... and while we should be involved in the struggle to explain it, we should not forget the magnificence of how even the smallest part of it feels. Rather than try to hold it, let's climb the thing and look around. Shooting is the act of climbing the mountain. Ironically, the very thing that allows me to say this about shooting is perhaps an idea that is most popular and made most public among mountain climbers. What idea is that you ask? Why, the idea of flow of course. That's what shooting is -- ritual and flow. It's no wonder that many people compare it to a religion... in fact the only thing keeping it from being such (in my opinion) is that there is no official writing around which it is based and no one person to focus on. Shooting is about the soul, about the self, and about the numinous (look that word up... it's worth the effort) and unlike religion, it is not confined by small minds who attempt to direct other small minds to great concepts which, in the end, can only be found by the individual.
Flow is the state at which one becomes at One. That is, everything in the entire universe all of a sudden seems to make sense. Everyone is capable of it and indeed, everyone has experienced it in some small way. Buddhists meditate; Christians pray; Shooters shoot. That is not to say that Shooters aren't religious... indeed, some of the best are devout whatevers -- the one has little to do with the other except by that through which they are alike -- ritual and flow. Ritual is the repetitious motion, thought, mode, etc. of any thing. We learn to do things through repetition... my father was amazed when I was a child of just two years because he thought that I was reading my favourite book to him. Obviously, I had heard the same words so many times, over and over (thanks mom) and associated them with the images on the pages of the book that I was able to repeat the proper words upon viewing the pictures. Bernice Morgan writes in her book Random Passage that when one of the characters (Ned) is confronted with a Methodist Preacher visiting his community that He has a great curiosity about religion, about all the bright framework of ritual men weave to keep their darkest fears at bay (p.118, revised cover edition). Ritual allows us to feel safe and perhaps more importantly, it allows us to escape from the problematic issues of daily life to a world where we know what is coming next. This knowledge is unique and rare and it frees us from having to Will the experience thus allowing us to relish in it. A shooter ideally performs his/her circuit -- the complete process of shooting from when his/her hands touch the firearm to the point at which they leave it -- the exact same way each time. During a match this happens at least 60 times... during a lifetime, thousands. I noted above that I spent three months focusing on trigger squeeze... well, all elements of the shooting position require this kind of focus and more -- I still work on my trigger squeeze today. The point is that the ritual releases the shooter from having to be stuck in the world of phenomenon (physicality and physical actions) and that this occurs because of practice like that which I have alluded to. But it is important to note that the ritual isn't confined to the act of shooting. If you were to look up the denotative meaning of shooting, you would find something to the effect of the physical act of using a projectile to hit a desired target. This is a fine definition to explain the physical aspect but as so many shooters have said in the past (myself included): shooting is 90% mental. This definition counts for only 10%, therefore, of what shooting actually is. What of the other 90%?
To say that shooting is a mental discipline would be a cop-out at this point. What does "mental discipline" mean? Does it mean that it is all about one's mind? Perhaps. I think it's more than that. I believe that shooting cannot be divided up into mind and body as most people try to rationalize the matter... can a body live without a mind (the argument of coma patients, braindead people, etc. could be brought up here but I do not equate a heart that pumps with life, nor lungs that breathe, just as no-one would ever say that a severed limb which continues to twitch is alive) and a mind certainly cannot live without a body. Why, therefore, should we conceive of shooting as a two-fold concept? I believe that shooting is One. It is, as I have stated, the act of bringing oneself to a point where one is at One with the entire universe. My students have been privy to this philosophy since the beginning, as have many people whom I have coached over the years. The key to understanding what I mean here is to shift your perception from phenomenon to numinon (you mean you haven't looked it up yet???) -- think beyond your own mind and what it perceives... climb the mountain folks! Each shot, each moment is a universe in and of itself... don't think about hitting a target, don't consider the thousands of minute actions that are required to hit a 10.9... simply understand that right now, a universe exists. It isn't the same universe that will be here tomorrow and it certainly didn't exist a second ago... it exists now. The task of a shooter is to find his/her place in the universe (the One), and that includes his/her shot. When a shooter reaches a point that his/her ritual/routine is so refined that total task absorption takes place (when s/he doesn't have to think about what is happening but rather seems to feel it) flow state occurs. It is here that the universe becomes One. A shooter doesn't project anything... s/he simply places a pellet in the right place so that when the universe moves forward, it finds itself in the bull.
How does one reach this state? Good question... it comes when the target ceases to be some sort of nemesis... a dragon which one has to slay. The focus, the discipline, the practice... there comes a point when it gets in the way of what is really important. Shooting isn't about medals, about who beats who, it isn't even about beating your personal best -- it is about seeking that place where the universe becomes One. Where time ceases to be perceived as a line that runs across the page but as a single point where all points become one. Don't understand? Try this on for size: get a pencil or pen or better yet, get a drinking straw... Oh... you're back? Good. Now hold the straw (for argument's sake) out in front of you at eye level such that it is horizontal and you can see along its entire length. This is how the finite mind perceives time... although we understand that it is infinite, we still see it as consisting of points which exist on a line, thus we can perceive (or think we perceive) a beginning and end. To truly understand what it means to be at One with all that is, all that was, all that will be, (I hope you still have the straw in your hand), turn the straw 90 degrees horizontally such that you can see through it. If this straw were a timeline, you would now be seeing all points at the same time. Thus, you understand (or at least you can touch the mountain) that all is One... each moment we experience is the exact same point in time. The only thing that changes is how we place ourselves. Likewise with shooting... the only thing keeping every shot from perfection is our own inconstancy and imperfect struggle.
Anyone who has ever felt the experience of shooting a 10/10 shot knows what perfection feels like... we can't grasp it but we don't have to! We become part of that perfection. The trick is staying a part of it.
