“Pull!”
A little clay pigeon is flung into the air followed by the sound of a carefully-aimed shotgun firing at and breaking the bird. Hundreds of such scenarios create a din of voices and gun fire. Scores are being yelled out at every station. However, it doesn’t phase senior Adam Culley. Instead, he’s focused and calm, thinking only about his next shot.
Culley is corporate sponsored for shotgun on the 4-H team and competes with the ROTC rifle team.
He joined the 4-H shotgun team after completing a shotgun course for a boy scouts merit badge. When he joined ROTC his freshman year at Rider, he signed up for the rifle team.
“I thought it’d be pretty fun so I joined,” Culley said. “Most people start out on the sporter rifle, and I did my first practice on it. Then my second practice freshman year, Colonel Kuhl gave me a precision rifle and said, ‘You’re on the precision team.’ I’ve been on that ever since.”
The two teams are complete opposites of each other because they use two different types of guns, yet Culley is on both. On the rifle team he shoots at a stationary target, but in the shotgun competitions there’s little clay pigeons that get thrown out of a machine and he must actively follow the target, trying to break it before it hits the ground.
“I’m kind of a mix between the two, which isn’t very common because shotgun people and rifle people don’t usually tend to get along very well,” Culley said. “Shotgun people think they’re better because they have a moving target. But I do prefer shotgun a little more. It’s more active.”
But Culley isn’t just an average shooter. He has corporate sponsorships with two firearm manufacturers, and after sending Oakley his scores multiple times, Culley was offered a sponsorship to get free sunglasses in exchange for promoting their product at his meets.
“Beretta has done a few things for me, and Remington, which is a big shotgun maker, but I also have Oakley, which everybody likes because I always get free Oakleys,” Culley said. “Most of my friends are really jealous about that one because they don’t really care about the shotguns and everything, but a pair of Oakleys, everybody likes.”
Not only does he sport sunglasses from his sponsors when he shoots, but he also has formed a few habits that he repeats before each shot.
“[In shotgun] there’s little plastic shells with a brass tip on the end, and on the brass it has the name of the company that manufactured it and the gauge,” Culley said. “I shoot a 12 gauge, Winchester AAs, and so whenever I put it in, I’ll turn it until I read ‘Winchester’ and then ‘AA’ across the bottom. I don’t know why, it’s just what I do. I actually have my lucky underwear also which is a pair of boxers that are four leaf clovers and say ‘Feeling Lucky?’ on them. I try to wear those as often as I can when I’m shooting.”
His luck and skill combined have many times gotten him a few shots away from winning prizes, as in the case of the Special 50s, a contest similar to the lottery in which the competitors pay an entry fee and attempt to shoot 50 birds in a row to win the whole pot.
“I almost got it one time,” Culley said. “I ran the first round and, when I got to the second round, I looked at my shotgun shell and it looked a little funny and so it kind of got into my head, ‘Is this going to misfire? Is it not going to work?’ Sure enough I missed the bird and then I ran the rest of them. I missed that one bird, and it kept me from winning which was a couple thousand dollars.”
Currently, Culley has his sight set on one specific prize that, for a couple years in a row, has barely evaded his reach.
“The district shoot is only trap, and they give out little medals and stuff, but the big prize, the high overall, is a belt buckle, and I’ve always wanted to win it,” Culley said. “Last year was my chance, but I didn’t get it. I got beat by one of my pretty good friends, actually. He scored two birds better than me. It made me a little upset, but I’ve still got this year.”
Culley’s passion for shooting comes to him naturally. His father shoots with him recreationally and both his mother and sister used to also.
“On the sporting clays, you’re out and you can talk and have fun,” Culley said. “[My dad] tends to coach me which is nice, but sometimes when I don’t want it, he gives it anyway and we get in a little tousle, but in the end we just laugh it off. I usually make fun of him because I shot better than he did. I’m very competitive. I always keep score just to mess with him. It brings us closer.”
No matter where he’s shooting or what’s going on around him, Culley finds a way to block it all out. In fact, he says shooting relaxes him.
“It’s kind of my escape from everything,” Culley said. “I go out there and just kind of forget about everything else and zone in on what I need to. Everything leaves my head except for focusing on the target, so I guess you could call it my little paradise, my escape from the world.”