Hey! It’s me!

Hey there!

This will probably be the most casual blog you get to read, but that exactly why I started this business, the same reason I got involved with the shotgun sports, and why I continue to stay involved in a industry where there’s typically more failure than success (or maybe that’s all businesses?)

I started shooting competitively about 7 years ago now. The first year was a wash, and if you meet me in person, I will probably tell you I’ve only been in the game for 6 years. Truthfully, that first year taught me a lot. The first season, I moved from right to left handed, shot my first competition scores (a whopping 28/100 on Sporting Clays), and decided that shooting just wasn’t for me. Following the first season, I told my dad I was quitting. I didn’t really love it. I didn’t have any friends on the team. This was just some excuse to try and build a closer relationship with him. That December, he told me he was going to start a SCTP (Scholastic Clay Target Program) Team at our local gun club, and he wanted me to be a part of it. He told me that if I didn’t like it after that, I could quit.

Guess what? I didn’t quit - I fell in love! The gun club quickly became my home. Even though I had already been working there for a about a year at that point, I didn’t have any love or passion for the shooting sports. I more so just saw it as a job to make spending money. The Skeet fields quickly became where I was able to calm my mind. The Sporting Clays where I felt the closest to God. The trap field….well no one really likes trap, unless you’re from somewhere that snows. This gun club quickly became my home, my get away, my church….my everything.

Fast forward 7-8 years, and here we are today. In the same place, in the same home, but with such a deeper love, passion, and JOY for the shooting sports / industry. I’m actually writing this from the Great Room at the gun club right now. I am the owner of A Joy Outdoors LLC, which ecompasses Joy’s Firearms, the gun store. There’s a whole backstory on the name we’ll have to get into at another time though. I still work at the gun club, working in the ProShop in the afternoons, as their head shotgun instructor, managing their social medias, and as their Sporting Clays Manager. I also work for the GSCA (Georgia Sporting Clays Association) as their Media Coordinator. As well as managing our SCTP Programs social medias. I also travel on the NSCA Circuit, competing professionally around the country and overseas. Seems like a lot of hats? Why, yes - very much so. This has been the joy of my life. Getting to share the parts of the game we all love. Getting to bring in new shooters to the family. Getting to educate people on firearm safety. Every aspect of it. If you ask me, I don’t think there’s a sport you can see God’s presence more than the clay shooting sports.

Faith has been the foundation of building this career, as well as the foundation of my life as a whole. My Nena and Papa were both Southern Baptist Pastors while I was growing up. I’ve never shared this publicly, but the last thing Papa said to me before he passed last spring, in the middle of his battle with Alzheimer's / Dementia was this, “Abby, go win it all.” As calm as day. As clear as I had ever heard him speak. Papa, Ron, was a man of great and humble faith. He loved the Lord with the entirety of himself. He spent majority of his days engrossed in the Word, learning everything he could about God. He taught me so much about blind faith, about trusting in what you can’t see. And really, isn’t that exactly what we’re doing every time we pull the trigger?

Our brains can’t spell out the physics of a target. We can’t write down on paper what our God given brains are able to do in a split second. I mean, how else would our eyes magically be able to create the exact gap our hands need to be in front to break a target with the given wind changes, target flights, sun levels, and everything else. So isn’t it really just a matter of trusting what we can’t see? Trusting in our God given capabilities (and hard work)? Trusting that our hands will never fail to go directly to where they need to be? Trusting our brains to store. our shot library in there on top of our favorite songs, movie quotes, family birthdays, and random history classes we took in 5th grade. How is that possible without God? Isn’t that exactly exactly what believing in God is about?

Hebrews 11:1-3 “Now faith is being sure of what we hope for, and certain of what we do not see. This is what the ancients were condemned for. By faith we understand the universe was formed at God’s command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible.”

Okay, I’ll get off my soapbox….now you know why I named this blog what I did. Rooted & Roaming is a way for me to let you guys in on the more personal levels of what it looks like to travel & compete, while running a couple businesses. To look deeper inside myself and ask more questions. To explore the world that God created. To be on a journey of learning more, looking deeper, and searching - while staying grounded in what saved my life, God.

Hopefully, this brings you deeper. Makes you ask more questions. Makes you wonder. And at the bare minimum gives you an idea of what life looks like doing what I do, while being so young, and let’s you learn more about the shooting world.

Thanks for hanging out - talk soon.