Guns and clovers

Olympic-bound sharpshooter targets 4-H gun club

Published Sunday, May 4, 2008

By Brandon Evans

Sharpshooter Bret Erickson talks almost as fast as the lead travels from the barrel of his Italian-made shotgun.

The Nebraska-born shooting specialist is preparing to make his fourth trip to the Olympic games.

Erickson will compete in Olympic Trap, also known as international trap, in the summer games in Beijing. Erickson has already competed in the 1992, 1996 and 2004 Olympic games.

At 48, Erickson will be one of the oldest competitors in the Olympic games, but that only encourages someone with his attitude.

"Old age and treachery will beat youth and skill every time," Erickson said with a smile.

Despite preparing for the Olympic games in China, Erickson still finds time to volunteer his expertise every Tuesday. He works with kids from Wise, Montague and Cooke counties in the Montague 4-H Shooting Club.

Erickson trains and coaches the 4-H club at the Willawalla Creek Shooting Center in Montague County. The center, owned by the Wegger family, is found off a dusty, gravel road a few miles south of Saint Jo.

Roadrunners skirt back and forth across the road leading to the center almost as fast as the clay targets fly across the green pastures of the shooting range. There are only a handful of such shooting centers in the entire state of Texas, and all the people who train there agree that Willawalla is one of the best in the nation.

Because there are so few professional shooting centers in the state, most 4-H organizations don't have a shooting club.

Bobby Fenoglio started the Montague 4-H Shooting Club three years ago. It has grown from three to 24 members.

"I've been shooting my whole life," said Josh Andresen, 10, of Alvord. "It's been really good having (Erickson) teach us stuff, and he's the best in America at his game. And he's one of the best in the world."

The facilities also help the kids a lot.

"This place is designated as the first training center for the national team," Fenoglio said. "This is world class."

"This is something these kids can do for the rest of their lives," said Troy Andresen, Josh's father. "I'd been looking for a while for something like this for my kids."

"We're training these kids the same way guys train who are going to the Olympics," Fenoglio said.

Two of the 4-H shooting club members have already hit a perfect score of 25 clay targets in skeet shooting since joining the club.

But sending kids to the Olympics is not the primary reason for the 4-H club.

"I like to get kids to understand guns," Erickson said, "not just tell them that guns are bad."

"The main thing we teach is gun safety," Fenoglio said.

"The 4-H is about teaching gun safety and gun handling," Erickson said. "It's not about making all these kids into Olympic champs.

"Education is a big part of eliminating all the gun tragedies you see around the country, not outlawing them."

A child must be at least 8 years old and in the third grade to join the 4-H Shooting Club.

A lot of philosophy goes into teaching kids the art of hitting clays flying at 70 mph Erickson teaches the kids to let go and not worry about missing that last shot.

Stance, muscle memory and biomechanics also play a role. A level of core strength is also required. Hoisting a 10-pound shotgun while firing off hundreds of shots per day requires some serious stamina.

"Everything about my shooting has improved since I started training here," said Caleb Schlomach, 13, of Alvord. "I couldn't shoot anything at all before."

"This is a good wholesome environment for us," said Caleb's father Clay. "This opened up a whole new facet of shooting."

Shooting for a lifetime

"A week before my father died, he told me I still didn't have a real job," Erickson said.

For all of Erickson's adult life, he has made his way by shooting clays.

His father introduced him to American trap when he was 10 years old, but his professional shooting career started later by accident.

"I had just graduated college and an Army recruiter called looking for my brother, who had just finished high school," Erickson said. "He said, 'Well, since I got you on the phone, would you like to enlist.'"

By chance, the recruiter was able to entice Erickson to join the Army and serve in the U.S. Army Marksmanship Unit.

"It's amazing he knew so much about it," Erickson said. "There are more than 500,000 people in the Army and only 100 people in the Marksmanship Unit."

For a long time Erickson made his way as a military man, all the while competing in shooting tournaments around the globe as one of a handful of people on the National Team. He retired from the Army as a Sergeant First Class before moving to Cooke County in 2005 to work at the shooting center.

Erickson relies on an Italian-made Perazzi shotgun these days for shooting trap. He won the gun at the 1990 world championships in Moscow.

"They last a long time," he said of the model. "I've put at least 800,000 shells through it."

The story of how he won that gun is one of the most memorable to him in all his years of shooting.

"I was competing in the world championship in Moscow," he said. "We were still involved in the Cold War at the time. I was staying at a hotel on the Red Square when I got a call from my wife. She just had our first baby. I woke up the next day and placed first in the world tournament."

Erickson hopes his Olympic training doesn't turn out like last time.

In 2004, Erickson momentarily died while training in Georgia.

"I was training for two events that year," he said. "I felt dizzy while running sprints and the next thing I knew I was in the hospital."

Erickson suffered from a bifiscular block, which is an electrical malfunction in the heart. His pulse stopped and he started turning blue before friends loaded him onto an ambulance. He ended up receiving a pacemaker at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C.

Although his heart failure limited his Olympic training that year, simply competing after such an experience was more rewarding than a gold medal.

"Just to be there after that happened was a great experience," Erickson said. "It certainly gave me a new outlook on life."

Despite several Olympic appearances, along with numerous national and international first place finishes, Erickson has yet to bring home a medal from the Olympics.

"I'm gonna win a medal and retire," he said of his plans for this Olympic trip.