Nadia Isa
Sitting in the car outside her local gun club, Liz Rymill can recall her heart racing with nervous energy and anticipation as she arrived for her first club shoot – seven years on and she’s regularly competing at state and national level in Skeet and Clay Target. Her advice? Give it a go. Growing up on a farm in the Adelaide Hills of South Australia, young Liz would go plinking in the paddock with her dad and as a teenager shot benchrest at the SSAA Parafield branch, yet she never really got into the sport.
After a 10-year stint as a media advisor in federal politics, commuting between Canberra and Adelaide, Liz moved to Penola in the South-East where she met her husband and her shooting career truly began. “He had a hand-thrower so we went out in the paddock and tried a couple of shots,” says ABC identity Liz.
Standing five-foot-three and right-handed, Liz was using a shotgun customised for her husband who’s six-foot tall and left-handed. “I still managed to hit the targets, really liked using the gun and found I had the hand-eye coordination to be able to do it. I just wanted to do more of it.”
Keen as mustard and with a strong competitive nature Liz bought an off-the-shelf Beretta, fitted it up following YouTube videos and went to the local club in Mount Gambier to join Friday night practice sessions. “I remember my heart rate was through the roof and I just didn’t want to be completely shown up,” she says.
The only woman shooting at that time, Liz felt pressure to perform. “I didn’t want to be seen as a bit of a hopeless female and luckily that wasn’t the way I was made to feel – I was encouraged to have a go. But I was the only woman and at least a dozen or more guys who were very good and I felt a bit of pressure. But despite my nerves I shot quite well on that first night so I came back and that was down to the guys being so welcoming and encouraging. They gave me a lot of pointers.”
Shooting competitively
From there Liz entered a monthly 5-Stand competition and while the enthusiast started out in Sporting Clays she found she excelled at Skeet – thriving on the pace, training and mental aspect – and decided to concentrate on that discipline. “So I focussed on Skeet and that’s where I’ve centred most of my efforts,” she says.
Since she took up the sport seven years ago, Liz has shot competitively at state and national level and earlier this year competed in her seventh state Skeet competition and has her fingers crossed the National championships, due to take place in November, will still go ahead as COVID-19 restrictions continue to ease. In 2019, the 34-year-old became the first woman in South Australia to reach AA grade in Skeet as she made the national postal team which recognises the top five Australian women shooting the discipline.
Not your typical shooter
As a young woman Liz says many people don’t consider her a ‘typical’ shooter. “Shooters live in the city, in the country, families do it, it’s hard to say ‘this is a typical shooter’ which is great as most people would look at me and not think I’m a typical shooter.” But she says shooting lends itself to all kinds of people. “For those like myself who’ve perhaps come to it later in life, it’s a sport that has a great level of equity,” she says. “If you apply yourself mentally and seek out some good coaching you can take it as far as you want and it’s a fantastic sport I get so much out of.”
Liz has watched female participation grow but would like to see clubs and the shooting community promote itself more to women and newcomers in general. “I guess it’s still largely a male dominated sport and perhaps that’s just what men have gravitated to. Lots of women like myself never knew the sport really existed,” she says. “If you can overcome any perceived fears you may have it’s so rewarding and the people you meet are incredibly supportive – there’s a real community and family feel to it.”
Also a hunter, Liz shoots ducks and game animals as well as carrying out pest control on her property and acknowledges hunting can evoke strong reactions in some people. “When they understand we’re not out there with guns blazing looking for thrills, we’re doing it because we’re proud of that part of Australian culture to have the freedom to harvest our own food, I think they understand and respect that.
“Probably even more so than just going to the supermarket and letting someone else do the harvesting and you’re just buying. They get it when you talk about the pride you have in responsibly taking an animal and harvesting that meat, using it and valuing that life.”
Family affair
Liz has a son and daughter both under five who have already started learning about the joys of shooting from Mum. “They’ll be brought up to learn about firearm safety and that education starts at this very early age,” she says.
Her son has a replica side-by-side cap gun and has been learning about shooting safely at the range with Liz. “He comes along and he helps me load my pouch with shells and loves watching – he likes to call the target. I didn’t shoot when I was pregnant but as soon as I had the babies I was back out there. This is a sport I got a lot out of, especially as a new mum to be able to go to the range for an hour and have some time to myself, nothing better.”
A shooting advocate
Ever eager to promote the sport she loves, Liz has hosted many ‘come and try’ days at her club in Mount Gambier and says it’s a joy to see newcomers try the sport. “We see lots of women and families coming along,” she says. “When they start hitting targets the enjoyment they take from that gives me the best feeling, how proud they are of themselves and how much confidence they take from being able to responsibly and safely shoot a target and shoot it well.”
Aside from owning a farm with her husband in Penola and being the mother of two children, Liz is a journalist with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation in the South-East and as part of the media the responsible shooter helps her fellow journalists understand the sport as a whole. “I regularly invite the media to come and have a shot at the gun club with me because I think people don’t know what they don’t know,” she says.
“If they only ever hear anti-gun material they don’t have another angle to draw on. I think with gun clubs and shooters it’s everyone’s responsibility to educate the broader public and show them the positive attributes of shooting as we know them to be.”
Liz hopes she has influenced some opinions on shooting and hunting or at least given people an alternative perspective. “Out in the community, I take every chance I can to talk about the benefits of shooting and it’s so important shooters promote and proactively talk about the positives of the sport, about the hunting lifestyle and safe firearms use, because Australia has so much to be proud of.”
Liz referred to recent policy changes introduced in the wake of COVID-19 which thrust heavy restrictions on licensed firearms owners and businesses and says any freedoms afforded to the firearms community can’t be taken for granted. “We can’t just do what we’ve always done, we have to modernise and use tools like social media and the media in general to our advantage and promote this sport. We can’t just protect it and not encourage new people because it simply won’t exist if we do that.
“The more people who come to shooting and participate in it either socially or competitively or just enjoy coming to watch, the better and brighter future our sport in Australia will have.”