Licence Limbo
You’ve finished your safety course, but you don’t have your licence yet. What now?
From the day you finish your safety course with Range Arts to getting your firearms licence it will be at absolutely minimum (if you’re very lucky) 4-5 months. It could well be longer than that.
So what do you do with those 5 months of waiting? How can you stay excited about this new hobby you’re entering into, be it target shooting, hunting, or collecting? Obviously you can’t go buy or shoot without a licence, but is there some other way of using that anticipatory energy to get set up? Yes there is!
Start a Path
Whether you want to hunt or go out to a range and start target shooting, there is a lot to learn. Researching about the path you want to take is an important first step. For example, if you start with hunting and If you don’t already have someone in your circle to take the lead and show you the way, you have a bit of figuring out to do. Start with getting your hunting license. You need to complete the course before you can buy any permits to go hunting.
Next you need to figure out what you want to hunt. A good place to start is small game like pheasant or grouse, rabbits and such. If you want something bigger, you have two seasons a year for turkey and bear, there is a fall deer, elk, and moose season, and waterfowl like ducks and geese all fall. Each type of species has its own skills to develop and gear you need to buy.
What to Buy?
Now that you have some idea of what you want to do, you should invest in some quality gear. You want to pick the right firearm for the right job, and pick the right ammunition for what you plan to do.
We always recommend a .22LR rifle to start. They are a great jumping-off point no matter what you want to do, as they are phenomenal at developing your skills. Stance, Breathing, Aim, Trigger Control, and Follow-through are all essential to become accurate with a .22lr. The small bullet weight and the minimal recoil make it very beginner-friendly and help in preventing the formation of a flinch, and if you manage to shoot well it will be a very accurate gun.
If you don’t focus on your fundamental skills, you will struggle. It will be very hard to be consistent and you might get frustrated. Slow down, think about your shooting fundamentals, and get consistent and accurate. Check back to our video on rifles, and we have some suggestions on .22s for you.
Shotguns are the way to go for a lot of your hunting, especially birds. The variety is endless and you can spend as little or as much as you want. A cheap pump action with a synthetic stock and fixed chokes, or a beautifully carved, ornate break action for the price of a car, you can have it all. If you look back at our shotgun video, we have a couple of great recommendations.
Where to buy?
Now that you are getting some ideas on what to buy, it’s time to figure out where to buy. Now, we do have to shamelessly plug that we are working on a store and are ever closer to opening. We would love you all to keep coming back and shopping with us, but some of you may not want to wait, or we might not be local to you.
Shopping online always solves any issues you might have around proximity. Take a quick google search, and you will be surprised to see that there are a lot more stores around you than you would think. Shopping somewhere regularly and getting to know the staff might never end up giving you any discounts but will give you some reliable information. A lot of stores have online shopping as well.
With a little luck we’ll have our store up and running in a few months!
Where to Shoot?
You need to be good with your gun, so join a range or find some space to go practice. Some of you may have heard that joining a range is hard and that is not quite true. Through your googling, you will find two broad categories of ranges – gun clubs and gun ranges.
Gun clubs are great! They are community-oriented, have lots of shooting events they host, and tend to be cheaper to join. The only problem is they are very difficult to join. Becoming a member of a gun club can feel impossible. They have waitlists (up to 2 years sometimes!!!), so you’re left waiting and hoping. The easiest way to get into one of the exclusive clubs is simple, nepotism! Know the right people and all of a sudden membership will open up to you. That isn’t great news, I know, but there is hope. Go to events or competitions. Often shooting events are open to the public, to non-members, and even non-shooting guests. So look at the website, take a look at Practiscore, and keep an eye out for events or practice matches that sound interesting to you and email the match director. Go watch, maybe even join in and make some friends and soon you’ll be through that door.
Gun ranges, on the other hand, are not so exclusive. They tend to be easy to join, have tons of lanes to shoot, and have lots of members you can make friends with. The only downside is they tend to be pricier. Gun Ranges will almost always have an open membership roster, and you can often sign up online.
If a gun range doesn’t float your boat and you want to lone wolf it on some private or public land, you absolutely can. You just need to be sure of two simple things, is it legal and is it safe to shoot? So how do you figure that out? Well, safety is straightforward. Make sure you know where your bullets end up – are they leaving the property? Do you have a solid backstop to catch every projectile? Lots of people and rangers use a dirt berm, essentially a small mountain of earth you shoot into. It catches and keeps each projectile and you don’t have to worry too much. Legal is also straightforward. Ask someone, not just anyone but a bylaw officer or your local police department. A lot of times a quick call into the non-emergency local number of your police station will yield you all the answers you need. Be polite and let them know what you plan to do, and they will sometimes even offer advice or info on great spots to hunt or shoot.
Where Can you find more training opportunities?
Practice is great, but if you have no idea what you are doing, it can feel like a waste of time and ammo. Getting some direction on how to train and where to spend your effort is key. There is a lot out there on the internet, and sifting through it all to figure what makes sense or works for you is hard. Take your time look at the style of shooting you want to do and find some pros in the field. They will often have great advice.
The other option is in-person training. A lot of ranges will have training programs, to help you develop skills and give you some direction in how you train. The problem tends to be that a lot of these courses are harder to find and often not advertised to non-members. If you start looking on your social feeds, or online for local instructors teaching things you want to learn, you can start to direct your training and take courses with them, even if you aren't a member of the range hosting the course.
We don’t want to promote anyone in particular but google, "Shooting instructors near me“, “Shooting range training/courses“ etc. and some should come up.
Completing a firearms safety course is just the first step on the journey to becoming a skilled and responsible gun owner. Spend some time thinking and doing research to figure out what you actually want to do next.