Flanders’ Stevenson brothers ready to take on world at Grand American

FAIRFIELD – Duncan Stevenson doesn’t have time to play video games anymore. But his real life is a bit like one.

Shotgun at the ready, Duncan barks out “pull,” and a brightly colored clay target flies from a small metal trap house into the sky 16 yards away. As it soars away, the shooter has one chance to fire a shell and break the target.

Duncan and his older brother Morgan Stevenson will compete at the Grand American World Trapshooting Championships in Sparta, Ill. Mom Pauline and dad Michael loaded the family’s travel trailer, hooked it up to a pickup truck, started the 970-mile drive from Flanders on July 30, another family vacation wrapped around competition.

The Grand American preliminary week begins today, with the overall prizes awarded on Aug. 15. Morgan and Duncan glanced at each other’s oversized, shiny belt buckles — Duncan’s is from New Hampshire, Morgan’s from Maine — noting that’s their favorite award, though the tooled leather bags to hold shells are a close second.

They acknowledged how tough the competition at the Grand American will be, more challenging than anything they’ve faced thus far. Though they’re looking at the trip as an offbeat camping trip, they could find room in the family’s travel trailer for a little more hardware.

That’s what happened at the Southwestern Grand in San Antonio during Spring Break. Morgan was the Class C champion, with Duncan third.

Both brothers want to shoot 100 straight at the Grand American, breaking targets with four boxes of 25 shells each consecutively. Duncan shot a 99 to win the New Jersey Open preliminary singles title in June, while Morgan has a couple of 98s in his career.

Morgan was the resident overall and all-around junior champ and Duncan the overall and all-around sub-junior champ at the New Jersey Open. Duncan, the No. 5 sub-junior shooter in the United States right now, was the high all-around sub-junior non-resident in Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, New Hampshire and Maine. A second-team all-American as a sub-junior last year, Morgan claimed junior non-resident all-around titles in Connecticut, New Hampshire and Maine.

“I want to win it all,” Morgan Stevenson, a 5-foot-10, 150-pound rising junior at Morris Catholic, said of the Grand American. “I want to come home with a Super Bowl ring. It’s that goal that is attainable. It’s incredibly hard, but it can be done.”

Family sport

Morgan and Duncan Stevenson began hunting with their father, Michael, at about age 7, and each boy killed his first deer at 10. At a fishing derby hosted by the National Wild Turkey Federation, their skill shooting targets attracted the attention of instructors at Hudson Farms in Hopatcong. Morgan and Duncan tried sporting clays, then became part of the Youth Trap Shooting Program.

They have taken lessons at Hudson Farms every Monday night for the past eight weeks, and also shoot at the North Jersey Clay Target Club at least twice weekly. The brothers shoot quickly and smoothly, “the fastest shooting you’ve seen, according to instructor Joseph Lombardi of Griffin & Howe Shotgun and Rifle Marksmanship School. He ascribed those tendencies to the natural aggressiveness required for the boys’ other sports. Both will play football at Morris Catholic this fall, Morgan wrestles and is on the track team, and Duncan plays lacrosse. Both are also black belts in taekwondo, and are working toward becoming Eagle Scouts — with merit badges for rifle, shotgun, and bow-and-arrow shooting.

“They get excited and want to break the target,” said Lombardi, a 19-year-old Rockaway resident. “As long as they’re able to pick up on the target, move smoothly to the target, and pull the trigger to break the target, smoothly in that quick of a time, and it doesn’t look like they’re jumping around, it doesn’t matter the speed. You just go at the speed that’s comfortable.”

Added Duncan Stevenson, younger but larger at 6 feet and 190 pounds, “The fact that we shoot makes us better at other sports. It’s all hand-eye coordination.”

Michael Stevenson has followed his sons to trap shooting, the oldest shotgun shooting sport in America. Participants shoot at 5¹/₂-inch diameter clay targets thrown in a random sequence from a trap house in front of them. Five clay targets, or “birds,” are launched for each shooter at each of five positions, one shot per target.

“Once you understand how to shoot, it’s 100 percent a mental game,” Duncan Stevenson said. “You have to think about what you’ve got to do, but you can’t think about it, because then you miss. ... I call it the zone. When you keep breaking targets, your mind just goes blank. You can do everything without thinking about it.”

Grassroots growth

Almost 10,000 high school students in Minnesota, Wisconsin and North Dakota participated in trap shooting this past year. Arizona, South Dakota, Illinois and Kansas will add the sport this fall. The Scholastic Shooting Sports Foundation has 13,000 enrolled in its scholastic clay target program nationwide, about 2,450 of whom competed at nationals last month.

Sixty-six percent of new shooters are in the prized 18-to-34 demographic, according to a report by the National Shooting Sports Foundation. Almost half of the newcomers live in urban or suburban areas.

The NSSF estimates the average 16-year-old competitor will spend $75,000 over his or her lifetime. Morgan shoots a fully adjustable, Italian 12-gauge shotgun which cost $5,000. Duncan is using his older brother’s $1,000 hand-me-down after growing out of his own weapon. Each boy shoots between a thousand and 1,300 rounds in a weekend competition, about 6,000 singles targets annually.

They have each shot about 20,000 lifetime targets.

“You can be shooting next to people in wheelchairs, war amputees, grandmothers. ... If you shoot so well you beat everybody, then you win grand champion,” Morgan Stevenson said. “Just keep yourself calm and collected. When you’re in the zone, you don’t see the background. All you see is the trap house and the bird.”

Staff Writer Jane Havsy: 973-428-6682; jhavsy@gannettnj.com; www.dailyrecord.com/writerjane/