Issue No. 4 | September 29, 2026
WELCOME
One line from this week’s Trap Talk interview with Randy Moeller stuck with me:
“Treat the shooters like customers.”
That is a pretty good place to start for the new guy running the ATA.
Moeller talks about clubs, beginners, communication, succession planning and a lot of small improvements that could make registered trapshooting better.
Elsewhere this week, we went inside the Perazzi factory, heard Wendell Cherry explain why breaking 150 straight can still be bad practice, and found a K-80 carrying an impressive amount of American history.
OPENING SHOT
Randy Moeller has a simple rule for the ATA
Randy Moeller’s route to the ATA included stops at USA Shooting, the NRA, Remington and the MidwayUSA Foundation.
Now he is the ATA’s Executive Director and Grand American Tournament Director.
Last week, he sat down with Richard Marshall Jr. and Zach Nannini for nearly 80 minutes on Trap Talk From the Back Fence.
The interview offers an early look into his priorities.
Moeller spends much of the interview talking about improving communication with members, helping gun clubs, attracting beginners and building on small wins. He also talks about succession planning inside the organization and doing a better job telling the story of trapshooting beyond the people who already understand it.
There is no shortage of opinions about what the ATA should change. Moeller seems most interested in getting the fundamentals right: listen to the shooter, communicate better, support the clubs and improve the experience where you can.
The clubs piece matters.
For most of us, the ATA shows up at the club down the road: the person running classification, the squad you shoot with on Sunday morning and whether a new shooter has any idea what to do when he shows up for the first time.
Moeller also brings an interesting background to the youth side of the equation. He previously led the MidwayUSA Foundation, which has spent years building long-term financial support for youth shooting teams.
I spent more than five years helping a major company put the customer at the center of everything it did. More than anything, it is a mindset shift. It will take everyone in the sport to make this happen.
Seven guns a day
That is roughly how many finished shotguns leave the Perazzi factory.
Target Focused Life went inside the factory in Botticino Mattina, Italy, while Steven Berger of Berg’s Outdoors was being fitted for a new MR57. The result is a good look at where some of the money goes when a competition shotgun costs well into five figures.
Receivers and monoblocs arrive as forged steel. Barrels begin as bar stock. Much of the machining happens inside the factory.
Then people take over.
One craftsman trues barrels by looking down them toward a line of light, working the steel until the reflection runs straight. Fitting the barrels to the receiver involves gunmaker’s blue, repeated assembly and filing until the bearing surfaces mate correctly.
The stock fitting is equally hands-on.
Berger starts with an adjustable try gun, moves to the patterning plate and eventually shoots with the unfinished stock. He mounts the gun, gives feedback, and the stock fitter removes wood until they get it where they want it.
Then there is the wood vault.
Perazzi’s top “extra” grade walnut has reportedly been aging for 20 to 40 years. Moving from standard wood to that grade adds roughly €12,000.
For the wood.
The master engraver featured in the tour has been doing the job for 57 years. The receiver sitting on his bench represented roughly a month of work.
You get to see the machining, barrel work, fitting, stockmaking, checkering and engraving that disappear once the finished gun is sitting in a rack.
THE CRAFT
Wendell Cherry on what happens after the shot
Wendell Cherry once broke 150 straight in practice and came away unhappy with the session. The targets broke, but he knew the process wasn’t where he wanted it.
A broken target can hide a bad shot.
Three things stuck with me.
1. The shot isn’t over when the target breaks.
Cherry says most shooters’ post-shot analysis amounts to one thing: I killed it or I didn’t.
That leaves a lot on the table.
What did your eyes do? How did the target look? How did the gun move? Was there tension? Did the shot develop the way you intended?
Cherry argues that the post-shot routine should be just as deliberate in competition as it is in practice. Later, he explains how he checks tension, eye position and how clean the move felt before calling for the next pair.
2. Good coaching gets simpler.
Cherry has been coaching for decades. His approach has moved in one direction:
“The longer I coach, the more simplistic it gets, and the less I say.”
Fewer words. Shorter instructions. Less information for the shooter to carry into the next shot.
He also wants shooters to spend enough time away from the coach to figure things out themselves.
Practice. Make mistakes. Have some success. Come back with better information.
For a developing shooter, that might mean a lesson about once a month. As things start to take root, Cherry stretches that to every two months and eventually once a quarter. Even some of his accomplished shooters stay around the once-every-three-months schedule.
The better the shooter understands his own game, the less frequently someone else needs to diagnose it for him.
3. Failure is part of the job.
Late in the discussion, Cherry puts it plainly:
“There’s no other way to become a champion than failure.”
If you fail, get angry and learn nothing, Cherry calls that a bad failure.
If a tournament exposes something wrong in your game, you can fix it and arrive at the next one better prepared. Cherry calls that kind of failure a gift.
Don’t waste it.
WORTH WATCHING
“Shooting” made it into a Presidential executive order
President Donald Trump signed an executive order September 17 directing several federal agencies to revisit access policies on federally managed land.
For our purposes, one word in the order is worth watching: shooting.
Within 180 days, the Secretaries of War, Interior, Agriculture and Commerce must propose changes to policies or regulations that restrict access to land under their jurisdictions. The order specifically calls for expanded federal hunting, fishing, shooting and other recreational access, subject to applicable law and several exceptions.
It also calls for changes that could allow construction, repair and maintenance of infrastructure providing recreational access to federal land.
A separate provision gives the Departments of Labor and Education 90 days to issue guidance clarifying whether federal education funding is permissible for school-based archery and hunter-education programs. Interior also has 180 days to identify opportunities using existing federal authorities and funding to help states bring more youth and veterans into hunting.
For now, this is an agency process.
Any tangible effect on clay shooters will depend on what those agencies actually propose and implement. The language around shooting access and recreation is broad enough that it deserves watching.
If it eventually produces new or improved places to shoot, we’ll come back to it.
CHIPS & CHUNKS
Not every target disappears in a smoke ball. Here are a few pieces that still count.
Krieghoff found some room on the receiver
Krieghoff’s one-of-one Legacy of Liberty K-80/S commemorates the 250th anniversary of the United States.
Apparently, extended sideplates leave a lot of room.
The right side depicts George Washington crossing the Delaware.
The left has the Statue of Liberty, a bald eagle and Mount Rushmore.
The underside shows the U.S. Capitol alongside references to the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.
The top latch gets the Liberty Bell and “250 Years - United States of America.”
All of it is wrapped around a K-80/S.
Krieghoff also turns 140 this year. The company dates its founding to 1886 and remains under fifth-generation family leadership.
There are understated shotguns.
This is the other kind.
YOUR SHOT
Break your first 25? Run your first 100? Win something worth bragging about? Have a great photo from the range, a story we should know about, or something worth reading or listening to?
LAST SHOT
That’s it for this week.
See you next Sunday,
Dean