Ep 10 - Why Shooting Sports Matter

Welcome to TrophyCast! This episode's special guest is Shawn Dulohery, a world-renowned shotgun sports athlete. We talk about the importance of shooting sports in the outdoors industry, how it is the fastest-growing youth sport in the US, how you can improve as a shooter, how you can introduce your kids to the world of shooting sports, and how it can maybe lead to a scholarship or career in the outdoors industry.

Shawn Dulohery - Team USA
The National Collegiate Shooting Sports Athletic Association - https://ncssaa.com/

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Transcript

 (upbeat music) Welcome to Trophy Cast, the official podcast of trophy properties and auction. I'm your host, Jake Brown. On this show, we sit down and chat with experts in the fields of real estate, land management, conservation, and hunting. All to help you live a more outdoor lifestyle, buy and sell your own trophy property, and feed the family. Welcome to Trophy Cast, episode number 10. Today I'm joined by Jason Cleveland, Anthony Posey. Posey? Not posy, I always say posy. It's Anthony Posey and Sean Doolohary. First, we're gonna touch on what auctions we have coming up 'cause we have a lot. We got one in Cooper County, 125 plus or minus acres. It ends July 6th. Audran County, 95 acres. Ends July 12th. Fulton County, 60 acres. Ends July 18th. That's in Illinois. And Howard County, 60 acres. Ends July 20th. If you have any questions, check out the auction section of the website. See what agent is involved. Reach out to them or reach out to us, anybody. Happy to get you introduced to the agent. And if you have any issues registering to bid, let us know. But those are the upcoming auctions. Buy yourself a nice slice of land. There's a lot more coming. Oh my gosh. Auction business is moving right now. That's just what we have in the next month but we've got a lot more coming. Yeah, we have so many auctions on the website. Go check it out. Those are just the ones ending in the next 30 days or so but we have so many auctions and I don't wanna take up too much time talking about them. I do wanna talk about though, we got some big news guys. Some big news out there in the conservation hunting world. I don't know if you've heard this one but the EPA Clean Water Act recently, Sackett versus EPA on May 25th, US Supreme Court ruled in the Sackett versus EPA case that wetlands without continuous surface connection to adjacent water bodies are not protected by the Clean Water Act. So this is a big deal in the waterfowl conservation, WRP section. You guys are big duck hunters. What's your reaction to this? I don't know how it's gonna affect us yet. There's a lot more that's gotta come out but we, on the board of Great Rivers Habitat, we do a lot of fundraising and protecting of the wetlands and we just approved two days ago to give some money to help people do their due diligence before they put in conservation easement. So I don't know what the effect will be yet. I haven't read through it to know what the outcome is but I know I spend a lot of effort protecting the wetlands. Hopefully this thing is aligned with that but I don't know yet. - I know the kind of the beginning of the case was a property owner backfilling areas that were, they were considered wetlands. They now are no longer considered wetlands. So I mean, this could lead to property owners, basically anything that's drainage or in the past that would be wetland or WRP can now be backfilled if it's not connected to a-- - That's what, at Great Rivers, that's what we're trying to stop up in St. Charles County is 'cause we have the confluence of the Missouri, the Illinois and the Mississippi River right there and that is a giant floodplain and if you backfill all that, the water goes somewhere. So then instead of out in those farmer fields or in the wetlands or the WRP, we're all duck hunting and enjoying that and it's up into FedEx's parking lot or and then our taxes go up because we have to increase infrastructure and pumping stations and it's just a nonstop fight and your insurance goes up just to, it's not good. So don't build in a floodplain, but. - I think too with, you know, more droughts that we have and whatnot, you know, the permanent water, semi-permanent water, we're seeing less and less than that and there's even like national wildlife refuges that are completely drying up right now

 and you know, if you look at, and that's such a larger scale, but that is a wetland that occasionally now goes completely bone dry and you know, what does that, what does this case actually mean for? - Yeah, it'll be interesting to see what happens 'cause as things are more, like things that would have been connected for a long time, you know, the drought happens, now it's not connected. Now is this not a wetland anymore? Is this not waterfowl habitat? It's just, it sounds like a complicated mess. - Sean, any reaction? - Well, a lot of times the folks that say that it'll do this or it'll do that, we know anything in nature is possible to go the opposite direction. So that amount of earth that's moved and put into places where there's normally water, like Jason was just talking about the parking lot at FedEx, you don't know whether it's gonna go north, south, east or west, it's going somewhere though and it may not end up in the right place. - Yeah, what we need is for, basically what fixes this is if Congress

 unequivocally clarifies what WOTUS is, Waters of the United States, that's probably not gonna happen 'cause it's Congress. So we'll see what happens. That's that news. I guess contact your congressman if you wanna get it fixed. Join GRHA, whatever your local protection to the floodplains are, I would recommend being a part of that 'cause that is not a good ruling for all of us waterfowl hunters. A good ruling though that recently happened was in the corner crossing debate. Are you guys familiar with this? So in Wyoming, some Missouri hunters were elk hunting and they were basically trying to land locked public land. So this was public land that there had no ingress or egress too, but they could get to it by corner hopping from one public land section to another public land section. So basically like a checkerboard, they're trying to play checkers across public land. And they used a ladder, so they never technically touched the private landowner parcel, but from a real estate perspective, this is interesting because you own the airspace above. So that's kind of the interesting part of this, but the landowners sued the hunters that were using the public land for a value of $7 million worth of damages. They basically argued against that this landowner was violating the Unlawful Enclosures Act. The judge agreed with the hunters, but we were talking yesterday based on a real estate. Well, Anthony, you're taking your real estate course right now. - Yeah. - Have you learned about airspace? - A little bit. - Okay. He's not very far from it. - So is airspace different than water space? Because I think it probably is. - Mr. Broker. - Airspace is different than, yeah, 'cause it-- - 'Cause water, if it's navigable-- - You're talking navigable waterways. And in the state of Missouri, there's the Missouri-- - Mississippi. - And the Mississippi, that would be, I think, technically all by the books of what's a navigable waterway. Other interpretations I've heard is like, well, I can float a boat in it. Well, you're also not floating a barge full of coal or grain in it either. - Navical meaning commercial big. - But the corners is, you go up into perpetuity above your ground. Now, the United States government has airspace and that's kind of some weird sticky situations there, but they can fly planes and everything else. But if you just keep it within 30 foot, we have that space above your property is yours. Well, if it goes to one single little bitty point, you can't cross that corner without getting into somebody else's airspace. It's impossible to do that. - You can't suck it in and out. - Yeah, yeah, way too old and fat to make that happen. - There's only one kind of person that I went flying over ours at right above the treetop high and that would be Mr. Greenhead. (laughing) - I know that conquers too, but-- - Well, the issue too with that landowner is he put a chain across his T-post or whatnot that were on his section of the property. So he was more or less putting a fixed chain across public land too. So it was like, well-- - Yeah, if he owned the opposite corner-- - So now that you're going across public land airspace too and blocking it over the chain-- - He shouldn't have put a chain across, but if he put, if this is the point where everything intersects, if you put a 30 foot tall rod on each side of it, nobody can fit in between there. And they just stop it without violating anybody's airspace. - I think it really, if this was just airspace or a corner cross, like the fact that it was landlocked public land-- - That's what one would face. - We have two counteracting basically laws essentially. And so the judge ruled in the favor of the hunters, which is good for hunters from a real estate company. It's like, it's one of those win, lose, like I agree with both perspectives. It's kind of a weird situation. - But damages that the guy is selling for too is that it decreased his property value because he had, I don't know how big the-- - He had access to the VLN brand. - That was only for him to hunt more or less, him and his buddies because he landlocked it. But yeah, so it was like, well, I'm assuming these guys 'cause now my property value went down because now they're, well, in a gray area allowed to hunt it, but it's like, well, you know that you didn't own that property, but you kind of-- - You were inflating your property values because of-- - You thought it increased the value of your property because you could hunt it and no one else. And now all of a sudden it's like, the public might have access to it. - Yeah, he might've just screwed himself big time. - It's like, well, and so they're like, well, go back and talk to the real estate agent that sold you that property with the assumed value of-- - Get an easement put across this property to get access to VLN, oh boy. One other ruling, or not ruling, one other piece of news that's exciting is USDA announces $500 million investment in wildlife conservation. This is awesome, they have a lot of specific programs. One is Western Magatory Big Game, Eastern Forests, Eastern Aquatic Connectivity, Sothezer and Pine Ecosystems. Those are the new programs that they're gonna do, but the big thing is conservation assistance for farmers, ranchers, private forest owners, and tribes within the key geographies.

 Basically, this just means more funding for CRP, WRP conservation programs. We were on Jason's property today doing some video stuff with wildlife farming, and part of that was talking about the dollars that you've been granted to do some projects, and basically this means there's gonna be a lot more of it. - Yeah, I worked with NBC, and I just got approved for some habitat management practices for $3,200, and I have to have it done by May 31st, and now I'm working with Dan Crigler from US Fish and Wildlife to get as much money as I can from them for projects, and know that when I put those two piles together, if I double that pile, I'll get the projects done I need. So I know I'm still gonna have to come out of pocket a bunch, but any helps, welcome. - Yeah, yeah, I mean, that would be awesome. Double that money, get those projects done quicker, easier, and just driving around with them today, just pointing out the amount of area, you don't have a lot of problems with

 creep on the edge of your fields of them not being productive or anything, but I know a lot of people do, and you could put those into CRP, or just contact your local office, and very helpful. - All good things. - All good things. - All good things. - All right. Well, let's move forward to our special guest today. We have Sean Doolahary in the office for the podcast. Sean's bio is so long and impressive when it comes to shotgun shooting sports, it'd take me 10 minutes to read through it. - We don't wanna do that. - Yeah, I don't wanna do it either, but-- - 'Cause some of it might be made up, or Anthony might've been bellowed down. - Anybody can write anything on Wikipedia, right? - We shot with one of your prize students last night. - He didn't, very good. - He went and did a bit of a coach. - Which one was it? - This one right here. (both laughing) But just some quick highlights of what he's done to give his credentials. He was a member of the USA Shooting National Team for 17 consecutive years, served in the Army, was the seven-time Inter-Service International Trap and Skeet Champion, multiple-time National Champion and record holder, has the qualification of Master at Sporting Clay's World Champion in 2001, multiple-time medal winner at the World Championships. You were the head coach of the Lending Woods Sporting Clay's Team for 10 National Championships. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. - Well, it's funny how this worked out. Anthony coming aboard and knowing Jason a little bit and hearing people's reputations. I think you have a gentleman by the name of Tim Daly that is still affiliated with the company, I hope. A friend of mine, Rick Allen, had purchased a property through you all and I happen to be a fortunate sweat equity owner of part of a debt club and that's how I actually knew about trophy property. So today I'm fortunate to talk about something that's been my whole life. - That's great. So just some context, Anthony works for us as the marking coordinator. You went to Linden Wood and you were on the Sporting Clay's Team there. - The shotgun sports team. - And bowling. - And bowling, don't forget the bowl. - I have four times. - Two sport athlete. - Yeah, awesome. And Sean, were you his coach while he was there? - Unfortunately. - Unfortunately. - We'll talk offline to see how to motivate him and what actually gets him to show up for work. - Well, let's go all the way back. So basic information, who are you, where are you from, how'd you get into this world of shotgun sports? - I was born in Kansas City, grew up in Lee's Summit, went away to college and was a soccer player. I know that's hard to believe with my size, but sustained a knee injury and while I was at Park University, was looking for something to do outside of the classroom and went to my first collegiate nationals and had no idea what I was shooting. I shot all of it and won the international skeet portion, which is one of the most difficult clay target games that when you look at it, you say, "Wow, that's probably pretty difficult." - Had you shot before that? Did you grow up shooting? - I grew up, the army coach when he recruited me says, "How many clay targets you shot?" And I had shot a little bit of ATA, American Trap, and was decent at it, but I had shot, the Blackbirds and Starlings would start into some of these farmer's fields around Lee's Summit because it wasn't so city-like. And they'd call and say, "Hey, if you wanna come out "and shoot, come on out." And I would load 500 rounds, back then a case of shells was double what it is now, it's 250, it was 500 then, and I'd shoot those. He says, "How many of those do you think you shot?" I said, "50 to 60,000." He said, "That's a pretty good stat, we'll go with that one." And that's what got, I would like to share with the information with everybody that was a mistake. When I was younger, I made some financial decisions that were not the right ones, and I loaded up some credit cards and let car insurance lapse and T-boned an elderly lady in a two-day-old Cadillac sedan of the Ville, $28,864.28. - Okay, made a mark on you. - It made a mark, and I share that story with as many young people as I possibly can because failure, although we think of it as a negative, its success turned inside out. You have to go through the negativity before you get to the positive.

 And that's virtually what got my start in play target, and I raised my right hand. The coach had said that I could be a member of the United States Army March 5th unit, Burl Branham, legend in all firearms sports. He said, "But you gotta come down and be a skeet shooter." And I had only experienced a trap, other than the victory at the collegiate nationals. And the next day, after getting kicked out of my mom and dad's house because of that accident, which dad and I did not see eye to eye on that one, and mom was in a panic, but it was the right thing. And I lost my dad two Decembers ago, and probably the biggest gift he ever gave me. Because it taught me humility, it taught me to grow up. And Anthony and I have something else very in common. We both have lost fathers not all that long ago. So when I talk about these things, it's not just about what we're talking about today on the radio, it's full fledgedly part of my life. I mean, I enjoy being around young people that are trying to struggle and succeed, and that's part of life. - Wow, wow. So you grew up shooting birds, helping farmers, went to college as a soccer player, got hurt, made the transition, won the national collegiate nationals? Your first year-- - First time I've ever shot it. - And then joined the army. - I joined the army because I had to, because I had no place to live, and was trying to get rid of all that debt. - Wow, and then you shot in the army. - Shot for the army for 20 and a half years. While I was in the army, I was also on the US team for the 17 years we talked about. - Yep, that's awesome. - Busy career. - Yeah, what a story. How many times do you think you've pulled the trigger in your life? - We actually sat down and figured this out at one point, and I think 1.6 million rounds. - Oh my gosh. - So when you see athletes like Tiger Woods with a golf club taking a ball and bouncing it off the head of a club, we wouldn't even look at the gun when we eject the shells from an over and under. We don't even look, but we're catching them behind our ear. It was a trademark that the army team had for years. Try and do it. Unless you've done it 100,000 times, you probably can't do it. - Can you do it, Anthony? - Probably. - Oh, he's gawky. Last night.

 - It'll take you a few thousand to get to that. - We shot last night at Stratholbin, and I did notice how many times, Anthony, you would eject the shells, not even look, catch them in one swoop, throw them in your bag. I was like, that's pretty cool. - He's done it once or twice. - You're really good when you catch them behind your ears. - Oh, he's not that good. - So he's not that good. - My 50-year-old Parazzi, it only kicks them out about a foot. I don't think it'd kick them out that far. - Blame it on the gun. That's what I do. - Those Parazzi, the Kriggoff are where I do it. - It's a newer gun. - Yeah, a lot newer. - So let's back up and just clarify, what is shooting sports? What are shotgun sports? What is your experience in those different categories of shotgun sports? - What I've seen over the years being around the younger shooters is it's almost a release where if you're not a super athlete, you don't think of shotgun shooters as athletes, but most of them that are successful at it have excellent hand-eye coordination. So it's also a release for somebody that really doesn't necessarily get along with the team concept. It is an individual sport, but what happens is when you get into high school and college, it turns into a team sport. So the team's only successful if the individuals are doing their job. - Okay. And so, I mean, you've got trap, skeet, sporting clays. - When you have the international games that are part of the Olympics, double trip, well, doubles is no longer a part of it, but you have international trap and international skeet. There's some oddball ZZ birds or electro-chilebays is what they call them in Italy. - Hallease. - Hallease. - What is that? - It's almost like a little-- - It's a helicopter blade. - It's a helicopter blade with a dome. You go ahead and-- - Clay target, yeah. It's pretty much a helicopter blade with a plastic clay target on it. And you have this half circle, little foot and a half tall fence, just like, it used to be live pigeon shooting. There's still some of that that goes around, but pretty much, cold pole, little helicopter blade comes out and it's going away from you. You have to shoot it and knock that little plastic cap out before it crosses over the little fence. So it was like 30 yards or something like that. - The machine oscillates left and right, so you don't know where it's going. So it's very similar to what he just said. - Pigeon. - Back in the day when it was allowed, the only difference is that when, in the live bird that they used to do, that bird had the opportunity to fly right at you or against you. So the angles, there isn't as many. It's still very, very difficult, but you have two shots in order to take the dome off of the helicopter wings and land it inside that ring he was talking about. - Interesting. - Really? - Yeah. - It's like darts with a shotgun. - It would be something that the crowd up there, strawthaw them would absolutely love to do. - Yeah, that sounds like they would enjoy it. - What's the closest one? I mean, there's one in Kansas. - There's one in Kansas City. There's some that are at different private farms and such that they have an occasional picnic and let people come out and have a good time. But it becomes very, very highly competitive and it's one of those things where the fine cigars come out and wallets are pulled out. - Full choke on those? - I think some guys actually have maybe beyond full, maybe a little bit tighter. And for those that are listening that don't know. - TSS number nines. - When you say choke, there's a lot of people that don't even know what choke is. So imagine, and I hate to say this over the radio, but you take your hands and put them around somebody's neck. And when you do that, if it's open, - You're not choking. - You're not choking, but if you start to tighten your hands, you're making that trachea a lot smaller than what it's supposed to be. So that's virtually what the lead is coming out of the shotgun when you talk about choke, you start with something that's wide open and then you choke it down. So where you can shoot something at a longer distance or farther distance. - Okay. - I would define it as-- - Let's go with the left murder E1. - I would define it as a funnel at the end of your gun that is now taking your shot, maybe from a one inch wide barrel. This is just kind of, but down to like a three quarter inch. So it's constricting all the BBs in your barrel. And so what you're trying to do is depending on the distance of your target, you're trying to change your choke. So that way your pattern, the density of your pellets down range are-- - It's like a shower head. - Exactly. - You can adjust the-- - Do you want a jet stream or would you like the middle one or the really wide? - Jason, do you want to take a crack at a medical work? - I have an idea what a choke is. Whether it be strangling somebody. - Or dragging your butt shot. - I mean, it's literally called choke. - It's supposed to be when you were eating how much, and I like to eat, and those of you that can't see, I have eaten my share of food. So I always like to put things in the eating context. - There you go. - I'm on this massive diet and I feel like I'm shooting about extra, extra full right now. So that means that the choke is very tight. So there's only certain foods that I can eat. So that's where that analogy came from. Sorry for the, sorry if I offended you. - I love it, I love it. Anthony, how did you get into shotgun sports as a kid? 'Cause you kind of went through the high school, college, how did you get into it? - Yeah, and a lot more recently than Sean, too. - Yeah. - I started out, I was probably, I was in middle school. If you go back a little bit further, I grew up with some pointers, some German Shorthair pointers, and on the East Coast. And we used to buy pheasants more or less, raise them up, and then trainer dog used to pull them all. When I was five years old, my dad got a bunch of balloons in a helium tank, and he would fill up the helium balloons and we'd go out to this property, and he'd release the helium balloons, and I had a little single shot 20 gauge, and as that balloon was rising, that's how I first got my start into a moving target or a bird shooting. And then I'd try to shoot some pheasants and we would run them down and take me 12 different attempts to try to shoot a pheasant over my dog when I was five years old, but I'd finally get it. And then I was in middle school, and my dad's friend was at a trap club in Pennsylvania,

 and I was there for the summer, and he'd say, "Hey, why don't you guys come by? We're barbecuing or whatnot, and maybe we can get Anthony to shoot some traps." So I went out and I probably 12 years old and started shooting my first couple rounds with a little field gun that beat my shoulder until it was black and blue and the cheek was all bruised up. But really liked it, and went back. At the time, Mom was living in Iowa and had a shotgun out there and went to a little trap field, started shooting, and then one guy's like, "Oh, you know, there's like a high school team around here." And they allowed middle schoolers to pretty much shoot on it. So joined that team. My eighth grade year was my first year competing. I won, it was the intermediate, was the middle school division. I won the intermediate division my first year shooting in Iowa. After that first year, I kind of learned about international trap, the Olympic style trap. Continued to shoot throughout high school and throughout competing international trap. I learned about Lindenwood and met a lot of guys that were older than me that were already going there. And from the time I was probably a sophomore in high school, I figured like, that's where I wanted to go. They went every national championship. I was like, I already have friends there. Like that's where I wanna go and compete. - How many national championships did you guys win when you were there? - Two. - Two, all right. - I mean, he was on the tail end. - While I was there, I think we had 11 consecutive. - Wow. - Mm-hmm. - And then shortly after that, they'd they've gone through still successful, but the team's gone into a rebuilding phase where you've got a new coaching staff and so on and so forth. They just captured our national collegiate shooting sports athletic associations first national championship. So they won division one. - Oh, wow. - And for Lindenwood to win a division one up against the big boys, Clemson and all that, that's a big, big successful story in itself. - I was always shocked like, man, Lindenwood has like a crazy athletic program. - Oh, yeah. - Yeah, very, very impressive. - Our bowling team was pretty good too. - Well, we're not talking about bowling today. Congratulations, Noah. - He did get, he's not gonna admit this, but he did get told, it's bowling or shooting, you make a choice. - Oh, that was within like the first four days of knowing Sean. - Really? - That was pretty much said to me, yep, pick. - Did you ever pick? - Not the first. - I have shot within a bunch, I've never seen him bowl. - I forget, well, into my sophomore year of college, it kind of hurt my knee and I couldn't. - Heard you were bowling, bowling accident. - Exactly, it was just repetitive strain and I couldn't practice enough to stay at the level of competition I wanted to. So I was just like, I'll continue shooting, I'll continue hanging out with Sean, I guess. - It sounded like I was being a jerk to him, but really and truthfully, his talents in two different areas were very much needed. So I was giving a compliment without giving him a compliment. Tell me you're good without telling me you're good. - A compliment sandwich. - Pretty much. - There you go. (laughing) - Compliment sandwich. - So the other thing, Jason, you have a daughter at high school age. - Yeah, she's shooting. - She's a freshman, it's her first year with a 12 gauge. We've been running a 28 gauge for a number of years and no formal team or anything like that. I am a member of a shooting club that's 18 minutes from door to door from my house to this shooting club that we've mentioned a couple of times called Strath Albin. And one of the other coaches at Lend and Wood and was also, I don't remember all of his resume, but it's also long, Tom Ruck is a friend of mine and takes upon himself to help the right people that wanna put forth the effort and everything else. And he's helped core a lot.

 She's shooting trap now, she doesn't like trap as much as some of the other stuff, but that's probably because when her and daddy go shoot, we go to the sporting clays range or skeet but now she's grinding on trap and finding a different challenge and enjoying it more than she used to, but definitely still likes other stuff. As soon as we're done here, we have to go practice some skeet because she's not gonna shoot trap at the grand, she's gonna shoot skeet and sporting clays at the grand. So the biggest, is that the biggest trap or is that the biggest shooting? Define the grand 'cause it's right outside. - The grand is the largest shoot in the world. We have roughly in and out for the two weeks that it's going on, you'll have 5,500 people out there. Now take that and add two brothers and sisters and a family, now you're talking about it, went from that 5,000, now there's 20 to 30,000 people running. - Oh, it's crowded, it's big. - And what I loved, the grand was good for me because I've been wanting to get a good over and under and trying to figure out which gun you wanna do 'cause you can spend a little or you can spend a lot. - You can spend a car. - You can, yeah, depending on the engraving, you can spend a lot, a lot. (laughing) It was really nice to go over there and shoot, I could shoot a Parazzi, I could shoot a Krigoff, I could shoot a Bloss or I could shoot any gun,

 pretty much that's in that field, you could go over there and shoot them and there is a night and day difference. I'm not saying one $10,000 gun's better than the other, but your shooting style and what you need, you will figure it out. I shot the Parazzi and I like, man, it's a beautiful gun, I love the looks of this, shot it halfway decent, but I picked up the Krigoff and it went from breaking half of them at the trap range to breaking all of them, like, well, this seems to work for me a little better. So you can go over there and play, they have glass, you can do the hearing protection, the glasses are a lot of stuff over there that you can go over there and just see all the manufacturers are over there and they bring their staff from around the world over there, they're working on the guns, they're doing a lot of stuff, they're there for weeks, they have-- - It's like a town, isn't it? - It becomes a town out of nowhere. - It's like a temporary town. - Yes. - I'm glad you brought that up, because a lot of times when we're at the top of our game and anything, a lot of the younger people and parents that don't know are asking that question, what kind of shotgun should I get? - I don't know. - Well, I can tell you that the answer is 14 different directions. First of all, you have to figure out what the budget is. - And what sport are you wanting? Don't buy a trap gun if you're gonna be a ski shooter. - That's exactly right. So when you get a young person or the family asking that, find out what they can afford or what, a Remington 870 is the greatest gun I ever made. It's cheapest, most-- - Reliable. - There's millions of them out there. It's very reliable. And a lot of times there are people that are subject matter experts that may wish that opinion on somebody. If the family can't afford a Prozzie or a Kregoff, I guarantee you there's just as many people kicking people's barriers with-- - 870. - 870. - I've got a friend of mine that shoots in Quincy all the time and he's like, in that area is one of the better shooters and he does it on purpose. He can afford a different gun, but he likes to show up and kick everybody's butt with an 870. - We were just talking about this, the guy that had the overalls on with the cut off sleeves and was using an 1897. Lever action, pumped it. He pumped it and it would, I haven't seen one for years. He's a 27 yarder, which means he's shooting from the farthest distance from the trap house. - Where we were playing Annie Oakley last night. - And he was carrying a 94% average, which is extremely high for a 27 yarder. - It's like hunting with a recurve. - It's not the bow, it's the archer. - But it is also nice to have a bow that fits you. - 100% and that is a very important point. - Yeah. - There's a lot of people that, we're different than the Europeans. The Europeans have the manufacturers right in their own backyard. So Beretta, Parazzi, whatever company you think of, most of them are over there. So when they have something from wrong, they get in their car and drive 250 miles and go straight to the manufacturer and say, the stock is not in the right configuration, they would allow another one and you're on your way. Here we learn to shoot whatever we have and we might take moleskin and build it up to make it higher. - Get the old hacks all out and start coming down.

 - I've seen guys use automotive Bondo and build it up. So we accommodate to the gun, not take it to the manufacturer and have it changed. So there's a lot of things that can be done to get you better. And that gun fit is, I'm glad you brought that up. That was the best point probably in this podcast. - All right, that's a wrap. - We got time, we have time to be talked. - I was gonna say about the Grand, I've never personally shot the Grand but I've been over there just to see all the vendors and meet people, get to watch the top in the world, shoot the events. - We watched somebody whip a $12,000 gun off the back of their buggy last year. (laughing) - Yeah, you get to see some crazy things happen. - When is the Grand? - First two weeks of August, really. - I'd say it starts with the AIM championships, which is the young folks. So it's three weeks long. - That's what Kora is gonna be practicing. She's never shot skeet,

 except for just goofing around with me. So it'll be interesting to-- - Actually the organization I work for is the primary sponsor for the AIM Championship. - She's registering for that today. I said, you need your AIM number. If you're gonna shoot skeet, get on it. - That's great. So, okay, I wanna clarify for the people that aren't super well versed in shotgun sports or like me, I shoot at a lot of charity events. I have a great time, love to show up and shoot but I'm not a sporting, I'm not a shotgun sports athlete. So what is the difference of like trap, skeet, sporting, let's break this down a little bit so people can understand what we're talking about. - As if I was a five year old that you're talking about. - Explain it like I'm five. - Okay, trap, you have a house in front of you, approximately 15, 16 yards, the front of the house. And the target is going away from you. The angles are only going to be in about like, I don't know, deflection. - 18 and a half degrees left or right. - Like I'm five, guys, like I'm five. - Okay, the target is moving from in front of you, 15 yards and going away. - At different angles, random angles. - And the same up and down and at the same exact speed. But the angles left and right are different. - And then the shooters move. - Every five shots. - It's still pretty tight but that angle changes drastically when you're on one and five. There's five posts. - That's trap. - That is trap. - What's skeet? - Skeet is a high house and a low house. And then you have eight stations starting in front of the high house and ending almost at the low house. And then there's a station eight that's in between them both. So it sounds very much more complicated, but the target is in the same trajectory every single time. So it's hard for people when they first start shooting to understand the concept of lead or shooting the same picture. Shooting the same picture means that if I say, what I see is a shotgun length of distance on three, four and five to break the high house and low house target singles. So when you transfer that to somebody that doesn't know what lead is, you gotta find different ways. So typically when I'm working with younger people, I will take a broomstick that's cut to the length of a shotgun and mount it right on my chest and then have them staying on station four. And then I start walking or jogging, trying to be the target. And those of you that are older, there used to be a thing on Saturday Night Live, I'm scrunching you, I'm scrunching you. - I'm squishing your head. - That's it. So when you take that and do the same thing laterally, you'll actually see what a shotgun length of lead is at 30 yards. So then you can put that into play. You can do that and ski, sporting clays is a little bit different 'cause you really don't know the distance because you're in various different scenarios. - Let's go back to what is sporting clays? - No, yeah, if you're done with skiing. - Well, there's a lot more to it. There's eight stations, there's a formula where you shoot high, low, double at each of the stations until you get to station eight and then you shoot a high house and a low house. And if you are straight 24 targets, then you shoot another low house for the 25th target. - One thing that I do think that we've missed a little bit is they are so exact, like when the high house bird comes out, it's going at the exact same speed and there's a white stake that's over, I don't know how far it is from the low house, but it flies over that white stake every single time. That bird never moves, it does the same thing every time. And the bird out of the low house is flying the opposite direction. They're opposing, but it crosses over and a white stake every single time at the same height and the same speed every single time and you move. And that's the major differences. You do a lot more moving in ski, but the birds fly identical every single time. - And they're crisscrossing. - They're crisscrossing. - Okay, so there's a lot of times that when we go to the ranges, and this is back when I was shooting a lot more, it was not uncommon to shoot around from the hip and break 22, 23 without even mounting the gun. Now, I don't encourage people to do that, but I will say that if you're trying to prove a point, you put somebody right here next to you where they can see the movement of the gun and where the gun and target relationship is, it makes it much easier for them to understand. So I am quite certain out of the years that I've been around the youth, there are so many things that I would do differently now that I'm older that have made it easier for me to teach people. - Yeah. - It's the path that you take. - You learn from your mistakes. - You learn from your mistakes. - What are you doing tonight? (laughing) - Okay, so that's trap, that's skeet. Sporting clays I've heard described as golf with a gun. - Golf with a shotgun because you're shooting many different scenarios that you encounter if you like to hunt woodcock or quail or pheasant, ducks, geese, rabbits. All of those shots are incorporated. - Hate those rabbits. - Yeah, into it. - We had the struggle bus out on the rabbits last night. - The hardest targets for the most accomplished shooters are the gravity pull. Gravity pull means it literally has dropped onto a log or something because typically you don't see stuff moving this slow in sporting clays. So when the gravity pulls that thing down and it takes a delay to even get on the log or whatever it's going down, it's typical of really good shooters to pull way out in front and then be looking at the target over here. - I find that the more time I have to think about shooting, I shoot worse. It's like the super high, like wait for the eight, yeah, I'm just like, oh, I'm thinking about it. I'm thinking about it. You know, and you mess up versus just reacting. - You're falling in love with the target. That's what I was always told. Don't fall in love with it. - Fall in love with the target. - Just shoot it, yeah. It's like by the time you get a look around to thinking about it, you know. - Going back to your daughter, you hear this a lot. I mean, it's in every conversation when you're talking to parents or even the younger people in general. Trap is not the preferred game because it's ritualistic. You're doing the same thing and it's like watching grass grow. You're not watering it. - It's not good for my ADHD. I can't really get out of here. One little, like last night we were out there shooting and I knew as soon as I mounted my gun and called pull, this squirrel jumped on in the course. I'm like, there's no way I'm hitting that bird 'cause my eyes went over squirrel. - It's easy to pull your head up off the gun. - Yeah, one little mistake. - But sporting clays, you're invested 'cause you're looking at a different variety of targets. You're trying to figure it out. Skeets even better or the predecessor to that because as a person on the outside, you're seeing different angles and things. So there's a little bit of variety. I think what happens with younger people, they get bored. Especially if they're talented. You watch a kid shoot his or her first 25th target, it will come sooner and sooner thereafter. - Shakura got her first 25 last week, is in practice. - And she'll start doing it. - I don't think I missed any there. I'm like, I didn't see him as any. - She's probably, she's getting comfortable with it. The problem with it is after you do it a while, we have a very good friend that had the highest average. He is six on the all time high average leaders in American Trap for the grand. He's struggling this year because I think he's expecting it every time he goes out. I don't know if that's it or maybe the fact that he got married. I would think that that probably has a little bit of-- - Distraction. - Yeah. - But that's like shooting-- - What's the range of thought right now? - Oh, yeah. - That just makes it even better. - Shooting sports is a mental game. I mean-- - 94%. - Yeah. You know, it's hot. You're carrying a heavy gun. There is a physical aspect to it, sure. But it is, I always like, I should have shot that because I know I like mentally wasn't ready or I didn't go through my checklist. It's like, it's totally mental. - It is, but when you start talking about temperatures like they are out there today, it's he who can handle 100 degree wheat. And that's, the grand is right in the middle of those 100 degree-- - Yeah, it's August in a flat field.

 - In Illinois with no shade, man. It's hot. - Yeah. Is that intentional, you think? Make it as miserable as possible. - No, you just need an open space. You can't have trees in the middle of a trap field. - Yep. - That's true. That's a good point. What do you think is the best way to introduce, I mean, people to the sporting clays, I assume, or five stand? - Well, I think-- - Trap? - I think if you had one machine as a kid, we used, back when I was a kid, we used to have the antique, had a little spring on it and the metal arms and you'd throw it. Take somebody out and hand throw them. If they really love it, buy a battery operated machine from Cabela's or Bass Pro Shop or whoever the retailer is that we push here at Trophy Properties. - Anthony, we're for Cabela's. We gotta mention Cabela's. (laughing) - Then, if they're still in it and they're begging you to do it every week, take them to a range. - I will say, I absolutely love having Cora shoot my youngest, they all, both of my daughters shot rifle a bunch. It's completely different than that. We sit on the front porch, shoot BB guns at night and at a metal target I have out there. So we do a lot of shooting, but the shotgun stuff has been a lot of fun that like, well, what do you wanna do today? Hey, you wanna go shoot sporting clays with me? Sure, let's go. Okay. It's something that I can go do, like I'm not gonna go run around and play soccer. I'm old and fat. (laughing) But she can dumb her down for me and go shoot and my youngest, we just had a youth thing out there and my youngest is real small and she's got a cut down 28 gauge A400, like the lightest gun I can think of and it's still a little bit too heavy for her. So we have to hold it and then she brings it off, chases the bird down, shoots it and then I reach out and grab it and put it back in my hand. So she needs the rest in between. So we're just patiently waiting, but it is as a family now on Wednesday nights, my wife goes out and my kids and we go out and shoot. It's a great family event and you know, so you can go all the way to your level and compete internationally for 20 something years or it's a good way to go spend some family time. Yeah. I think the difference, the other thing that I was gonna add to what he just said is that sometimes parents are the worst coach to their own kid. I leave that to you, Ruck and the guys at Gateway Clay Busters. Cor and I just go have a good time. Not all good shooters are good coaches either because sometimes we get to this level. Explain it like I'm five. And we're still talking at a master degree or doctorate degree and we need to be talking elementary or kindergarten. You just said that earlier in the podcast. So I do think that somebody other than parents, if a parent has that relationship where the kid's listening to what they're saying, I think it's a good relationship, keep it going. But I also think outside sources are your best friend. I taught my wife to fly fish. I don't teach her anything else. Now I hire, if I want her to learn something else or she wants to learn something else, we hire somebody else. She tends to listen to other people than me a little better. Makes sense. I think that the best shooters out there or best athlete in any sport can take something from a hundred different coaches and use what works best for them. You know, it's like Sean's taught me stuff, Russ taught me stuff. I've had guys in the army marksmanship team, other teammates, whatever the case may be. And it's like, okay, like try it out for a little bit, see what works for me, maybe take a part of what everyone said and figure out what works for you. - Chris Himes has brought that up to me with his kids shoot really well and he has different instructors all the time for him. Like, oh yeah, go take that class, go do this, do this. And he always asks like, what did you learn from this instructor? Like, well, I think they said X, Y and Z, but I really like this Z concept. And if I can put that with what I learned from this one and you have to come up with what is your routine and what works for you, but it's good to hear all these other options. And I had one guy put a piece of tape on my left eye 'cause I'm just, I'm right eye dominant, but barely. Ruck ripped that thing off. I was shooting mid 80s on sporting clays. He ripped that thing off. I went down to like 60s and a year and a half later, I'm back, I'm now back up into the mid 80s, but hopefully I don't have a plateau there. Hopefully I can continue to get better. But like he broke it down. Like, do you duck-conk that way? I'm like, oh God, no. Why do you shoot sporting clays that way? - We don't do, it's funny that you're saying that because Tom is one of the most decorated, his accolades are, he shot international back many years ago, but he also is one of the most decorated senior sporting clay shooters in the United States, period. - Yeah, and he's who I shoot with, like our chorus shoots with once a month is with Tom. So it's not a bad question. - Again, we sometimes forget when we get to that level of how to talk, that's what the joy of working with really young kids is now, is 'cause I gotta figure out ways to put myself there. And I'm a kid at heart, so it's easy once you do it one time to do it 15 times. - Yeah, well let's talk about like the youth that is being injected into the sport now because isn't it like the fastest growing youth sport in America? - That's what the Wall Street Journal's saying. - And they're generally in three replicas. - They put that article out two or three years ago. - Oh, did they? - Oh yeah, it was, Time Magazine's put an article out. I mean, some of the mainstream, sometimes we think that they would be liberal, but that's a conservative conversation. - Yeah, so what do you think, why? I mean, why? - I think that the students and parents are looking for something that's not necessarily the team concept, even though it is the team concept, if that makes sense, what I just said. - There's other sports like that, wrestling's very much individual. When you're out there on the mat, it's you and one other dude trying to whip your butt, but it is a team sport. - Track and field, same. - Yeah, you gotta beat all these other guys. - Golf. - It's a team sport. - We're seeing teams at the collegiate level. We went from, when I first started in the collegiate division, we went from 75 at the collegiate nationals and then over a three year period, it went up to 105. So now, this up and coming year, there's 105 colleges that have programs and we're still-- - Not club level, but actually college. - They may not be seriously funded, but they're funded somehow or they're through their student union or club sport, or in many cases, three quarters of those have become varsity sports. - Scholarship, we're talking scholarship. - I don't know about scholarship, but they're doing something to help the student body involve themselves in that deal. - Yeah. - So it's good to see the growth from the high school. I'm gonna say, because you can never get a straight figure from any of the organizations, 'cause you don't know whether they're tabulating all the event shots, so they may say that's three entries. When we talk about hard numbers, I'm talking about one person and shooting a tournament.

 Every state at their state level, Missouri has about a thousand kids down there at Lynn Creek shooting the trap game. - We did that one this year, there's a lot of people show up for that, baby. - So then you move on to an event like the AIM grant. There will be 2,500 to 3,000 kids there. Half of them won't stay for the full duration of the grant, but some of them will. So when you start looking at the numbers, now we get to the national championship where they're participating at a university level, and it drops to a thousand out of 10,000 people. So there's a substantial loss when they get to college, 'cause they're focused on getting their degree and their studies and so on and so forth. It's hard to find those athletes. So you will see a drop. Hopefully, though, these teams that are up and coming, now we're starting to see these are the ones that are gonna keep the industry going. These are gonna be the kids that are wanting to buy duck clubs, deer properties, and so on and so forth, because they're gonna be able to afford it. So it comes full circle, not just with the shooting game. - Do you see an influx of more high school teams? - We're seeing it in both. - 'Cause St. Louis, I mean, we've got, I live in West County of St. Louis,

 we're taxed enough, we have a lot of money for our schools. But there are no high school teams here, but you go up into Rule, like where we do a lot of our land sales and everything else, every little bitty underfunded school has a trap team and a trap range. - And I just, very, Eolia, all of them have-- - Every one of them. I'm just confused on why this school that's like, just about broke has a trap team, and we've got a fair amount of money down here, and oh my God, no, we're not having a trap team. - I think it's where media meets the road, and publicizes what they want, so the administrators have a tendency to frown on it, because what do we hear on the news every day? - Mass shootings. - You got it. - Yeah. - So why would we wanna do something like that? Well, I can tell you exactly why we wanna do that. - Promote what we're gonna say to you. - The students that come from the programs like Linnonwood, Texas A&M, Trinity University, and all these that have these college programs, they are the percentage of students that are going to affect the way we operate later down our road. We might not be here to see it, but they're gonna be making decisions, and if we don't capture that now, the sports that we love, the outdoors, e-sports, is hunting, fishing, they're gonna disappear.

 So when we talk about this in a podcast, or a show, or anything else, very, very important. I think the trend is, is companies like the one that's here that you all represent, you're affecting recreation by the lands, you also have the ability to do exactly what you're doing today with this podcast. Hopefully somebody, one of those administrators will see this podcast, and say, "You know what, they're right. We need to start having some of these programs Wildwood, or Marquette, the trade on the Rockwood." - Yeah, Marquette's part of the Rockwood School. - Parkways. You don't think of too many of the schools here locally in the inner city, if you will, and I'm not saying this is the inner city. - No. (laughs) - You're-- - The inter-v - You go to Kansas City,

 Blue Springs North, Blue Springs South, Lee's Summit North, Lee's Summit West. All of them have trap programs. - Well, so I guess, what is Clay Busters? Is that-- - It's a club team. - It's a club team. There are a lot of club teams, and you know, what is that, Gateway up there? What's the official name of that? - Gateway Busters, Clay Busters? - Well, that's the team name. - Well, Gateway Trap and Ski. - Yeah, Gateway Trap and Ski. They are very supportive, and there are a lot of youth teams that call that home. - Yep. - You know, it's not just Gateway Clay Busters. There's a bunch of teams that that's their home court, and we'll have trap tournaments up there that are just St. Louis based teams that that's all their home court. - Hinges, Team Hinges is another-- - Yeah. - It's the Missouri Department of Conservation range that's down there, and they have a team. - There's one at Bush that would be good for Rockwood, 'cause it wouldn't be very far they could go. So I think there's opportunity if the schools would fund it. There's not even a Rockwood school system club team. - Is there an opportunity? So I played a lot of weird sports in high school. One of which was rowing. And so I was on the St. Louis rowing team, and it was all of the schools in St. Louis. You could do it as like-- - Both of 'em? - Yeah. You could do it as like your spring sport. And so instead of playing lacrosse or tennis or whatever, you could do rowing with the St. Louis rowing club, and it counted as your school sport, and the St. Louis rowing club had partnerships, or like it fed into the collegiate programs. So a lot of the kids that I rode with got full rides to Cal, Princeton, Harvard. - So what in their, I can remember one that we watched probably when we were kids. It had Rob Lowe in it, and he was on a rowing team in England. - I mean there have been movies about rowing. - What's the person that calls the Catons? - The Coxon. - Okay, that's what. - Yeah, but maybe there's an opportunity for that. You know, the high schools create the St. Louis shooting club, and I don't know. - I don't know, I just think it's, I think where St. Louis, the county out here, is definitely missing, well the whole county is-- - Missing an opportunity. - Missing an opportunity that I feel is important. Like why are all these small towns doing it? And it's easy, and everybody's on the team, and nobody here is. 'Cause sometimes I think my daughter gets a, she doesn't tell everybody, it's not a school sport, so she's a cheerleader, and on the trap team. Everybody knows she's a cheerleader, nobody really knows she's on the trap team at her school. All of her trap friends are from different schools around that are on the trap team, 'cause they don't have trapped at their school either. So it's a, I think it's a void that we're having, and it creates, it's almost awkward for her to tell her friends like, "Yeah, I run a shotgun "on the weekends." You know, like, "Well, what?" You know? - It is, Cora's a bit of an enigma. She's full of surprises. Yeah, that's funny. - And Coach is typically, it's funny that you're saying that, she's willing to talk about it. - Oh no, she has a great time doing it, and she's showed up at so many charity shoots and all the stuff out there that we do, that people are starting to recognize her, and like, "Oh, she shoots pretty good." And she likes that kind of pat on the back from everybody, all the adults like, "Oh, she shoots pretty good." - Keeping a log, she should keep a log of everything that she does, because it comes down to, I was a coach that when I would interview the family, I wasn't really interviewing the family. I didn't want to hear from mom and dad, I wanted to hear from the athlete, and you can't believe how many of them the parents speak for on literally everything. His dad started to talk when I met him, and I said, "Sir, if you don't mind, "I'm interviewing your son to come to shoot "for our program here. "Don't answer the question for him, please." He thought I was being, I asked for it professionally, to the point, he thought I was being a complete jerk, did he or did he not? - Yeah, that's not what I was about. - But my point is this, we have leaders in this game, and if there was anything that I have to say about shotgun sports, the one thing I will tell you about every kid that walked through the door of any program in the United States, it's preparing them for the fight that is the big fight. I said it, look on the news. Our sport doesn't get very many accolades. In fact, very rarely do we get any, but we do get a lot of criticisms. So I'm proud of the sport, I'm proud to be here on this podcast, and I thank Trophy Properties for giving me that platform to talk about a sport that's, 'til the day I die, I will be a part of it. - Yeah. What would you recommend to help kids get into it? And also, I think, Jason, you can speak to maybe like,

 maybe not over pressuring your kids, like fostering that excitement without putting it on them. I mean, what would you recommend? - It's gotta be fun. The how I did it was just a lot of fun and like BB guns, and you know, at first, like go out and shoot, pop these five balloons with a BB gun. You know, just make it easy and fun, and then like, well let's put it up, and then the next day, but keep it fun for a while, and then at some point the work's gotta begin, but you gotta get the desire in there before the grind happens. There's a lot of people that, shells obviously have gone up in price. - Yeah, how has the cost of ammunition affected this sport? - It affects it pretty good. It affects those programs. - It's doubled since COVID. - Yep. But it is starting to come back down, and I think that will be a trend probably for another couple of years, and then it'll flatten out. But taking 10 shells out of your pocket, and having stationary targets sat on the ground, and pull some kids that are sitting back behind the fence that are there with their mom and dads, but they're not participating, it really is costing me pennies to influence somebody's life. So if I've got extra ammo in my pocket, and you're a parent that really doesn't know whether they wanna let their kids do it, if you see me at a gun club, ask me for 10 shells, I'll give them to you. It changes the sport. - Yeah, it's a good mentality to have. - My dad's friend inviting us up for a barbecue at the gun club, and I shot my first couple rounds of trap in my life. I mean, I wouldn't have gotten into shooting, wouldn't have gotten to London Wood, wouldn't have been wearing them today, more or less. - Oh, I wouldn't be here with those. - Oh yeah, I wouldn't be here with you. - I mean, going into that, I mean, the opportunities that shooting sports offer in terms of access to people you meet, scholarship dollars, I mean, what are we talking about in terms of getting into shooting sports, how can it affect your life? - If I can say real quick, whenever I submit my resume to Trophy Properties and Auctions, you picked up the phone and called Tom Ruck. - Yeah. - You saw London Wood shotgun sports and-- - I saw his resume, I'm like, well, I'll get to the bottom of this real quick, and call Tom, like, hey, is this kid worth his shit? (both laughing) - That's pretty much it was a huge networking opportunity, I think, especially if you're into hunting and fishing and you wanna be in the outdoor industry, there's plenty of companies that sponsor events and whatnot, and I just, it's a great networking opportunity. - Yeah, about who you know and not what you know. - The hunting world is already a pretty small world, and I mean, I'm always amazed, like, we're at events and you're significantly younger than all of us, and you know more people than, it's just like, wow, Anthony knows everybody in this room, 'cause you shot at London Wood. - It's a real small world. - It is a small world, man, yeah. What about, like, scholarship opportunities? I mean, I think one thing we're seeing on a bigger scale, you talked about media and, like, mass appeal, I think we're seeing kind of a chicken and an egg thing with golf right now, golf, people are realizing, like, the scholarship opportunities that golf has, and so you're seeing this, like, boom, of youth golf, and is it kind of the same thing? - Man, those kids are getting good, too. You watched some of those youth guys, like, holy crap, they're amazing. - Yeah, but it's, I think it's, like, the cyclical thing of, like, more kids are getting into it, so there's more scholarship dollars, and the kids are getting into it because of the scholarship dollars. Is it kind of the same thing with shooting sports? - It is, you have to do some homework to find the dollars that are out there, but there are several foundations, the Higgin-Brancini Foundation, the Midway Foundation, a lot of these different foundations that are set up on the platform of outdoor sports, shooting, hunting, fishing, they have the dollars, you just have to submit, and a lot of them feel inadequate to put in for them, so that money goes left untouched. And I know that everybody's trying to cut back and hold on to what they have, but on the same token, like I said, the 10 shells, that doesn't sound like much, but it's gonna influence somebody, maybe, to do it. There are dollars, each of the universities that are funded from the athletic department or the school in any shape or form, most of them, like, Missouri Valley and Marshall, I think they had 16 people on the team, and they just hired a new coach, and I think probably half to two thirds are on some kind of financial package. So it never hurts to ask any university, "Hey, can we start a program?" And we'll even help. - Is it gender-specific? Is there like men shooting, women shooting? - I'm going to make a T-shirt for myself that says, "Shoot like a girl." - They're out there already. - There's girls out there, Lauren Mueller went to school at Lindenwood, and she is the only female in history to ever win the HAA at the Grand, that means she kicked the heck out of all everybody. - Wow. - She, oh, she beat everybody. Her accomplishment was so important to the shooting community, and she's from, oh, it's Brittany, Brittany, Illinois. - Well, but Brittany Gunclap. - Brittany Gunclap, and I'm going through her hometown, I'm thinking to myself, "This girl just won a sport where there's 5,000 people." The downtown road that goes through the middle of that town should be called Lauren Mueller Lane. - That's got a ring to it, actually. - I mean, it's crazy. And I asked her mom, I said, "Well, we submitted it, but they didn't buy it off." Well, I know why. It's all evolved around this media push. She accomplished something that was a tremendous feat for anyone, it doesn't matter whether male, female, Martian, whatever, she beat everybody. - That's amazing, that's awesome. Anthony, did you go to Lindenwood on a scholarship of any kind? - Yes, I think they called it a leadership thing. For the student life sports, it wasn't like an NCAA scholarship, but there was still assistance in there. And even going there, and I still had a, wasn't like a full ride or anything, but at the time, Lindenwood provided all my shells for me, all my targets, and a charter bus that would take us to the shoots. We had a hotel room, and then we had per diem for food on the weekends. So it was like, I definitely made up for what I had to pay for college, 'cause all the free shells, free targets, travel. - And just the opportunity. I mean, you got to go to Italy, and get like a custom gun, stuff like that. - Well, yeah, whenever, I was in high school competing whenever I went to Italy, but yeah, still, it was, but yeah, even if you find a college that the school has, even if there's not scholarships, I mean, they might have either discounted targets and ammo, and if you're a really competitive shooter, if you can get a deal, or get someone to help pay for your targets, - Well, I can tell you one thing, after shooting around these guys, if you start seeing them shoot from the hip, one thing that I have determined in all the sporting clays, tournaments, and everything that we sponsor for charity events, and we do a lot of that at Trophy Properties and Auction, but if these guys start showing off and shooting from the hip, that means somebody else was buying their bullets at some point in their life. - Thank you, Sean. - 'Cause I pay for my own bullets, and I do not shoot any of them from the hip. - Part of the-- - When it comes to that, I will say, for a long, long time, the United States Army had a lot of marketing programs. They sponsored Tony Schumacher, Top Fuel Dragster, and the Golden Knights would jump into the ball-- - And they bought you pallets of bullets to shoot from the hip. - For a little while, they did give us some ammo to do the trick shooting, and it was a good thing because it captured people to let them know that there is some good and positive, other than just blood and guts, and this, that, and the other. - The guys at Winchester also shoot from the hip out there when they're goofing off, too, 'cause they also get free bullets. - I mean, probably one of the most, what I grown up, the most famous name in shooting that I really knew was like-- - John Satterwhite. - Well, I was gonna say Tom-- - Tom Knapp. - Tom Knapp, and that's 100%. - Herb Parsons. There's a-- - Trick shooter. - Herb Parsons is who started it all, and he did it with a Model 12, so-- - The Gold Brothers, I mean, they probably get a lot of people into shooting, and they did stuff with Dude Perfect, and it's just, I think trick shooting definitely captures a lot of people's attention. It might spark their interest to get out there, and hey, you know, I had a lettuce and some tomatoes. I shot a lot of, we were out on some farms before, and we had charcoal briquettes for a charcoal grill. Throw those things up and shoot them, a little puff of black dust comes off of them. You know, they're pretty fun to shoot. - Pull a rabbit out of the hat next. - Yeah, yeah, really fun. - Joe Uggen and I took Corey Cogdale turkey hunting. She was an Olympic shooter. - She married one of the linemen for the Denver Broncos. - He's a different team now, I think. - Yeah, but we took her turkey hunting out in Kansas, and she choked from these dirt roads and this cherry red Mustang, and the roads were muddy, but she got in there and we all shot turkeys and everything else, but she'd shoot anything. We're throwing watermelons and heads of lettuce, just anything, just playing around, but yeah, she loved to run a shotgun. I will say we called a turkey from about 200 yards, strutted the whole way in, and she shot it, she gets paid to run a shotgun. She shot way more than I'll ever shoot in my life, and she center punched that thing right where the beard came out. (laughing) - Did it destroy it? - It's destroyed the breast, yeah, it killed it, but wasn't an eater. - That's a good one. - I think the one thing, it's funny you just said that because I'm sitting and I'm thinking of all the positive that the shotgun shooters do for the world. Think about the money that's raised for the hospitals and different causes by the charity events, just here in St. Louis that we do, and take that times every large city that has two or three gun clubs,

 that's a lot of money being raised for great causes. - We just had the summary of the one that we did for Great Rivers. It's our big gala at the end of the year is $400,000 for Ducks Unlimited and Great Rivers, but we raised $15,000 with 18 teams out there having a good time. - Well, Phil was one of the founding chairman of Kids and Clays here in St. Louis, Missouri, in the Ronald McDonald House, and they've raised almost-- - Out of Chicago. - If Glenn Lebuschnick is the guy, he would have done it with Glenn, is Glenn still with them? - Phil started here in St. Louis with Brad. - Phil started here, and it's been going how long? That's 18, 20? - Wow, 20, almost 20 years, and I mean, they've raised over five, almost $6 million. - Through shooting. - Yeah, just through shooting. - For the Ronald McDonald House. - But going back to that media thing, now all of our stuff, we don't have anything to do with guns, just to be able to get the mass appeal. We're able to get companies that like, "Eh, we're not really an outdoors company." It's like, "Well, it's not just shooting." It's a Ronald McDonald House. - It's raising money, like, "We just want your money." Honestly. - Yeah. - The conservation without dollars is just conversation, right? - That's right. - Ooh. - He stole it. - Yeah, I was stolen. - Hey, wait, that needs to be on a T-shirt. - Yeah, where's that from? - That's from... - I think it came from-- - Is that living stand? - Yeah, Ducks Unlimited, some folks that we knew at Ducks Unlimited. - Okay, I like that. I wanna make sure whoever came up with it gets the credit. - It might've been Hank Bell, I know Hank Bell said it a lot, which is our office manager's dad. We've got a lot of ties to great conservation and charity events around here. We spend a lot of money on conservation, other stuff, downtown St. Louis for schools and all kinds of stuff, but there's a lot of shoots that raise a lot of money. So, a lot of money. - Yeah, that's a really good point. - And we're involved in most of them. - Yeah, the shotgun, the shooting sports world does raise a lot of money through charity events. And it's like going to a golf tournament, but more fun in my opinion. - Actually, I was just getting ready to say that the person that did it great, that put two of the greatest fundraisers together, Mike Matheny, when he was the manager of the Cardinals, had a deal, it was called the Guitars and Guns. And he shot 50 Sporty Clays in the morning and then he played nine holes, or was it 18? - I don't know. - Out at Hickory Golf Course and then had a concert that evening. And I think the first two times that he did it, it was the religious group. They made Mercy Me. - Oh, okay, yeah. They were a band. - They were fantastic. It was fun to be at. It was a pleasure to be working with people that had never ever shot. - I think that golf analogy is a good way to get people interested that maybe have never done it before. 'Cause at the Missouri Athletic Club, we do an event called Birds and Bogeys, where in the morning you shoot around a Sporty Clays and then you go to a country club and you have lunch and then you play nine holes of golf. And at the end of the day, everyone's like, "Man, that was fun." A lot of guys that had never really shot before. And it's just a good, people are like, "Man, it's like golf. "It's like golf with a gun. "That was a lot of fun. "That was really cool." It's a good entry point, I think, for people with Sporty Clays is it is golf with a gun. It's a lot of fun. - 100%. - Put that on a shirt. That rhymes. Golf with a gun, it's a lot of fun. (laughing) - What are, so just kind of wrapping it up, what are some good, just like basic tips that you would give a young shooter that's maybe looking to improve, maybe take it a little bit more seriously, maybe look at it at colleges, or I guess anybody. Like who, what are some basic tips that you can give to somebody? - When we were talking earlier about, in several interviews after the Olympic games, they would ask who was my coach. If you can't have a conversation with one person and maybe learn something from them, I legitimately would have to say that I had probably 250, 300 coaches. Because the things that those people were telling me are the things that I live by now and try and put into play, and each one of us has influences like that. So that's still affecting a competitor on the line. You know, I can remember being told we should never speak to the foreign competitors when we were overseas. And I was like, I want worldly friends. So I got really close with the Italians and the Russians. Don't speak their language, but hand signals and stories and everything, you had to draw out pictures. - I drank their wine. (laughing) The Russian wine. (laughing) - That's not good. - So yeah, you're asking for the long term for somebody that's younger. I just said to Jason about his daughter, I think she needs to take a notebook. And whether it's shooting related or not, but if it makes sense, what was the guy that had the radio show on 97.1? No sense, common sense radio? Jamie Alman? - Sure. - That makes sense. So write it down. How many things do we miss in life that we don't tape, record or film? - Not much around here. - Write it down in a book. - If it's not measured, it can't be managed. - That's it. - Yeah. - So I would say that, number one. Number two, even if you may not like the way that somebody's delivering something in the shooting world, at least listen to it. - Yep. - And Anthony will tell you, I'm a proponent for believing that you have to do something 500 to 1,000 times before you can say, that doesn't work very good. You know what I was getting ready to say. - It's okay, you can say it. Oh, I've already dropped a few times. - I'm trying to think, utilize every piece of information that you can. And don't believe the propaganda that's put out sometimes. Like I know several people that try and push selling a Parazzi or a Krigoff to people that shouldn't even have one because they're just getting started in their shooting career. You don't, when you go dirt biking on a motorcycle, you don't start with a 750 or 1,000 CC machine. Start with a 50 or 75, 125, maybe not even those. - No, I don't need a motorcycle. (laughs) - Borrow one. - I'm not responsible enough to own a motorcycle. - Borrow one for someone. I've loaned out old shotguns to Eli's little brother. He shot high school with one of my old competition guns because it was like, before you go out and spend money and figure out what you like, here you go. And I know a lot of people that, a mentor in the shooting world kind of loaned them a gun and was like, let me know whenever you're done with it. - Chris Himes has got a youth 28 gauge, just like what I bought for Cora. And it's so short, but I know that gun has been in five different families starting their kids out. That gun has been passed around a lot in some years. - I learned on an old 16 gauge, I think it was a Winchester, like A5 or something like that. And the stock had been sawed down. - When a Winchester A5 is a Browning A5. - Browning A5, that's what it was. And yeah, that thing was sweet. - But it is the same, you surer. Browning Winchester, it's universal. You were good. - Thank you. - I'll fight for you in the next one. - Not back in the day. - When Ternpike Truidors sang about it, they sang about his grandpa's Belgium made Browning. So that's right. - I think what's funny is when you go to a gun club, there's a lot of it, and I'm not picking on anybody specific, but there are these guys that have the really fancy Grigoffs and Parazzis. I'm fortunate that Parazzi after I got successful said, we want you to shoot our gun. And it was at a time when the army was saying, no, we can't do that. So I got my contract in as fast as possible before they change your mind. It's a service. If somebody gives you a race car to drive, guess what? You let anybody and everybody touch that race car because that's what you're getting paid to do. - Right. Promote that gun. - Promote that gun. So if somebody asked me, hey, can I shoot your Parazzi? I'm gonna let them. If I got anything that anybody wants, if it's there at the range and they wanna shoot it just to see if they like it, I'm gonna let them. That's another lesson. That's why notebooks are important. These are the things that will change a young person's life. If you don't criticize them, but give them a better way to do it, it's all in the delivery. It's all in the delivery. - Yeah. - And then there were those times on the bus that when the team was acting like they were college age people, not adults, that we would have to have a little silence on the bus and have those times when they knew I was upset. And then there was the times when they knew I was upset 'cause I was being very loud. - Do you guys have any tips you could give? Jason, Anthony, any tips that have helped you, helped your daughter, help anything like that? - I have tips for people that are probably currently shooting and that's to invite someone out to shoot with you. Invite a young kid or a family. Or there's times where I was at Lindenwood on the shooting team and I had some friends that never grew up around guns or any had any opportunity to. And I don't think they have any interest in hunting, but one day I just invited them out to go shoot. And I've taught, even by the age of 20, I probably taught a dozen different people to help people out of shoot for the first time. And it was just giving them that experience. And I think they earned an appreciation for guns and for the sports and stuff like that because if you don't grow up in that world, it's definitely. - It's intimidating for somebody, my wife didn't grow up in a hunting family or gun. - It was all new to her at all for every inch of that. And then Mary in a redneck like me, where I probably have five guns in my truck right now. It was a learning curve, but now every Wednesday she's going out and shooting. And I've watched her in the last year and a half go from hitting none of them to where she's running 18 sometimes on trap versus literally it was three. Now she's at 18 and she doesn't get to shoot that often, but she works a little bit. - That's a good point. 'Cause if you ask most people, how'd you get into hunting? Most people would say, well, my dad hunted. And it's a familial thing, it's passed down. And a lot of people that don't have that, they don't get into it. - Getting a gun and somebody take you to range, that if you're not around that, it's seemingly impossible. How do I get to there? You just show up and you're looking around, like you got a gun I can borrow, the range is probably gonna, no. - It's funny that you brought up the hunting scenario because some of the greatest shots that I've ever seen in my life, my dad was pretty good in American trap, but I'd put him up against anybody, wing shooting. But vice versa. There are people that are excellent, play target shooters, but then you take them out to hunt, that it's all in their head, all of it in their head. - Jason, do you have any tips for maybe parents? - Yeah, I would say, like as a parent, you're the one that has a driver's license, can go to the range and ask questions. There's always, I feel like the outdoor world is, like a guy standing along a trout stream, taught me to trout fish, 'cause I'd been down through there with a spinning rod and caught a trout, he didn't move his feet and caught five. And I was like, I clearly need to figure out what this dude's doing with this fly rod. And he just helped me out, taught me how to do it. If you go to a range and ask these questions,

 somebody will help you out. Just like, you know, Sean's 10 shotgun shells can change somebody's life. If you go there, ask those questions, somebody will be generous and like, yeah, let's go out, let me show you how this is done and let me, and like we were talking, you can go buy a used 870 for-- - 250. - $250, all of a sudden you're going boom and clay pigeons are exploding. So, you know, just, you gotta jump in and try it out. But go to a range, figure it out, ask some questions there and watch people do it and then just learn. - Yeah. - That's probably about the easiest way to find a youth shooting team too. If you don't, if your kids high school doesn't have one, talk to a local gun range because if they have more than probably two trap fields at it, they've probably hosted some sort of high school events. - And we had kids on clay blisters, like here's how you hold a gun. We're starting from zero on some of them. - In my experience, and I just found like the outdoors community, the shooting community, is very welcoming. You know, it's like we all want to evangelize for the sport and for the lifestyle. And so I've never had an experience of someone, you know, not welcoming a newbie to clay. - I loved it so much when I was a kid. When I first had that first chance of stepping foot on a skeet field or a trap field, I loved it so much. Dad told me how much it was for a box of shells. I would go and take a flat shovel, one of those farm shovels and scoop, go to the end of where the shot fallout is, scoop it up, take it home, put it in a bucket, wash it. Put it out on paper and let it dry in front of a fan. That's how I had my shot. Then I would take plastic wads. - You recycle the wads too? - Recycle the wads. My dad whipped my kale. - That's right. No wonder you're in the shot. You make every one of them count. (laughing) - I took a pillowcase, put the wads in there and doubled it up and tied it in a knot and then threw it in the washing machine. He, oh, he was upset. Twice I ruined the washers because they'd come open and then the tabs would go in the agitator and everything. So then I think I bought, I wanna think back then, Alcan primers, they were the cheapest primers out there. Powder, I had to beg and plead Hodgdon powder in Shawnee Mission, Kansas. They sent me my powder for free. So I was loading a bag of shells for about a buck 25 and that's what I was using out there in the fields with the farmers and the birds. Couldn't afford the targets. So when I tell you it's a kind of a, there are some that can afford that, some that can't. I am not moaning, groaning or anything else about the way I was brought up to become an outdoorsman. It just made me a better understander of everything. - Wow, that's dedication right there. I love it. Well, guys, thank you for your time. Anything else you wanna add? How can people reach out to you? Anything like that? - Yeah, you can always get ahold of me through the National Collegiate Shooting Sports Athletic Association. Just look up collegiate shooting and it'll probably be the first thing that pops up along with the competing organization that we, one of the organizations has done the collegiate thing for 50 some odd years, that there was mismanagement. That's why I left. And then we started the new one where the competitors that are at our national championship with the collegiate level have qualified. They have had to earn it, which I think the lesson in life is we are not giving anything when we're an adult. We have to work for it.

 So, yeah, get ahold of me there. If you're at a local range here locally or wherever we're broadcast or when they click on the podcast, look me up. - Yep, and what was the name of that organization? - National Collegiate Shooting Sports Athletic Association, N-C-S-A-A. - N-C-S-S-A-A, rolls off the town. - You had to check it. - He's got his shirt on. - Across the room. - That's why I wear the shirt when I do these kind of things. So I can look down and make sure that it's right. - A little. Well, Sean, thank you for coming in. - Thanks for having me. - Guys, thanks for your time. If you have any questions, reach out to us. Thanks. Thanks for listening to TrophyCast. If you want to learn more about trophy properties and auction or want to buy or sell your own trophy property, please visit our website at trophypa.com. That's trophypasinpropertiesaasinauction.com. If you enjoy the show, make sure to follow or subscribe to us on your podcast player of choice. Also, we would really appreciate it if you would recommend us to a friend. If you have any questions or comments after listening to this episode, please message us at marketing@trophypa.com. Thanks again for listening. We'll be back with another episode soon.

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