A season you don't want to miss
By Nick Simonson
The past week has been my busiest in the outdoors, as it has been for the last eight years. There’s been more to get done than loading up for pheasant opener at the farm. The checklist is far longer than the one leading up to the start of firearms deer season. Fishing, now simply the grabbing of a rod and a handful of tackle, and maybe towing the boat somewhere (compared to all the forethought I used to pour into the process), pales in comparison to the efforts I and several dozen others have undertaken for the start of the spring shooting sports season, culminating in the recent rush. It’s becoming more apparent too, that the young shooters taking to the stand and their parents as well, don’t want to miss a
weekend of the action; and that’s a good sign for the future of shooting sports and the interconnected avenues of hunting and conservation. Against my calendar of swimming lessons, basketball and family events for my boys still too young to shoot, and those of my comrades in clay dust and their middle schoolers and high schoolers involved in every
activity imaginable, we’ve planned for the start of the season over the past few months. This spring we’ve taken on fifty additional shooters over the previous year and added both sporting clays and five-stand to our group’s offerings.
