More Shooting (Quick Review of Gatlinburg Sportsman’s Club)
So I have a really exciting life. I have expanded my activities from working, eating, and sleeping, to working, eating, sleeping, and scaring clay pigeons (occasionally hitting them!) So once again, just a short post about my weekend of shooting. Emmett and I went to the John Sevier Hunters Education Center. They are closed the first weekend of every month. That’s there as much to be a reminder for me as to anyone else who’s thinking of going there. This is at least the second time I’ve gone up there and been welcomed by a locked gate.
(I’m kind of writing this next part as an entry for “what I did today”, and partially as a “review” in case someone looking for a place to shoot around the Pigeon Forge area finds this and wants to know more)
Thankfully people in TN must like to shoot a lot because there are no less than 3 other ranges within a “convenient” driving distance of us. Emmett and I decided to try a new range we’d never been to before that is between Pigeon Forge and Gatlinburg. Gatlinburg Sportman’s Club is normally a members-only range, however, on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday afternoons, the clay, trap, skeet, and sporting clay ranges are open to the public. No “range fee”, but their sporting clay prices are close to double the affordable $5/25 targets at JSHEC at $20/50 or $35/100 for sporting clays and just a dollar more for trap at $6/25 targets.
Getting to GSC is pretty straightforward. It is located on King Branch Road which is directly off of the Scenic Parkway (441) between Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge. King Branch is well marked, and following that road for about a mile, Gatlinburg Sportsman’s Club is well marked with a large green sign on the left.
Note: Do NOT take a lowered sports car or something with bald tires. The gravel drive is quite smooth and any sedan well make it up just fine, but the grade is very steep in some areas and my essentially brand new Goodyear Eagle GT’s on my Kia were having trouble getting up a few areas.
After going through the gate, there are a couple of splits, just follow the gravel drive up the hill watching for signs for the Clay/Shotgun range. There is somewhat limited parking, I am not sure if they have “overflow” somewhere or not.
GSC has a some really great features. They have 3 fields they can setup for trap or sporting clays, and their “main” field has two nice trap houses for skeet. There seemed to be some younger people doing some training on the skeet field when we got there, so Emmett and I went to the lower field where they were shooting sporting clays and we ran through a 50 round set followed by 25 traps.
The sporting clay trajectories are significantly more challenging than the sporting clay field at JSHEC, and I did quite poorly, but it was still lots of fun to practice. I think a longer gun with a modified or full choke would help a lot. My 20″ open choke barrel is just WAY too open to hit the clay pigeons at the GSC range. JSHEC’s is much closer in, and can be handled with a short gun like mine much more easily. Also practice. Even given a longer gun, I still think I would have been below 50% on the sporting clays. I’m used to a nice stationary circle target with my rifle. It’s hard to mentally put together a shot while having to compensate for a high speed moving target.
Lastly, but almost most important, the staff at the range is really great. They’re helpful, and willing to take as much time as you need to explain anything you’d want to know. I’ve never really seen an Over/Under up close so he picked up one of their rental guns and explained how they worked, what you could change on them for a better fit, etc. I think next time I’m there I might rent one of the O/U guns to see if I like it. The balance felt a lot better than my Mossberg for that kind of shooting. Felt steadier with the long barrel. *shrug*
Anyhow, once again, no really big lesson learned with today’s shooting. Just found another nice place to shoot, and got some more practice in. And still wanting another shotgun more than ever now.