Thad Shaffer always liked the outdoors, growing up in Port Allegany and hunting with his dad.

When it came time to consider a career, he didn’t have a clear path in mind.

“I always knew I wanted to do something special, a cut above .. not something everybody else did,” he said. “I didn’t really have much direction in my life. I didn’t know what I wanted to do.”

Port Allegany High School was having a career fair on a Monday. He went.

Two days later, he enlisted in the Army at the age of 17 in November 2013.

“I made up my mind one day that I was going to join the army,” he said.

“I dove right into it,” he said with a laugh. “I graduated high school June 8, left for basic training June 9. I didn’t have much time to get in trouble over the summer.”

Now, with a few years military experience under his belt as an infantryman, and some high marks in marksmanship, he was invited to try his hand at joining a pretty elite group of soldiers — snipers.

“I started working with those guys a bit in Virginia doing some training,” Shaffer said. “I ended up liking what I was doing. I started training with those guys in August.”

It’s a small, close-knit group of men, he said, explaining the group he trained with has eight members.

“To be in the section you have to be sniper qualified, you have to be school trained.”

He was accepted into school, with training beginning May 18; he graduated Friday.

Earlier this month, Shaffer explained a bit about his schooling, and his career path in the Army.

School is six weeks of some serious training designed to weed out those who aren’t mentally or physically suitable for the high-stress life of a sniper, he explained.

“It’s actually a lot more academic than the average person might think,” Shaffer said. “A person might think a sniper goes out and lays on his stomach and shoots bad guys all day. We’re more of a battlefield intelligence collector who will engage targets if necessary.”

School is broken into two phases, Shaffer explained, a marksmanship phase and a field craft phase.

“There’s a lot of events that are go-home events,” he said, explaining if you don’t make the grade, you don’t continue in the school. There were 35 men who started the school. Part way through the second phase, the class was down to 23.

“There’s a lot of math involved,” Shaffer said. “It goes down for formulas for winds you have to figure out — your bullet can be affected by barometric pressure. There are so many variables that can change one shot.”

He explained, “It’s a very, very, very academic job.”

There’s classroom instruction in addition to shooting at different times of the day and night and under different conditions.

“It’s all graded on a point system,” Shaffer said. “There’s a lot of mental stress.”

Referring to the second phase of schooling, he said, “We got issued our ghillie suits and we started going over how to be in place, how to do your job without being seen or compromised.”

Shaffer added, “There’s a lot more that goes into it than just pulling the trigger.”

Maj. Cory Angell, deputy public affairs officer for the 28th Infantry Division of the Pennsylvania National Guard — himself a Port Allegany native — spoke about the tremendous talent and skills necessary to be considered for the rare challenge of sniper school.

“There are many challenges the military offers,” Angell said. “There are none so rare and won as the title of sniper. The Bucktails began in Smethport and were famous for their marksmanship. I truly attribute these skills to those who come from that area. They are born woodsmen who can shoot.”

Angell explained Shaffer is part of the Stryker Brigade in Pennsylvania — one of only two such brigades in the National Guard. Because of the full spectrum of operations for which the Stryker Brigade is responsible, “you will generally find more slots for snipers in Pennsylvania.”

However, “they are few and far between,” he said, adding in his 28 years of service, he’s met only a handful of snipers.

“It’s a job that requires small-team operations,” Angell said. “It’s covert. They operate differently than many other soldiers. You have to be advanced in other skills as a soldier.”

Snipers are the “eyes and ears” of a troop, reporting back intelligence to the soldiers on patrol.

“They’ll see something unfolding and can report that to save lives,” Angell said. “They are used for intelligence gathering.”

Another important job for a sniper is precision fire — taking out one bad guy without endangering the people around him. Angell told a story of a sniper taking out a man who was planting an improvised explosive device near an area where children were playing. After the shot, the villagers came out, clapping and yelling praise to the unseen man who likely saved their children.

Shaffer said the person who has helped him the most through his schooling is his father, Mark Shaffer of Port Allegany.

“My dad is pretty excited,” he said with a laugh.