Kayla Krauth propped herself up on her elbows and lined up the sight on her Daisy 499B BB gun.

Exactly 16 feet 4 3/4 inches in front of her was a target with a black bull's-eye in the center.

Her goal, as she slowly pulled the gun to her cheek and steadied her finger on the trigger, was to hit that black dot, which is about the size of a nickel.

As she and a few dozen other kids in the Hall County 4-H BB team took aim and fired practice rounds on a recent Thursday night, their parents, who sat dutifully next to them, checked their progress with squints through binoculars.

These kids are serious about hitting their targets, improving their personal scores and putting together a championship competition team that can take them to other places in Georgia and around the country.

The BB club is part education, part competition, said coach Sherman Pass, with the first half of each Thursday's practice at the Chicopee woods Agricultural Center focused on gun operation and safety and the second half focused on target practice.

It's open to kids between the ages of 10 and 14, or fifth- through eighth-graders. The kids also must be 4-H members, Pass said.

"We teach them safety aspects of the guns, handling of the guns, and then we go into actual target practice," Pass said. "They have equal classroom time as they do in the firing line."

Each Thursday evening, the club members sit in lines of folding chairs at one end of the practice room to go over safety questions and take tests. Then, as older 4-H club members grade their scores, the students file down to the target shooting area, where mats have been set up across from corresponding targets.

Most of the kids in the club have their own guns and found out about the club through friends at school or older siblings who went through the program. But Savannah Ledford, 12, said she got involved in the group mainly because she didn't know many others in it.

"None of my friends at school, except for (one friend) shoots, so I get to do something different than most of my friends do," she said, adding that it's just fun to come by and try and hit that center mark on the target.

"My sister shot, and I just think it's fun," Ledford said. "I just like it because we get to hang out with our friends, and shooting makes me feel good when I do great."

But there is some severe competition running through the veins of these kids, too.

Pass said the competition team is made of seven shooters, and the top five of their scores count toward the overall score. In order to shoot on the state level, students have to compete well in qualifying matches, with each shooter shooting at least 30 points, or a team shooting a minimum of 1,500 points.

There's also scholarship money, Pass added, for students who are good enough to compete on the national level.

On the target, the bull's-eye is worth 10 points, and one point is deducted for each ring away from the bull's-eye that's hit. Shooters can get a maximum of 100 points from each run at the target.

"It's highly competitive," he said.

Austin Poole, 11, said the trophies and the chance to get a better score drive him to keep practicing.

"It's fun to shoot and it's real competitive," he said. "You try to do that (get a better score), but you also win all these trophies if you win that."

Krauth's mother, Yolanda Krauth, said the competition also helps make her daughter more focused.

Yolanda said her daughter got involved in Junior National Rifle Association classes in south Florida, where they lived before moving to Hall County, and as soon as Krauth found out about the BB gun program here, she signed up for it.

"They taught us the safety rules and I started getting comfortable holding the gun and stuff," said Krauth, adding that she and her 16-year-old brother would go target shooting, which gave her a chance to see lots of other types of guns. "The .22 is pretty loud for a little gun, but not as loud as some other ones."