THE SHOOTING SCHOOL

The Shooting School is a morning in mid April for eight members who have never held a gun, at a shooting ground in Millbrook, in the hunt country of Dutchess County.

It exists so that when the Court shoots later in the year, nobody is standing at the back.

The Form

Every shooter who calls for a target says “Pull.”

The word is Victorian. Shooting at a trap then meant shooting at a live pigeon, released from a box when a boy pulled a cord, and the gun called for him to do it. Glass balls stuffed with feathers were tried in the birds’ place, and never flew like birds. In 1880 George Ligowsky of Cincinnati watched children skimming shells across water, saw why they flew flat and far, and began baking saucers of clay. Britain banned shooting live pigeons from traps in 1921, and the clay had the field to itself.

The target still carries the bird’s name. The shooter still calls for the boy.

Learning to shoot is mostly learning where to look. The gun follows the eye, and the shot goes where the shooter is looking rather than where they are aiming. Beginners who stare at the barrel miss. Beginners who watch the target hit it.

The Morning

Eight places, and an instructor to every two.

It begins with the gun unloaded on a table: how it opens, how it is carried, where it points and where it never does. Then eyes and ears, stance and mount, the gun brought to the face rather than the face to the gun.

The first targets are slow and straight, thrown away from the shooter at a gentle height. They grow harder only when the instructor decides they should.

The morning ends with a single round, scored on form rather than on hits: how the gun was mounted, whether the eyes stayed on the target, whether the gun kept moving through the shot. A member can hit nothing and win.

Lunch follows, at a table in the country.

What Is Asked

Country attire: something that moves with the shoulder, and shoes that grip wet grass. Nothing bright.

The ground provides the guns and cartridges. No member brings their own.

Every member signs the ground’s waiver before handling a gun.

Nobody shoots who has had a drink that day. Lunch comes after the shooting, not before it.

Do exactly what the instructor says, when it is said.

Everyone misses. Nobody is laughed at.

The Places

Eight. It is as many as can be taught properly in a morning.

Members are written to in February.

The sum is stated in the invitation and covers the guns, the cartridges, the instruction and lunch.

Those who finish the morning are offered a place at The Clay Shoot in September.

How one becomes a member is set out under Admission.