This weekend was the culmination of a lot of dreams and planning! Jenny had several different groups of girlfriends who had expressed interest in learning to shoot or sharpening their shooting skills. The Christmas party hosted by Molly last winter was the final straw — time to stop talking and about it, and time to just get better! And that’s all it took — Vizslas & Vixens was born. The plan is to start by learning to shoot, and maybe someday Vizslas & Vixens will be a week long hunting event with Vizslas in tow to somewhere exotic — like South Dakota! 😉
Jenny took it as a challenge. Find the perfect spot for a girls weekend, something nice, so we wouldn’t feel like we were roughing it. Find an instructor that could help us work at our individual levels and with our individual guns. Not an easy task, but the perfect location was found in Longmeadow Game Resort & Event Center. They took care of everything…food, lodging, instruction. It was the perfect location for our first Vizslas & Vixens venture.
The weekend started off on Friday night when we all met out in Wiggins. While we waited for everyone to arrive and check into their rooms, we took full advantage of the full service bar and patio. The weather was amazing and the company was even better! Dinner was served around 8:30 and before we knew it, it was 2:00 am! We can talk — it was like the time evaporated!
This morning, we woke up and met for breakfast around 8:30…Erica and Jen were fashionably late, but Caitlin, Jenny, and Heather were able to down a few cups of coffee while we waited on the sleeping beauties. When everyone arrived we had breakfast burritos with homemade green chile — they were SO good and just what we all needed after our late night at the Longmeadow bar 🙂
Then it was time to suit up and hit the fields. Jenny had given all the girls a customized Vizslas & Vixens t-shirt as a little party favor Friday night. Everyone loved them and decided we should all wear them for the day. So pink shirts on, earplugs in, and eye protection down — we were ready.
Tye (our awesome instructor) started us out with some individual warm-up time on our guns. Then we moved to the top level of the tower and practiced as a group. Again, time flew by. Pretty soon, we headed back to the clubhouse for lunch. The time out of the sun and a little rest for our shoulders was much appreciated. After lunch things heated up — it was time for the Vixen Shoot-Off.
We started out on the ground level with a single elimination competition. Caitlin and Erica were the final two, with Caitlin eventually winning out. Upstairs, Tye switched the launcher to “swivel” so we had no idea where the clays were going to come out. It was amazing to see how much we all progressed in just a morning! This time it would take three hickeys (long story) to get each of us out. And our winner was Jen! Erica came in second and was also chosen by Tye as our most improved gunner.
Everyone had a blast, and it seems like this might be an event we need to have more than just once a year! It was a great time with a great group of women — and we are pretty sure our Vizslas are ecstatic about the possibilities this presents for them 🙂
