The first weekend of October was a happy one for Eli Sloan. The 10-year-old Statesville resident watched his father Brian and teammate Caleb Gilreath, 11, of Taylorsville, bring home a pair of National Wild Turkey Federation 2011 Wild Turkey World Still Target Championships.
Eli Sloan qualified for the finals and finished third in the JAKES 20-guage division, and Caleb won the JAKES 20-gauge division. Brian Sloan won the Black Powder Division. It was his ninth world championship in the past eight years. Sloan said he is the only adult male to win every division in the NWTF’s still target competition.
Eli and Caleb are two of four youth shooters Brian Sloan coaches. Eli won four straight competitions during summer.
That gives him the lead over Caleb in a friendly competition among teammates. The world championship win Oct. 1 in Edgefield, S.C., is Caleb’s only victory in two years of competitive shooting. He said he finished second in three tournaments.
Caleb is also an avid hunter. He mostly hunts deer, dove and squirrel.
“If it’s got shooting in it, I like it,” he said.
Caleb was nervous during competition. The gun shook in his hands and forced him to guess when to squeeze the trigger on Sloan’s Beretta 20-gauge shotgun. Eli used a Browning 20-guage shotgun.
Brian Sloan used a custom black powder 12-gauge shotgun provided by Indian Creek during his shot for a ninth world championship.
Sloan was on his high school’s shooting team. He was good at it so he kept doing it.
“I try not to do things I won’t be good at,” Sloan said. “It’s kind of like golf. I played for one summer, figured out I couldn’t be good at it and quit.
“I figured I could be good enough with shotguns to compete.”
Email
Facebook
Google
Twitter
Favorites
More
Advertisement