I don't spend as much time on the trap and skeet as I used to. In fact, now that I think about it, I have never been an especially competent scatter gunner. But the odd thing is - in my skimpy experience - the best ones around here are women... and many of them are younger and dazzlingly beautiful. I am not kidding either.
Now that I think of it, they come in two flavours too: the demure goddesses that can stop your heart with a word or a smile... and the rancid bitches that make you want to head for the hills. A hundred years ago at the old Strathcona club I almost got gooned by a flying Krieghoff shotgun when Susan Nattress threw it at the rack because the skeet machines weren't set right and was throwing the birds too high or too low - I can't remember. Those shotguns were worth about $25,000 dollars back then. They have to be more than that now.
If you or I had done that, the stubfarts and hecklers would have had a field day with us, and then we'd get the very hell of it from the range master. But with Susan, they all turned white as a sheet, quailed in fear and turned away and pretended not to notice it.
The mind wobbles.
I don't care if she owned the club, personally. Anyone stupid enough to throw a shotgun would get what she had coming to her.
ReplyDeleteBack in the old days...
ReplyDeleteSkeet shooters are a pretty sociable lot. There are exceptions, but they're generally sociable.
Trap shooters are a different breed. They stand apart and bitch about everything. They're always trying different loads, different guns, looking for that special combination that will let 'em break 25 anytime they want.
Now then.
Back at the Old Gun Club (now gone), there were two trap fields and two skeet fields, more or less in a line. Most trap shooters used the far trap field, and most skeet shooters took the close skeet field - because, you see, if you hid behind the low house of the skeet field, you could poach birds from the near trap field. Not that I would ever do that, but it could be done.
So one fine day there were five shooters at the skeet field finishing up a round, and one shooter, being a bit bored, was idly watching the trap game on the near field. He happened to see one of the three most neurotic, short tempered, and anti-social trap shooters known to the club at station two. Thinking quickly, he loaded his shotgun, and when the bird was thrown... well, it's an easy shot, right to left, and all that was left was the powder. Greg the trap shooter cursed, and for a second I thought that Krieghoff was going out into the field. Greg stalked over a few steps all set to give some serious hell to the bird stealer, when who should he see but Junior, coming out from behind the low house (he'd just completed his last station). Junior was six-four, maybe 350 pounds, and worked part time as a bouncer in a local strip club.
Greg stormed over to his jeep, threw the shotgun into the back, and sprayed gravel all the way out the drive.