Here are ways to practice your shooting skills before hunting season

Shooting is a degenerative skill. Whether you favor a bow, handgun, rifle or shotgun, your ability to shoot accurately declines with lack of practice. It’s not the gun, scope or cartridge that changes, it’s the operator’s comfort and familiarity with the shooting tools.

That said, shooters need to make a special effort to head to the range this summer and not postpone practice until hunting season arrives this fall.

Whether you choose to plink metal targets, shoot holes in paper or bust flying clay, practicing marksmanship reinforces gun safety and comfort of handling firearms and establishes muscle memory that will carry over into “meat on the table” outings. It’s also fun if you shoot with family and friends.

There are decades-old fish and game or rod and gun clubs in many Maine towns. Some larger communities boast privately owned gun clubs with indoor and outdoor ranges for public use to practice archery or firearm shooting.

Some have trap and skeet fields and a couple boast sporting clays courses. Most have bench-rest shooting ranges of at least 100 yards. A few clubs feature ranges at 200 and 300 yards for big-game rifles and long-range varmint guns, and some even feature a short 50-yard range for .22-calibers and handguns.

If you travel to southern Maine, a few outdoor ranges are even open during the winter, except for days with very inclement weather. There are indoor shooting clubs that operate year round.

There are also a myriad of pastures, farm fields, wood lots and gravel pits where landowner permission is usually granted to safely set up some targets.

Any selected location needs to be away from houses, farm buildings and machinery, roads, ATV and hiking trails. It’s also essential to have a raised backdrop like a hill or thick woods to stop bullets from going astray.

To this end, Aroostook County agricultural land abounds with hundreds of gravel pits and old farm dump areas, every shape and size. From years of personal experience, I’ve found these high-walled enclosures to be safe shooting locales.

Whatever location you chose for a plinking session, leave it in better shape than you found it. For example, don’t use glass containers as targets. It’s dangerous and leaves glass shards. Pack out your cans, plastic jugs and paper targets. Pick up your brass or shotgun shells, and if you use wooden frames or cardboard backdrops, take them back home with you.

While I like to fire a few rounds from my hunting rifles to stay comfortable and familiar, I’d much rather enjoy the reduced cost of ammunition and milder recoil and noise of my .22-caliber rifle or handgun. The same basics for mounting, steadying, sighting, breathing and trigger control are utilized and will easily transfer to larger hunting guns when the time comes.

For shotgunners who want to powder a few fast flying clay pigeons, it’s not necessary to visit a commercial site. A simple hand thrower will suffice or a multi-bird mechanical machine that can be staked into the ground or attached to a vehicle bumper or trailer hitch offers variety and advanced wing shooting challenges.

Prices range from $10 for a hand-held thrower upward to $100 or $200 for a good, multifunctional and featured field machine. Then all you need is a secluded field, a box of clay birds, some shot shells and a friend or two for some competition.

Some scattergunners use the 12-gauge they hunt with, but I opt for a 20-gauge or even a 28 or .410. The youngsters and smaller-framed women will like these lighter shotguns as well, and busting and dusting clay birds is a bit more of a challenge with the lighter loads.

There are plenty of reusable commercial plinking targets for sale at very reasonable prices, such as metal animal silhouettes that clang and fall over when struck, or spin, or even a few that fall over, then reappear.

Newer paper targets feature high visibility colors that appear when a bullet strikes, and even have self-sticking dots to cover holes for reuse. I’m still happy with a package of paper plates, and tape or a staple gun to secure them in place.

For the kids, it’s fun to blow up colored balloons, fill a couple of plastic bottles with colored water and once in a while I’ll take a tomato or carrot from the garden or an apple from my tree and hang it from a string for an extra challenge.

It’s all fun and there’s an underlying teaching experience for future hunters.