The Broad Side of a Barn

What do pheasants, clay pigeons and the broad side of a barn all have in common? It appears that I can't hit any of them. But considering that I haven't done any shooting in over 15 years, it's reasonable to expect that.

Greg's dad, Greg and I all went hunting yesterday -- the first time any of us had hunted in over 20 years. As you can imagine, our hunting skills were rusty enough to be non-existent, but fortunately we all remembered the important thing -- the pointy end kills -- or as we hunter-types prefer to say, gun safety.

The coolest part was our firearms... we all used vintage shotguns. My shotgun (shown in this picture) once belonged to my grandfather. It was made sometime in in the WWII era. It's seen its share of use, and it's not worth much money, but it's in good shape and I am proud to own this gun. The wife doesn't understand why I'm proud of this gun, even when I explain that it's more of an heirloom thing than a man with a gun thing.

But back to the hunting. We got a few shots off, but the pheasants were in no danger of losing their lives to us. To put things in perspective, we shot at clay pigeons before scaring up any live animals, and I had a hit ratio of about 20%. As for the barn comment... well, I didn't actually shoot at any barns; that was just me taking a little artistic license. (Barns aren't in season right now, and you need a special stamp for hunting them anyway.)

Either way though, it was fun to go hunting again, even though the only thing I got was a reminder that I need to re-learn how to shoot.