COMPETITIONS
CHANGING GEARS Lena Miculek Moves Over To Team Sig Sauer STORY BY FRANK JARDIM * PHOTOGRAPHS BY LENA MICULEK
L
ast year, at 20 years old, Lena Miculek became the top female 3-Gun competitor in the country and the only person I have every known who has a pet toucan. It’s named Riley. She tells me that Riley is a toco, the biggest of the toucan species. When I ask her if it cost $100,000, she laughs and tells me that Riley’s breed is, in fact, the “Bugatti” of toucans but costs nowhere near that. She’s told me that her parents taught her by example to work hard and save every dime, so it seems odd that she’d buy such an expensive and rare jungle creature for a pet. She explains that a vacation only lasts a week, but a toucan can live for 25 years. I like her value-based logic. Also, her husband convinced her it would be fun. Last year all three of them drove to a 3-Gun competition in Nebraska in their 1993 Ford Explorer painted to look like the one used for tours in the film Jurassic Park. That is just how she rolls, literally. BEFORE LENA MICULEK WAS BORN, her father Jerry had established his reputation as one of the best competitive marksmen in the world and the fastest man on Earth with a double-action revolver. Her mother, Kay, was right alongside him competing, and since Miculek was home-schooled, she went with them to every match until she was 15. She grew up surrounded by guns (at home and in her mother’s gun shop), shooting and competitions. The family lived on a shooting range on Shoot Out Lane, in rural Princeton, La. Miculek has known how to safely handle and shoot firearms for as long as she can remember, though exactly when she started and under whose guidance is long forgotten. Naturally, she learned to shoot a revolver; but handgun competitions didn’t ignite any passions in her soul. Neither did the shotgun or precision long-range rifle competitions. In fact, while she was growing up, she didn’t really want to shoot at all. Shooting was work. Starting at age 8, she shot in one competition a year and that was enough for her. Her parents never pushed her either. For them, guns and shooting were a full-time profession, as well as their passion. The subject was always on their lips and seeing guns on the dining room table in the house was as normal as seeing silverware. As a kid, Miculek had none of the typical childish curiosity about firearms, and by the time she was 15, she wanted to get completely away from anything related to shooting. She took a year off and thought about what she
Lena Miculek is a household name in the gun industry and has just made a big move over to Sig Sauer, and her toucan Riley is along for the ride.
wanted to do with her life. Her older stepbrother and sister pursued careers in the military and nursing. In that year of soul searching she met Brock Afentul, the boy who became her husband at age 18, at a Christian evangelism conference and they began dating. She mastered karate, earning her black belt and dabbled in mixed martial arts fighting. As much as she enjoyed that year, she knew something wasn’t right. She realized that she truly missed the people on the competition circuit. At 16 years old, she decided she wanted to be a professional shooter and that 3-Gun would be her game. IT WAS A ROUGH START. It took her 20 matches before she cracked the code and then started winning and placing in the next 50, earning four world titles and a national title. In 2014, Smith & Wesson saw her potential early on and started sponsoring her after her second big win at the 3-Gun Nation match in Las Vegas. Miculek stayed with S&W for a year and half until last February when she took on an even more involved and diverse role with Sig Sauer as a full-time contractor, in which competitive shooting is only a part of her job. She shared with me how she got to where she is now.
American Shooting Journal What appealed to you about 3-Gun? Lena Miculek The overwhelming difficulty. The absolute layer upon layer of things you have to master. You don’t just shoot a pistol, you shoot a pistol on the run or in weird positions. You don’t just shoot a rifle. You learn to shoot a rifle offhand, use barricades, shoot on the run at targets 5 yards away and long range up to 600 yards. It appealed to me because there americanshootingjournal.com 95