Not at Home on the Range

When it comes to shooting sports, I'm a total noob. I've never owned a gun, and the only thing I've ever done that could be considered hunting is to shoot at rodents once on my in-laws' farm. I went to the shooting range once with my friend Clint and thought it was a lot of fun. I had been wanting to go again for a while. When my brother Steve called to say he would be in town and wanted to get together and do something fun, I proposed we go to the range.

Steve thought that sounded fun, but was surprised that I would suggest it since I don't have a gun. My solution to that problem was to invite a couple of people that have guns: my friend Clint and my brother Russ. As it turned out, neither of them could go, but they both graciously offered to let us borrow their guns. Steve invited his daughter Kylie and I invited Todd and Kenna. We also invited our brother-in-law Nate. So there were six of us that went to Get Some Guns and Ammo this evening, each of us with less experience than the next. None of us has ever owned a gun. We had been to a range a combined two times. Four of us had never shot a handgun, and two of us had never shot any gun of any kind. I'm sure we had the entire range secretly laughing at us as we tried to figure out how to load the guns.

I went first, thinking I'd show the others how it was done. On my second shot I placed the thumb of my off-hand in the wrong spot and when the gun recoiled it took the skin off my knuckle. My goal had been to show the three kids that the recoil wasn't bad, but the blood running down my hand showed them the exact opposite. We never could convince Kenna that the same thing wouldn't happen to her. Luckily Nate knew the correct technique and showed Kylie and Todd how to do it. Pretty soon they were both hitting the targets.

 

After putting a bandage on my thumb I was back to shooting, too.

Here Todd shows off his best shot:

I don't know if we'll make this a tradition, but I hope we do it again.