Marksmen load up at Mallard Trap Gun Club.
By: Leon Tovey
MONROE You take a deep breath, ease the stock of the big gun into the crook of your shoulder (lowering your head to the sight at the same time) and shout, "pull!"
You watch for a moment as the Day-Glo orange disc arcs through the sky, swivel your torso to the right, find a spot just half-a-beat ahead of the target and exhale as you squeeze the trigger.
A .12-gauge shotgun makes a huge, earth-shattering sound; even through the sonic haze created by a pair of foam earplugs, the report of a gun that size surprises you, particularly given the lightness of the recoil. You hear it and you are absolutely convinced that something that noisy should destroy anything anywhere near it.
And then you if you happen to be me on the afternoon of April 10 look up in utter bafflement as the Day-Glo orange disc, completely unscathed, glides lazily to earth and shatters 70 yards away.
"That was a lot better," Steve Schechter told me after I’d fired at and missed my 14th or 15th shot. I can only assume he was referring to my form as opposed to my shooting.
Mr. Schechter, a NRA-certified shotgun instructor from Manalapan, is a regular shooter at Mallard Trap Gun Club. He started coming to the club, which is located on Monroe Boulevard, about 13 years ago and has taught both of his children to shoot there.
The club was founded by Georgiana Nero, an Africa-American woman who bought 60 acres of land in the township in the 1940s and opened up a blacks-only shooting club there. She desegregated the club at the behest of a friend in the 1950s and the Mallard Trap Gun Club was born.
When Ms. Nero died in 2002, she left the land to her daughter, Jackie Dejue, who still lets the club’s members come and shoot on Wednesdays and Sundays. Dennis Hughes, the club’s president, said there are currently about 10 active members of the club.
"We lost a couple members last year," Mr. Hughes said, pointing to a pair of clipped obituaries that hang on the faux-wood-paneled interior wall an old trailer that serves as the club’s office.
"We’ve picked up a few more a year ago, there were only six people in the club but we could use new blood," he added.
A big man with tattooed hands and an ever-ready smile, Mr. Hughes is a retired sheet-metal worker who’s been shooting at the club since 1985. He said that in addition to the club’s members, a number of irregulars and occasional visitors come to shoot particularly in the spring.
"We get Boy Scout troops working on shotgun shooting merit badges, folks from the retirement communities there was even a woman from Woodbridge who came in March with her kids," Mr. Hughes said. "She said taking the kids paintball shooting got too expensive."
Trap shooting has its origins in the live pigeon shoots of 18th-century England, when pigeons were released from "traps" (usually boxes, cages or even top hats) and shot in the act of taking off. As the sport grew in popularity on both sides of the Atlantic and the numbers of various species of pigeons declined (making them more expensive), shooters began to search for suitable inanimate objects to replace the live birds.
In the late 19th century, a Cincinnati man named George Ligowsky developed the first "clay pigeon" and modern trap shooting was born.
A round of American, or Down-the-Line trap (which is what the Mallard Club shoots), consists of 25 shots. A shooter takes five shots at each of five stations located in a 44-degree arc 16 yards from the trap house (a cinder-block bunker set in the ground, from which the targets are "thrown" at speeds of 50 to 60 mph by a device that resembles a pitching machine turned on its side).
The trick is that each target comes out of the trap house at a different and unknown angle, rises between 6 and 12 feet about 10 yards in front of the house, and travels between 50 and 55 yards before crashing to earth. Obviously, the farther a target travels, the more difficult it becomes to hit, so a shooter has to track the target, anticipate its flight path and fire within a few seconds of the target’s launch.
The sport bears some resemblance to skeet shooting, which has similar roots and also uses "clay pigeons," but there are myriad small distinctions. The simplest way to understand the difference, Mr. Hughes said, is that trap shooting is meant to simulate a game bird during take off, while skeet shooting is meant to simulate birds already in flight.
The sport rewards concentration and good timing above all else, as this reporter found out.
There were around 25 people at the club on the day I went (the first truly beautiful Sunday of spring), among them Mr. Schechter and his 16-year-old daughter, Bobbie.
Bobbie started shooting when she was 11 and, unlike most children and beginning trap shooters, she started out on a .12-gauge rather than a smaller gun, such as a .20-gauge.
Needless to say, she shoots very well. So I had no trouble taking her advice in addition to her father’s as I flailed my way through my first-ever round of trap.
"Keep your elbow up," she advised. "Where are you putting your face? Make sure you bring the gun up to your face and shoulder at the same time. Don’t bring it to your shoulder and then lower your face.
"And lean forward more," she added.
As I took my five shots at each station missing completely each time I realized there is far more art to shooting trap than I had originally believed.
I had assumed that a childhood spent killing jackrabbits and pheasants in rural eastern Oregon would more than qualify to me knock down a few clay discs they were Day-Glo orange, after all.
After missing my first five shots, I started to sweat.
After the first 10 I started to curse.
After I’d missed 20 shots I was willing to admit that those little Day-Glo discs were indeed an elusive form of prey.
Mr. Schechter laughed.
"We do it because it’s challenging," he said. "It takes patience, concentration and skill. We don’t even hunt. We’re animal lovers."
Like Mr. Schechter, many of the club’s members had different reasons for coming to the club than one might expect.
"It’s not like TV is it?" Warren Pasternack asked his 16-year-old son, Chad, as the two sat watching a group of shooters work its way through one of the club’s ranges.
Chad, a slightly built youth who seemed to know his way around firearms, had shot his first round of trap that day and the .20-gauge he’d been using had knocked him around some (though he still shot way better than I did). He mumbled that it was not, in fact, at all like television.
Dr. Pasternack said his goal in bringing Chad to the Mallard Club as well as to the Old Bridge Pistol and Rifle Club, where they also shoot regularly was to engender in his son a respect for the awesome power of firearms.
He pointed out the way each shooter kept his gun open, unloaded and pointed at the ground at all times except when shooting.
Gun safety is a big issue at Mallard Trap, Mr. Hughes said. There’s never been an accident at the club.
"And we’d like to keep it that way," he said. "We’ve got a million-dollar insurance policy, but we sure don’t want to use it."
The Mallard Trap Gun Club is open from 12 p.m. to 3:30 p.m. Sundays and from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. Wednesdays. Large groups can be accommodated by appointment by calling Mr. Hughes at (732) 521-3099 or by e-mailing [email protected].
The club charges $2.50 per singles round and $5 per doubles round for club members and $3.50 per singles round and $7 per doubles round for non-members. Anyone who shoots a perfect round gets a $1 discount. Reloaded shells are sold at the club, but each shooter or group must bring his, her or their own gun.
Children under the age of 18 are allowed to shoot, but must be accompanied by a parent or guardian.