This Young Shooter is a ‘Natural’
Minnesotan Won the World Championship

By Tori J. McCormick

Pull!

When Gregg Wolf’s eyes lock on the run-away orange pigeon, when his cheek meets the wooden stock of his over-and-under shotgun and when he finally squeezes the trigger, the result -- a plume of pulverized clay -- seems preordained by a higher power.

“He really doesn’t miss too often,” says Dave Wolf, Gregg’s father. “Actually, it’s a little surprising when he does.”  

But target shooting is an ecumenical sport, and Wolf’s rise in the competitive universe of sporting clays is more like watching the budding career of a soon-to-be transcendent professional athlete.

Put another way, Gregg Wolf, you could say, is the sporting clay’s version of Roy Hobbs, the fictitious baseball slugger immortalized in cinema for tape-measure home runs.

He’s a natural.

A tall and lanky drink of water, Wolf, of Jordan, Minn., a Twin Cities suburb, is painfully modest and recoils at even the rumor of a superfluous adjective being spoken in his direction. Still, excellence cannot hide -- not on the big screen, and certainly not in real life.

Simply put, Wolf is one of the premiere sporting clays competitors in the world, a 22-year-old kid who has won sanctioned events at every level -- in the United States and Europe. And he has the hardware -- trophies, medals, certificates, ribbons and patches, you name it -- to prove it.

“We have stuff all over the place,” said Dave, of his sons’ shooting awards.

    Perhaps most impressively, Wolf has also burnished his mark in the history books. He is the first American shooter to win the prestigious World FITASC Sporting Clays Championship, the international version of the sport.

     Asked once what it was like to win the 1994 event in France, Gregg, as understated as a school librarian, said: “Pretty neat.”

Pretty neat, indeed. 

Although Gregg is young by contemporary standards (he just turned 22), he is considered a seasoned competitive shooter, with more than a decade of experience under his belt. Still, many of the shotgunners against whom he competes are decades older and have far more experience.

To which Gregg says: “Either you can shoot, or you can’t. It’s pretty simple, I guess.” 

Gregg’s first brush with sporting clays came at age 9, after which he became a regular at a local sporting-clays club, where his father was a member. A year later, he began shooting competitively, traveling throughout the United States and Europe. Throughout the years, Gregg and his father, who travels with Gregg to tournaments, have logged thousands of miles to events across the United States. They also hunt together regularly, and more often than not make an autumn pilgrimage to North or South Dakota (sometimes both) to hunt pheasants and waterfowl. “We have a great time,” said Dave. “We both love to hunt ducks and pheasants.”

Today, Gregg’s shooting schedule is less hectic than in years past. Life has conspired against it. He’s busy learning the ropes of the family business (Gregg’s father owns a Ford dealership, which has been in the family 50 years) and consequently can’t devote as much time to competitive shooting. “I still shoot quite a bit, but not as much as I used to,” said Gregg, who in March will compete in a tournament in Atlanta, Georgia.  “I still like the competition a lot, but by the end of the shooting season in September, I’m pretty burned out. I haven’t picked up a shotgun since the hunting season. I’ve been pretty busy working.”

Growing in popularity across the United States, sporting clays simulate as much as possible shooting conditions while hunting. Some are overhead shots, similar to on-the-wing waterfowl or upland birds. Others skip across the ground, in attempt to mimic a running cottontail. Examples abound. The round clay targets, which come in as many as six sizes, are thrown mechanically from trap houses, many of which are hidden. All are in a natural setting.

According to Gregg, the international version of sporting clays is much more difficult than typical American courses or competitions. The shots are farther and faster, and the targets come from seemingly all angles and heights. During a tournament, very few throws are repeated. 

“The courses are much, much harder,” said Gregg, who has made the National Sporting Clays Association All-America team for several years running and has won the National FITASC Championship three out of the last five years.  “It’s a real challenge. But I like it.”

What makes a great sporting clays shooter? 

The profile of a sporting-clays champion, say industry officials and others, typically hinges on three personal attributes: DNA, desire and discipline. Gregg’s father says his son is fortunate to have all three.

“Gregg has tremendous eyesight, reflexes and the mental makeup to focus solely on the task at hand -- breaking targets,” said Dave. “He’s not very outgoing, but he’s very determined and very committed.

“Gregg is a very modest kid,” added his father. “Sometimes his success is hard on him. He almost feels bad about winning so much. But he’s always very gracious, whether he wins or loses.”

Most competitive shooters also go through a maturation process -- the birth (learning how to shoot under pressure), the flowering (the period in which the shooter puts it all together) and the withering of capacities (when age slows reflexes, diminishes eyesight and saps desire). “In many respects, competitive sporting clays is a young man’s sport,” said Dave. “But Gregg is still in his prime.”

Then there are the intangibles. In Gregg’s case there’s but one  -- his trusty and loyal boom stick. Call it the Old Reliable.

For the last nine years, Gregg has shot the same Beretta over-and-under shotgun. God knows how many rounds he has fired out of it, a bit of calculus for which mainframe computers were designed. For his part, Gregg won’t even hazard a guess at the number. “I have no idea,” he said, saying only that he shoots roughly 1500 targets as a tune up just prior to a tournament.

The Old Reliable has 32-inch ported barrels, and its internal parts have been rebuilt five times. Super glue and orange electrical tape hold the shotgun’s oft-cracked stock together. Old Reliable has seen better days, Gregg admits.

“I’ve tried to switch shotguns, but I always seem to come back to my old one because it has been so reliable over the years,” said Gregg, who says he uses a semi-auto for duck hunting. “I just haven’t been able to find anything I like better.” 

Gregg says that when you’re competing in the high-pressure atmosphere of a shooting championship, you have to have a shotgun with which you’re completely comfortable. “It helps a lot,” he said.

That said, many say Gregg is almost impervious to pressure. 

Consider the 1994 World FITASC Sporting Clays Championship in France, where Wolf competed in the junior division for Team USA but ended up winning the overall event in the open division. 

Gregg found himself competing against 79 of the world’s best shooters, some of whom are multiple world champions and twice his age. Still, he won the event… but not without a dash of international intrigue.    

At the end of the regular four-day competition, Gregg, who broke 179 of 200 targets, was tied with a British shooter. He then won the 25-target shoot-off, after which the British team protested two targets that Gregg had broken earlier in the event.

Then things got interesting -- and a little strange. In attempt to sort the out the mess, competition officials huddled for more than an hour, Gregg said, presumably discussing what to do next.

Was the fix in?

Would the Bush State Department have to dispatch a special envoy to smooth the overseas rift?

In the end, no shuttle diplomacy was required. Instead, Wolf was summoned to shoot an additional pair of targets. If he missed both, he would have lost the competition. If he hit one, he would have tied, requiring yet another shoot-off. 

But the unflappable Wolf, in Hobbsian fashion, dusted both clay targets, winning -- finally -- the world championship and one monster trophy.

“The way it went off was pretty weird, but it turned out okay,” Wolf said. “It really didn’t bother me too much. The trophy was really big, though. You should see it.”

Gregg said he is often asked about what went into developing his shooting style. He said it is the byproduct of working with some of the world’s best instructors. “I don’t have one distinct shooting style,” he said. “I’ve been lucky enough to shoot with many good instructors, and I’ve taken a little bit from each of them.”

In recent years, he adopted a pay-it-forward attitude, helping kids and others with shooting instruction. “I really enjoy it,” he said. “It’s a lot of fun.”

Asked if he could give up a few trade secrets for North America’s crooked shotgunners, Gregg didn’t hesitate.

“The best advice I can give to someone who is new to sporting clays or bird hunting is to find a shotgun that really fits your body type well,” he said. “When you’ve done that you need to remember to shoot with both eyes open, follow the bird and not the barrel, and swing through the shot.”

Naturally.