SHOOTING THE BREEZE

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED BY THE SOMERS RECORD (03-25-21)- Please remember small business in your town during this coronavirus pandemic

 

     I went skeet shooting last week with my friends Tracie and Brian, and it's just great to get out of the house during a pandemic, at least that's what my wife told me. It's not just a bunch of people shooting at stuff, it's an actual sport. You aim your shotgun at 4 1/2 inch clay discs, standing at different stations around a semi-circle. 25 of these discs, or pigeons, launch from both ends of the semi-circle, one at a time, and you try to shoot them before they hit the ground, and definitely before you do. It's quite loud so it's important to wear earplugs, and if you've invited me along, you might want to wear two pairs.

     There are less challenging sports. It's much easier to shoot a basketball for instance, it's a lot bigger and moves a lot slower. Curling is much easier, you just follow your hair around with a curling iron on a pair of ice skates. I'm actually not very familiar with the sport. Even football is a lot less complicated, you only have to hit another guy, and you have ten other people aiming for him, too. It didn't help matters that we went on one of the windiest days of the year. 25 breezes must have blown my gun just as I was pulling the trigger.

     It's been a while since I shot skeet, before my rotator cuff surgery six years ago. The gun has a recoil, so I had to wait to complete my rehab, since you press the butt right up against your shoulder. Or is it the other way around? I tried it both ways when no one was looking. My friends were shooting pretty well, but I had a rougher time of things, and a lot of the pigeons got away, at least for now. I saw where they went and I promised myself I would hunt them down later and run them over with my car. When you get to the end of the semi-circle some of the birds fly right towards you. Under normal circumstances I would consider this brave, possibly heroic. In my case, I considered it taunting and it made me want to get even them in my article. The pen is mightier than the sword; MUCH mightier than my shotgun.

     It's harder than it looks to shoot straight. As you move around the semi-circle you have to aim ahead of the clay pigeons so that the pellets from the shotgun intercept them in mid flight. The instructor said, "You have to lead the bird." I told him I was leading by example. He said, "When you hit something, remember what you did. When you miss, you should forget it." That's fine, but he doesn't know the people I'm shooting with, and I doubt if they're ever going to let me forget it. But it was good advice, and at the end of the day I didn't remember a thing that happened after I parked my car.

     You should clean and lubricate your gun every time you finish shooting. I can break down my weapon with my eyes closed, which is the only way I would even attempt it. You remove the barrel and clean out the inside using a ramrod, then rub some oil on it, massage it in and serve it a nice candlelight dinner. Once I had the gun back together I saw a few pieces that I hadn't noticed when I was taking it apart, but I had the basic parts facing in the right direction.

     There are people who want to take your guns away, and those people are called parole officers. Don't you let them. The constitution guarantees you the right to protect yourself. Who knows where the next threat is coming from? Maybe that guy sitting next to me on the subway is looking to take me OUT. If he knows a decent restaurant and doesn't try to get too fresh, I'm not totally against the idea. I'm not going to stand for an infringement of my Third Amendment rights. Which I looked up and means that I don't have to let soldiers sleep in my house if they don't want to, so that's not the amendment I'm thinking of. I do know that we all have the right to bear arms, and I've seen people with such hairy arms that they must have taken that concept to an art form.