Air rifle shooting is an excellent way to improve your accuracy with bigger, louder, more hunting-appropriate rifles. My youngest son, Logan, has only been doing it for about four years, but he’s already accomplishing some pretty impressive achievements. He qualified for the Junior Olympics Nationals last year, and he did it again this year. He’ll go to JOs next month, and this year, he should end up quite a bit higher on the leader board than he did last year. He may not be one of the eight shooters who are invited to join the U.S. Olympic Shooting Team, but he should be in the top 10 or 15 percent if he keeps shooting as well as he has been.
JO Nationals is his big goal right now, but he competed in the Civilian Marksmanship Program’s state championships in Casper over the weekend as part of his preparation. He said going in that winning would be great, but he was mainly doing it to stay sharp and get some more experience in a match setting. He accomplished both. He ended up as the Wyoming CMP State Champ for air rifle – he had the top score on both the men’s and women’s side, which is excellent, because women tend to be better at precision shooting than men are.
He’ll face a lot more competition next month in Colorado Springs – and again the following week at the CMP Regional competition in Utah. There were only about eight other precision shooters at the state match. I’d love to see more kids get involved, because it’s a fantastic way to improve your shooting, concentration, self-discipline, and a lot more.
If you have a kid who is interested in shooting competitively, ask around and find a precision shooting team. You just have to be OK with the fact that your kid will be outshooting you in no time at all.
