Despite cold, wet conditions, eight Quay County 4-H members competed in the State 4-H Shooting Sports contest Saturday at the NRA’s Whittington Center near Raton.

The 4-hers who competed were Taylor Atwood, Dustan Hight, Daniel Hight, Blake Moon, Carmen Runyan, Antonio Rodriguez, Richard Rush, and Patrick Weigel. 

The contest, which is only open to Senior 4-H members, consisted of several shooting disciplines. 

Quay County had a rifle team, two shotgun teams, and a compound bow archery team.

“This was the first time for these 4-Hers from Quay County to go to the competition, and it was was a great opportunity to learn how to compete in their disciplines.  Since none of these youth or parents had been to this contest, we regarded it as a chance for all of us to learn, so that we could make plans to bring 4-Hers back to the contest next year,” said 4-H Agent John Villalba.

The rifle contest consisted of two parts:
l Three- position; where contestants must shoot at targets in the prone, standing, and kneeling positions from 50 yards
l Silhouette, where contestants stand and shoot metal animal silhouettes from 40 to 100 yards.  Quay County team members consisted Dustan Hight, Daniel Hight, and Richard Rush.

The shotgun contest consisted of two parts: Skeet and Trap.

Team members shot 50 rounds in skeet and trap  events, which test a shooter’s ability to call for a clay target, and hit the target while it is in flight.  Quay County was represented by two teams.

Team 1 consisted of Patrick Weigel, Richard Rush and Dustan Hight.  Weigel led all Quay County shooters with a score of 69 out of 100, and Team 1 finished 10th overall.

Team 2 was led by Daniel Hight with a score of 66 out of 100, and the team finished 13th overall.  Other team members included Antonio Rodriguez and Taylor Atwood.

The archery contest also consisted of two portions:
l FITA (circular targets); Team members shot at these targets from 60, 50, 40, and 30 yards.
l In the 3-D portion, team members traveled a course in the wilderness and shot at foam animal targets from 5 to 50 yards.  Blake Moon and Carmen Runyan led all Quay County archers and the team placed 6th overall.  Other team members were Patrick Weigel and Antonio Rodriguez.