Phil Graves

Speach made by Phil Graves at his Induction:"

"I don’t remember when I learned to shoot, growing up on a farm near Panama City, FL. A story told by many others, my grandmother had an old single shot 22 that she let me use to gather a mess of squirrels, or sometimes robins for dinner. Squirrels were about all we hunted. We trapped quail.

Then I grew up and moved to Atlanta and firearms took on a different meaning.

After the 1996 Olympics my good friend Vic Branstetter and I took our girlfriends out for an Olympic sport day, including mountain biking and skeet shooting at the Olympic venues. I’d never shot a clay target before then.

We started shooting at Wolf Creek every Sunday and shot Skeet and Trap. I registered my first trap targets in 1999. Sam Weil and I joined Cherokee Gun Club around 2001 when Norman Franklin wanted help running the trap shoots there. Sam and I

(and Dan Brigito, John Grant and others) tried to run the best, most efficient shoots possible.

We did, as reflected by throwing the highest attended 1-day shoots in the southeast.

The high point of my ATA career was winning Georgia State Doubles Championship in 2011. I’ve been shooting a bit of sporting clays and hunt quail and pheasant in the winter. Sam and I have been to Argentina a few times to shoot dove and pigeons. I like the competition, but it’s the great friends that most attract me to the sport." - Phil Graves