A perfect score that wasn’t easy to come by

My friend called for the bird. The first streaked out crossing left and shattered. The second crossed at 30 yards left to right and disintegrated into dust. He pointed his gun up and turned to walk out of the station box. Our squad was out. I started to clap and the rest of our squad joined in, followed by a lot of handshakes. Mark had just shot a perfect score in sporting clays breaking all 50 targets. One of the guys in our group explained what was going on to the squads waiting to shoot that station. More congratulations followed Mark wasn’t the friend we expected to shoot the perfect score. Not that he can’t and has before, in the last 15 years he has had the opportunity to shoot with some of the best clay target shooters in the country, and that means free instruction. But he picked up a shotgun for the first time in eight months two weeks prior to this.

It was another friend who shoots a lot of sporting clay with many 49’s to credit and we weren’t really expecting him to do it either. I’ve never witnessed a perfect score being shot in sporting clays. Chris’s target gun had just been sent out to a Berretta repair shop for work after 25,000 rounds clays in six years. We expected him to place high, maybe even compete for the win, but perfect scores don’t grow on trees even for the master class shooters. Instead Chris was shooting his back up hunting gun, that he had never shot in his life. He just got the deal of the century on this Berretta Silver Pigeon that had less than 100 rounds shot through it. It has a field safety, meaning every time you crack the gun open it automatically safes itself. At the first station Chris led off and called for the bird. He gets on targets fast and breaks them fast. But this target flew out curving to the right, and started falling to the ground. He broke it at 50 yards about five feet off the ground. The second clay broke almost before the rest of us could see it. He turned and told us he forgot to take the safety off. He did the same on the next pair and the first pair at the next station. Friends being friends, one of us would yell out “safety” to him every time he closed his gun and before he called for the targets. Chris spent that day explaining this to other groups after shooting at each station. We had a lot of fun with this, especially Mark.

Let’s back up a little bit before Mark shot that last station. The day started out raining, a lot of rain. But the rain was gone, the skies cleared and it was 74 degrees with a gently breeze. I wish we could have a day like that about now.

Mark was nervously pacing and almost talking to himself. His daughter was talking him down. This course has a couple stations that they don’t alter from year to year and this was one. The reason is that this is a station that separates the men from the boys. It has given him fits over the years and most shooters miss at least one target at this station.

Several squads had been bottlenecked by a group that was the slowest squad I have even seen. To the point of great distraction if you’re working on a perfect score and irritating to the 25 shooters backed up. If it doesn’t kill you... And this was a fun shoot for habitat. It had several classes with a gun as the top prize for each class. There were a lot of people watching when Mark stepped up into the shooting box.

I shot before him sweeping the station, as I walked back past him I told him he had this. He walked up, called for the pair, broke the first clay, and just took a small chip out of the second, which at least ten people called out. I heard his daughter say, “Kind of cutting it a little close there don’t you think?”

He nodded to her and well you already know how this ended. Mark won the shoot overall with that perfect score. He gladly bought the first round so we could toast his success.

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