Flathead marksman joins sporting clays hall of fame

Former state senator Michael Taylor of Rollins has been shooting for 70 years.

As young boy, he first laid hands on a BB gun at the tender age of 7 or 8.

Once he hit double digits, Taylor pooled his chore money to purchase a .22 rifle for a whopping $6 at an auction. Back then, his shooting prowess was born out of both necessity and fascination. He grew up “fairly poor” and often shot small game to supplement his family’s food supply.

“You were expected to do things quicker to help out,” he said. “I was driving a car by the time I was 12 years old.”

But Taylor — and his shooting — have come a long way since those early days.

He became a successful businessman, state senator, rancher and father.

He also developed a passion for shooting sports in the mid-1990s, spurring a decades-long journey chasing greatness on national and world stages.

Taylor has two world championships under his belt in the sport of FITASC — a sporting clays discipline that challenges shooters to hit clay targets thrown to simulate live game. He earned the 2010 world FITASC title in the super-veteran division in Laterina, Italy, and bested the Master Division in 2018 in Laon, France. Other significant victories include silver and bronze world championship medals in sporting clays, two world cup wins and two national championships.

At his home on Flathead Lake, Taylor’s trophies nearly overwhelm a pair of tables in the entry, and there are more hanging on the wall, and still more at his second home in Arizona. They are souvenirs of an illustrious career, hard-earned evidence of his persistence and dedication.

He’ll have to clear space for one more award this October when Taylor will join a short list of elite shooters in the National Sporting Clays Association Hall of Fame. His induction is the highest accolade a shooter can receive from the organization and one that’s especially meaningful to Taylor.

“There’s a lot of tremendous shooters around the United States and for me to be recognized as one of those, it’s pretty significant,” Taylor said.

The ceremony will take place in San Antonio as part of the 2019 National Sporting Clays Championship. Taylor was nominated by fellow shooter, John Hackethorn, of Polson, and will be the first Montanan to receive this honor.

Former training partner and 2005 Hall of Fame inductee Andy Duffy said Taylor has a unique combination of athleticism and dedication that led him to the top of the field.

“There’s very few people that I’d rather train with more than Mike. He’s deadly serious,” Duffy said. “He examines [the sport] from every angle, determines what his weaknesses are and attacks those things.”

While Taylor first picked up shotgun in his youth, it wasn’t until much later in life that he was drawn to sporting clays. His ventures in the beauty business and agriculture eventually led him to pursue a career in politics. He won a seat in the state senate in 1997, propelled by his mission to cut the state’s business equipment tax. But getting into office wasn’t without its stresses, so prior to his election, his campaign manager suggested Taylor blow off steam at Polson’s newly opened Big Sky Sporting Clays.

“It’s called shotgun golf because every station is different. You walk from one station to another and a course can be up to a mile long,” Taylor explained.

Clays are thrown from different positions at each station, with variances in size, direction and speed.

“I still have my first [scorecard], the very first card. I shot 100 targets and I broke 44,” he recalled. The card in question is pinned to the wall behind his award table to this day.

But 44 wasn’t good enough for Taylor.

He wanted to do better.

“In this game, like any game, when you lose there’s two ways to look at it: if you don’t succeed the first time, try try again or if you don’t succeed the first time, to hell with it,” Taylor said.

His losses only inspired him to try harder. He sought out more instruction and began traveling to neighboring states for competitions.

In the late ’90s, he jumped ranks from the lowest competitive class to the top category in a single year.

“I went form E class to master in one year and that’s pretty amazing,” Taylor said. “Very few people are able to do that.”

Duffy said Taylor was the first Montanan to earn a spot in the Master Class division, an achievement he considers “probably a harder feat than making it to the hall of fame.”

Within the Master class, Taylor continued to excel, earning spots on at least 13 national teams throughout his career, along with his solo victories. His competitions took him all over the world, from France and Spain, to Australia and Italy. After he won the first national championship in 2007, he knew he wanted a second.

“You have to be real careful of complacency,” he advised. “You ask yourself: well, what am I going to do next? The only thing you can do next is to try to do another [championship].”

After earning his world title last year, Taylor, now 78, decided to retire from competing in FITASC and sporting clays.

However, the avid sportsman isn’t hanging up his shotgun anytime soon.

He’s trying a new sport — Helice — which he said is the most challenging yet. The sport was designed to simulate bird hunting and requires shooters to hit targets that are thrown at random from one of five launchers. “Garden & Gun Magazine” calls it “skeet on steroids.”

“I think it’s the toughest thing I’ve ever tried to do,” Taylor said. “I think a person has to remake themselves or they get pretty bored, or I would, over the years.”

Reporter Mackenzie Reiss can be reached at (406) 758-4433 or mreiss@dailyinterlake.com.