Sunday Shoot

Sunday evening seemed like a good time to drive out to a friend's ranch and shoot some dove, which is exactly what me and GWB tried to do.

We set up in a favorable treeline and waited for the birds to fly. We had high hopes, shotguns, a Mojo decoy and we'd seen plenty of dove while driving in.

An hour later it was getting near dark, a very beautiful twilight, to be sure, but no birds. So we fell back to the pickup, unloaded the guns and reached into the Yeti for a couple of cold ones. The lack of action was a disappointment but not by much, it was just good to get out in the field and enjoy that time when night is setting in over the fields.

Then, just as the first sip of the right stuff went down, two dove shot over. "Did you see that?" I asked GWB. "Unh hunh," he answered perceptively. Two more flew over, then a small wave, followed by a larger one and on and on. Just a lot of dove and well within range.

Kindly Old LSP

"I guess we know where to find the birds," I uttered with rare rhetorical insight. "Oh yeah," replied the parser of post-structuralist word games, "right above the beer concession."

I was tempted to do a quick reload and have at it but no, we had had our chance, and the birds had theirs.

God bless,

LSP

Point and Shoot

There comes a time on a Tuesday afternoon when you have options. You can get down to some well-needed remedial reading on the Gospel of Luke, or Just War Theory. You can edit the latest batch of articles that just crossed your virtual desk. You can read Drudge and ZeroHedge -- oh dear, Facebook, what an utter disaster -- again, you might even try and write something, or you can say, "Enough of this nonsense, I'm going to the range!" Which is what I thought and did.

It was interesting to see a John Deere with a skull mascot parked up at my parishioner's shooting enclosure. Somehow that augured well for the shoot.

The Enemy

I laid out some clays at 75 yards, two end-on Dr. Pepper cans, a couple of small iron plates and three Marlboro Light boxes on sticks. There was a sighting-in target at 100 yards beyond that, and there it was, the countryside, the tailgate, a value pack of ammo and the plinking.

Firepower

For some reason, I imagined the clays approximated to rabbit heads, which is odd, because these are notoriously smaller and not fluorescent orange. Whatever, they're fun to shoot, as were the mini plates and the soda cans. It took a little while to zero in on the Marlboro adversaries, but they came off their sticks after I got the measure of the thing.

Vespers

Shot a little high at 100 yards, overcompensating for the apparent 5" bullet drop explained on the box. I guess the little zingers go flatter than advertised, strangely. Maybe I'm missing something here and need to pay more attention to the front sight, but it's probably a good problem to have.

Not having the the energy to investigate ballistics further, I finished off with Evening Prayer on the tailgate. It was peaceful after the crack of the gun.

Shoot straight. All hail Facebook.

LSP