By Ron Minor:   This past weekend I attended the Nora and Randy Ross' trap clinic being held at the Hale Mountain Fish and Game club in Shaftsbury, Vermont.  The weather was very warm with a slight breeze once in a while, but it was welcome with the heat as it was.  The flies were on the annoying side but nothing could be done about that.

Saturday we started out with a short meeting in the club house which was followed by the first round of 16 yard shooting which Nora taped.  This was followed by two rounds of shooting with the trap locked to throw a straightaway.  We then broke for lunch put on by the club and then afterwards watched the tapes of us shooting, with Nora and Randy pointing out areas for improvement.  In my case, it was suggested I lean forward slightly more and grip my fore-end tighter because it was bouncing around when I fired.

After that we did two more drills with the trap locked throwing angles, followed by another two rounds with the trap in normal moving mode, but we changed our gun holds over the house, but kept our eyes looking where we normally would for that station.

Finally, we fired the last round as a normal round with Norma filming us.  We then watched the film to see if there was improvement, which there was in most cases.  We then quit for the day at around 6:00 p.m.

Sunday we started off with a hour of class going over doubles before heading to the field to do two drills and then a round of doubles.  After lunch we started on handicap with two slider drills, followed by two rounds of regular handicap.  We finished fairly early at around three o'clock which was good because it allowed me to pack up my camper and head home.  All in all, a very pleasant weekend.

Was the class worth it you might ask?  I would say so especially the drills which I plan to do more of instead of going out and shooting regular practice.  Everybody that attended the class was very happy with it and in fact there was talk of having them come back next year at the same time.  Also, it's not every year you have the chance to have a twenty-eight time All-American women trap shooter stand behind you and watch to see your errors.  Randy also taught with Leo Harrison, a thirty-three time All-American, the previous couple of years.  These folks shoot more and watch more good shooters shoot in one year than most of will in a lifetime.

Wrapping it up, I would like to thank Hale Mountain for hosting this clinic, Pat Travers for setting it up, Charlie Stewart for loading the traps, cleaning up and especially helping me out with electrical problems I had, and Jim's wife (Sorry I didn't catch their last name) for setting up the lunch each day.  I hope to make it back down to Hale Mountain again this year, maybe in the fall.  It should be beautiful.

By the way, Hale Mountain also has a interesting looking 5-stand set-up that they shoot on Sundays.  All the traps are portable except for one.  On that day, #1 was left to right, full face target with a rainbow arc.  Number 2 was a steep climber out in front of the stands.  Number 3 was a low left to right crosser.  Number 4 was a left to right high crosser and #5 came from behind the stands, fairly steep.  It looked like a lot fun.