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By CJ Songer,
Women and guns? I can do that! I knew Kay Miculek from watching her compete at several of the International Steel Challenge matches that are held annually in Southern California, so I'd have had a good notion of her shooting abilities even if I weren't already aware that she's won umpteen national championships. Kay is a quietly composed woman, very practical and down-to-earth, but you should see her when she's off to the side, goofing around juggling. (No, seriously, folks-juggling. Little hackysack balls and scarves. I have pictures.) Julie Goloski is another of my favorite clowns, and I mean that in the absolute best sense. She's a top-notch competitor, an excellent shot, and she's intimidatingly attractive in pictures and in person. Fortunately, I've seen her moon-walk. I didn't know Lisa Munson before this class other than by reputation, but that reputation assured me that she'd be dynamite in this group. The basic premise behind the class is that at the United States
Practical Shooting Association (USPSA) national championships
several years ago, Kay started talking about the concept of getting
a strong team of female shooters together to train for the Debbie Ferns has a lot of energy. She whirlwinds around, cracking a joke here, making a self-deprecating remark there. She likes to dress up in pink and call herself Princess-"What, clean my own guns?!"-and has a hoot-load of stories about the instructors she's disconcerted while hot on the trail of shooting enjoyment. ("See, it would be really more helpful if you'd shine the flashlight on the targets in here that you want me to shoot.") Debbie attended that first Ladies Camp down in Louisiana while she was conceiving a book she's since published, called Babes With Bullets (see the little blurb at the end of this article), and she persuaded Kay, Julie, and Lisa to bring their training to Arizona so that a couple of her girl-gang shooters/babes from the book could more easily partake in it. Hence, the Babes With Bullets camp at Gunsite last November. Rather than sharing travel-trailers this time, though, the twenty-some ladies who gathered for the class stayed in the luxurious instructor quarters at Gunsite-two full-sized houses with fully-operable bathrooms, kitchens, living rooms and bedrooms, located on the property not far from the ranges. (Your Intrepid Reporter opted for journalistic integrity, however, and took a hotel room in nearby Prescott. Hey, I didn't want to be corrupted, okay? And I need my hot showers. Besides which, I gather there wasn't a lot of actual sleeping going on. After one of the parties, seven or eight of the women were apparently banished to a closet to carry on with their talking and giggling till all hours because they were making too much noise for the rest. I didn't get the whole story, which is probably a blessing, but there's now a Sub-Gang of Girls from this group called the Seven Weird Sisters. The Closet Society? Something like that.)
There was camaraderie. There was rivalry. There was a lot of fun shooting. The Three Caballeras set the tone by kidding around and improving each other's stories, but they obviously had a lot of respect for each other and the sport, as well as for the ladies they were teaching. After getting everybody up to speed on safety and shooting the first day, the second and third days were pretty much devoted to competition scenarios. The class was working on Gunsite's Hanneken Range, which has an extra bay off to the right, so Julie took a third of the gals over there while Kay and Lisa split the remaining students into two groups and ran them through side-by-side timed exercises on the main range. Ah, the thrill of a buzzer! The agony of a jam. The joy when people behind you are cheering because you just had a great run! Along the way, red dot sights failed, and others were lent; handguns and related equipment were offered and borrowed; lubes were discussed and shared. Bandaids were plentiful, as was sunscreen and complaints about muscles nobody had previously realized they'd had, so you know those were some blistering, hard-working days. And yet, come sundown, well.the joy of being in a Ladies Camp is that everyone (except, of course, your Intrepid Reporter) was staying right there on the premises, a mere two-minute ride away.
(The Intrepid Reporter will reveal no more of any putative goings-on involving Marines, wild parties, and the possible exchange of shirts for favors, but bribes and/or blackmail payments can be sent to her in care of this magazine)
Debbie Ferns' book, Babes With Bullets, is available from her website: www.BabesWithBullets.net Look for Part 2 of W&G's Gunsite experience in the April online edition.
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You know, some things
are just right up my alley. When the email came in last year,
asking if I'd be willing to go to Gunsite (the renowned shooting
school in Arizona) to cover a Babes With Bullets class for women
that was going to be taught by Kay Miculek, Julie Goloski and
Lisa Munson, well, heck, I must have hesitated for all of about
a second. (Okay, I'm sorry-that's me, exaggerating. I actually
thought about it, carefully and conscientiously, for at least
a minute.)
USPSA World Championships. More
than a few of the women there were interested, Smith & Wesson
came onboard as a sponsor, and voilà, Kay's "Ladies
Camp" was born. That first camp took place at Kay and Jerry
Miculek's Shootout range in Princeton, Louisiana, in April of
2004. About two dozen ladies shared travel-trailers and bunkhouse
quarters there, while they spent five days on the range fine-tuning
their competitive shooting skills, culminating in a LadySmith
match with prizes. Everybody went home happy, but not before
they'd gotten Kay's promise that she'd do it again.
Meanwhile, back
on the range, it was three full days of shooting. The Princess
was resplendent in pink-flamed holsters and matching accessories,
but she was also busy lending out extra magazines and holders,
and making sure that everybody's equipment was working properly.
One or two of the women hadn't ever been shooting before, and
several of them had previously only shot long guns, but everyone
was interested in making the most of their time in the class.
When you have a trio of famed competition shooters as instructors,
it just naturally brings the learning curve way up. A couple
of the already-proficient gals on the line had been telling me
that they'd come because they felt they'd hit a plateau in their
competition shooting; they'd been feeling stuck and frustrated,
and couldn't figure out how to improve their scores, but a little
tip here from Lisa, a tweak or two there from Kay, a bit of advice
and some one-on-one time with Julie, had them all grinning and
hitting the targets better, they said the last day, than they
ever had. I could tell!
You simply have to
throw your stuff into a rear seat, cram into whoever's handy
vehicle, hurry back to the shower, and then all clean and nice,
you gather around for the evening meal-a compendium of vegetables,
lasagna, salad, whatever. After that, replete, sated and satisfied
and tired to the bone, you sit in the living room chatting and
eating cookies (ooh, fresh from the oven), rehashing the day
and toasting each other and generally having a heck of a time.
We did have a glitch-well, not quite a glitch. More like a ripple
in the all-girl-all-the-time waters. It turns out that just up
the road from us there was a small group of Marines) Whoa, yes,
indeed, Ladies Camps can be fun!
Information regarding
future Ladies Camps (now being called LadySureShot Camps) can
be found on Kay Miculek's website at Bang, Incorporated Firearms
Training: http://www.bang-inc.com
