12 NRA-Women-Inspired New Year’s Resolutions

It’s January again, and you know what that means—it’s time to summon our best intentions and vow we’re going to do some things more, some things less, some things differently, and some things not at all in the new year. With a fresh year offering a fresh start, I’m ignoring my own track record of breaking all my resolutions and choosing to make a list of shooting, hunting and personal safety-related things I’m going to work on in 2024.

1. I’m going to shoot my carry gun at least twice a month. Where I live, I can safely shoot in my backyard, so there’s no excuse not to stay practiced up with my concealed carry firearm.
2. I’m going to carry more consistently. I’ve been guilty of “It’s just a quick trip to the grocery store; I won’t need my gun” thinking, and although that’s always been fine, I’d like to make carrying everywherea more ingrained habit.
3. I want to explore a chest or shoulder rig for open carry when I’m hiking or walking in the woods.I have plenty of handguns to choose from for this specific use, but it might call for putting a red-dot on one of them (like I use on my concealed-carry gun). Once you get hooked on red-dot optics on handguns, it’s hard to go back! And I’m seldom wearing a belt while working from home and going on walks with the dog, so I think a chest holster might be a great alternative to a standard OWB holster.
4. I’m going to shoot rifles off of sticks more than I do off of benches. While I have a fair bit of experience shooting off of sticks, I could use more, especially in out-of-breath situations. You never know what kind of rest you’ll have when you’re hunting, and sticks have come in handy—and, at times, given me trouble—more than once.
5. I’m going to continue to work on my health and fitness so I can hunt in more exciting and hard-to-get-to places.
6. I want to shoot skeet. I shoot sporting clays recreationally but have never tried a full round of skeet or trap. It’s about time, isn’t it? And I fully expect it to be a humbling experience. And speaking of shotguns …
7. It’s time to get my shotgun fitted. I’ve been shooting off-the-shelf shotguns for years and doing an OK job making it work, but I really need an honest-to-goodness slice-this-stock-up gunfitting for my primary clays gun. And while I’m at it, I’m going to do more at-home mounting and swinging practice (unloaded, of course) to improve my wingshooting.
8. I want to go suppressed. I’ve done enough damage to my hearing during my younger and dumber days by hunting without hearing protection, and although I don’t go afield without ear plugs now, going suppressed will be even better. Unfortunately, when I was in my accumulating-rifles stage of life, suppressors weren’t common, so none of my barrels are threaded. This means I’m in the market for a new deer gun with a threaded barrel, probably in .308 Win., but I’m open to suggestion. And I’m going to go ahead and buy the suppressor early in the year, since wait times to receive the required tax stamp are still long.
9. I want to get more adventurous in my wild-game cooking, including cooking the heart of the next deer we bring into the house. I tend to cut my deer up into backstrap medallions, stew meat, a few roasts and a whole lot of ground meat, but this year I want to get better at identifying different cuts like round steak, shanks (I make a killer osso bucco when I take the time to saw up the bone-in shanks) and even offal.
10. I want to find gloves that really work and really fit. I’ve been trying for 20 years to find warm, waterproof gloves that actually fit my tiny hands and are thin enough to shoot in. This might be a pipe dream, but I’m hoping 2024 is the year I find these elusive magic gloves.
11. I want to call in my own turkey. I’ve shot many turkeys, but I’ve always been with someone who really knew what they were doing and took charge of the calling. I’m a long way from being very good at it, but this spring, I want to call in a turkey all on my own, whether I end up shooting him or not.
12. I want to share my hobbies with someone new. I’m an empty nester with some time on my hands, and since I’m no longer shepherding a kid through the process of learning to hunt and shoot, it’s time to focus that energy on teaching someone else. It might be a stranger who looks uncomfortable at the range, a friend of a friend who is dying to try hunting but doesn’t know where to start, or a woman who’s always wanted to learn how to shoot but is a little bit scared to pick it up on her own. This lifestyle we love is meant to be shared.