Periodic Editorial on the State of Hunting and the Hunting Industry Today
Unnecessary Grandparenting
I got an e-mail newsletter, Target Talk, today, from the NSSA-NSCA (National Skeet Shooting Association-National Sporting Clays Association; www.nssa-nsca.com). Its top headline read, “Grandma Takes Aim At Shooting Title.” Okay, I was a little interested in seeing what a lady, in what surely had to be her elderly years, was doing with a gun to garner such top billing in a mass e-mail missive.
I was duped. “Grandma” it turns out, was a 53-year-old lady from Louisiana, one Annette Aysen. Fifty-three. Fifty-freakin’-three! Since when is that old? The word “grandma” used to bear the notion of a woman well into her sixties, and more likely her seventies or eighties, someone bent and gray and definitely moving at a slower pace.
Annette Aysen is not moving at a slower pace. In fact, given the picture I saw attached to the original article—Target Talk lifted its headlining piece from the Daily Comet online, a paper apparently published in Lafourche Parish, Louisiana—Annette Aysen could pass for someone in her forties. She’s a dark brunette, with a fairly unlined face and pretty blue eyes highlighted with eyeliner and mascara. She looks as capable of handling a gun—or a boiling pot on a kitchen stove or an SUV on a snowy road or a Honda push mower over her home’s lawn—as any other middle-aged woman I know. So why the titillating use of “grandma,” when, clearly, the article’s subject didn’t fit the image that word is meant to conjure up?
We should not be stunned, in this day and age, that a woman in her early fifties is capable of handling a gun in competition at the national level. We should give her the praise and recognition she deserves for continuing to win in such venues, just as we list the names and placements of anyone else who competes successfully at large, prestigious shooting events.
Truly, Annette has worked hard for her wins. In fact, according to the Daily Comet article, she’s been at this shooting thing of hers for some thirty years—hell, she’s sponsored by Smith & Wesson! So why would the paper heading its article as if Annette was some amateur geriatric who might have suddenly picked up her first gun and found a knack for punching holes in paper? Such a headline is just plain misleading. Does the fact that Annette has lived long enough to give birth to children who have also grown old enough to have given birth lend anything to her ability to shoot accurately? Of course not.
Seriously, I’d have been more impressed if the headline had said something like “Local Markswoman Claims 4th National Title In 2009.” Yes, the headline the paper provided got me to read the article, which is, of course, the point of any headline. But I feel like I got suckered in, kind of like I stood in line for a Black Friday special after Thanksgiving and found, when I got inside the doors, there were only three of the fabulous item I wanted available nationwide—and none at the store I was at. It’s just wrong, it pissed me off, and you can be pretty sure I’ll never take any headline from the Daily Comet seriously again. Its journalists have no integrity.
Of course, maybe in Lafourche Parish they’re still that backwards. Maybe they’re really not over women getting the vote, and so a “granny” with a gun is a big deal to the local. But I don’t think that’s it. I think it’s just the trite and automated application of 1950s thinking in the year 2009, the unthinking promotion of the idea that women, and elderly women in particular, are somehow weaker at everything. In my opinion, it’s high time we got over that.
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Afterthought
Let it be said for all of you reading this who do not know me personally, that I am as far from a flaming feminist as I can get and still be a feminine (and, for the record, heterosexual) female. Sure, I believe in equal pay and all that, but you won’t find me holding a rally about it. I actually like some boundaries and separation between the sexes. Not all the time, but sometimes, maybe even sometimes often. Most sports, for instance, I wholeheartedly recognize as activities that generally require a separation of the genders if the playing field is to be level. Women can’t lift as much weight as men, we can’t shot-put as far, and, yes, we probably need to hit our golf balls off the girlie tees.
But this is a blog about shooting, not triathlons. One hardly needs to be an athlete to compete well in the shooting sports; a quick glance at all the beer guts in the men’s divisions of a sporting clays shoot or single-action competition should tell you that. Now, I’m not saying that being in shape doesn’t or can’t help one’s shooting abilities—being in good shape can help most any activity. But let’s be honest, move-mount-shoot, drawing from a holster, and shooting prone bull’s-eye are hardly feats that require hours in the gym or a low body fat percentage to be successful at. And, so, in that vein, for the shooting sports at least, I fail to see why we need to have a separation of the sexes in competition at all. It’s time we were done with such antiquated practices when it comes to our guns.
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A Bone To Pick
Annette Aysen is a competitive handgun shooter who apparently specializes in USPSA revolver competitions. Last time I checked—and I’m a Life Member of the NSCA, so I should know—the NSSA-NSCA was an organization for competitive shotgun shooters.
Now, I’m all for the cross-promotion of shooting activities and encouraging anyone and everyone who desires so to get involved in the shooting sports, but if I wanted to read about a competitive handgun shooter, female or otherwise, I’d read the news releases from the USPSA, the NRA, or other competitive handgun organizations, not a newsletter from my competitive shotgun organization. In other words, I subscribe to Target Talk to learn about what competitors in the sporting clays, skeet, trap, and FITASC fields are doing, not other shooting sports.
Pay attention, Target Talk. As both a competitive shooter and a professional editor who has been a part of the shooting and hunting industry for nearly twenty years, if you want to talk about other shooters in other disciplines, fine, but put such information in a sidebar that should plainly show its content is not about shotgunning and the clay bird shooting sports. Otherwise, you’re wasting my time.
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Shotgunning Goes Apple
Since I pretty much just slammed the December 8, 2009 version of Target Talk, and since my mother told me never to say anything if I didn’t have something nice to say (oops, too late), I did find a tidbit in the newsletter that was pretty cool and needed sharing.
Target Talk, borrowing from www.AmmoLand.com, notes that the new ClayTracker Sporting Clays Application has earned a spot on the iTunes “What’s Hot” list. Download the ap for $19.99 onto your iPhone or iPod Touch, and not only can you and your buddies keep track of your round when a puller isn’t available and without a clumsy piece of paper and a little tiny golf pencil, you can keep track of percentages, too. For now the app is useful for scoring sporting clays courses, but the makers anticipate additional applications for skeet, FITASC, and trap in the near future. Love it! Go to www.ClayTracker.com.
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