Straight shooting and hard searching
By Tom Wiest | (wiest.tom@gmail.com)
The 2012 state championships for the Tennessee Scholastic Clay Target Program took place on June 21-26 at the Tennessee Clay Target Complex in Nashville. More than 1,200 middle and high school shooters competed in trap, skeet and sporting clays. Winners will go on to represent their state at the 2012 SCTP Nationals on July 17-21 at the World Shooting and Recreation Complex in Sparta, Ill.
Competitors are grouped in five divisions determined by age and experience: Varsity (V), Junior Varsity (JV), Intermediate Advanced (IA), Intermediate Entry (IE), and Rookie (R). The 2012 honorable mention for the East Tennessee teams follows.
The Jefferson County 4-H Patriot Shooters, a perennial powerhouse, had two teams take second and third in varsity sporting clays with scores of 274 and 268 out of 300. Hunter Rich was a High Over-All (HOA) runner-up in clays with 95 of 100 targets. In varsity skeet the Jefferson County team also took first (288 of 300).
JCHS had two shooters named to the All State team, Davis Rader for men’s sporting clays and Hunter Rich for skeet.
The Monroe County 4-H SCTP Shooters repeated last year’s excellent finish this year. In men’s sporting clays the JV team and the IA team each took first places, led respectively by Ben Smith’s 92 and Devin Jenkins’ 89. In women’s varsity sporting clays Tianna Sellin (91) and Chloe Darragh (87) earned HOA for the tournament and Sellin was named to the All State sporting clays team.
The East Tennessee Straight Shooters’ JV skeet team won first place (263), the IA skeet team took first (276) and the IA sporting clays team placed third (248). Seth Oaks and Peyton Horton earned HOA in skeet.
• As of July 1 there is a new law in effect in Tennessee aimed at controlling the transportation of wild hogs. The Tennessee General Assembly passed the law earlier this year and the Tennessee Department of Agriculture will enforce it. Basically the new regulations prohibit the movement of wild-appearing hogs that have not been state-inspected for diseases.
Wild hogs are riddled with diseases, especially pseudorabies and swine brucellosis, which endanger domestic hogs. Foraging wild hogs damage farmers’ crops to the tune of $1.5 billion every year, and the problem is growing.
Certain scofflaws have been trapping wild hogs and releasing them in other parts of the state to create new huntable herds. That is why the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency stopped sport hunting of hogs last year on public and private lands, but it allows private landowners to slaughter the hogs any way they can.
• If you use the Google search engine to shop online, be advised that Google has begun censoring certain products it considers not “family safe” and firearms and related items are on that list. The gun censoring is only done on the Google “Shopping” function where many people go to compare prices; at this time the general Google searches still have gun-related subjects.
Other not-family-safe items banned by Google Shopping include: ammunition, knives, vehicles, tobacco, and traffic devices such as radar scramblers.
One would think that Google would be strongly in favor of the free flow of information since the company faces strict censorship in China and other countries hostile toward freedom of speech. The question arises: How can a company that supports the First Amendment with such zeal be so hostile to the Second Amendment?
Google’s new policy raises barriers to one of the country’s strongest economic trends, the robust sales of firearms and ammunition, one of the true bright spots in the U.S. economy. Firearms and ammunition sales are at all-time highs, accounting for a 30.6 percent increase in jobs from 2008 through 2011 and an overall economic impact of nearly $32 billion to the nation.
This comes at a time when retailers and other online information resources have increased their content about firearms because of consumer demand. Fortunately consumers have other online services — http://Bing.com for one — to turn to for their price comparisons.
Tom Wiest welcomes news, questions and comments from readers. Contact him at (wiest.tom@gmail.com)
