It’s not all about being top gun
Western shooters enjoy camaraderie of rifle
KIRKWOOD — When Jimmie Perrin is looking to impress a girl, he’ll point to his black Subaru.
“I’ll tell ’em I race autocross,” Perrin said. “Everyone wants to be a race car driver, right?”
The 28-year-old from Kenmore stays away from mentioning his other hobby.
“That I shoot a gun is a hard hurdle to overcome,” Perrin said. “I don’t really tell people right away because I don’t want to scare anybody. If you’ve never been around it, you’re scared.”
Perrin, who won bronze in the 3-position rifle team competition Friday and has won 30 medals over the last 14 Empire State Games, is one of more than a dozen locals representing the Western region in everything from skeet-shooting to rapid-fire pistol contests.
They are all quite normal folks. Lisa Fletcher, 50, who competed in the open women’s air pistol event Friday, is a teacher’s aide in Newfane. Lockport’s Debra Hahn, 39, is an English teacher at Newfane High School. And Robert Belko, 19, who won bronze with Perrin, is a sophomore at the University of Akron.
Yet they have a hobby that makes them anything but normal in the eyes of even their closest friends.
“Working in a school, it’s not something I always bring up,” Hahn said.
“People have no idea what I do,” Belko said. “They think we’re in camouflage and walking through the woods.”
Perrin showed that to be false Friday at the Broome County Sportsman’s Association. The games were held in a forest clearing in this outpost about 15 miles west of Vestal. And Perrin wore a $1,000 canvas shooting suit and flat-soled shoes to keep his joints stable, peered into a high-priced scope between shots and fired a .22-caliber long target rifle.
For good measure, he also wore a viking helmet.
“It’s my psychological advantage,” Perrin said, laughing. “Unfortunately, you have to shoot well with that advantage.”
Good thing, then, that it’s not always about the results for local sharpshooters.
Belko, who started out years ago shooting his BB gun at backyard targets, said he enjoys the rush of shooting competition. And Fletcher, speaking at a postshoot tailgate outside Binghamton Rifle Club, said she enjoys the camaraderie of events.
Hahn never could understand that attraction to guns as a kid. Her father was a cop, but she associated guns with killing animals and violence.
“I thought, ‘Who would want to do that?’ ”
Then, her husband introduced her to shooting as a sport, and Hahn changed her mind.
After the air pistol event, in which competitors fired their CO 2-powered air pistols 60 times at a target 10 meters away, Hahn said shooting is “just such a rush.”
“It’s hard to explain,” said Fletcher, who has been shooting competitively since 1996. “Your heart’s racing. And when you hit the target, and you see a 10 [score], it’s a huge rush.”
The shooters lament that limited accessibility and an increasing stigma attached to guns have led to the sport’s steady drop in popularity.
At the Kirkwood shooting facility, tucked in the woods at the end of a gravel road, there were 14 spectators seated behind the shooters.
“It’s fun when you’re doing it,” said Mike Spore, the vice president of the Broome County Sportsman’s Association. “But it’s like watching paint dry.”
Then there’s the stereotype of shooting as a “redneck sport,” as Fletcher said, and guns being viewed only as a weapon.
At Iroquois, where Perrin coached the rifle team through last season, the shooting range used to be at the school. Now, it’s off-site. Other schools have eliminated their shooting programs.
Still, Perrin said competitive shooting will always have a place.
“Some people are frightened, and I understand that,” he said. “But it’s a good thing. It attracts the non-traditional athlete, the kid who might not play football or basketball. Anybody can do it and have fun.”
