The Day *Before* The Great Sporting Clays Massacre

Writers are told to “write what you know about” – a concept that would leave this post largely blank.

After all, what I know about Sporting Clays you could fit on a page the size of the Nestle Ethics Manual, though after blasting a few targets out of the air today – and receiving several detailed emails jammed with technical hints (keep both eyes open, mark your break points, point your toes toward the second target, etc) – I think the real secret has been revealed to me:

As a sportsman, you must develop an intense hatred of orange clay saucers – as if they murdered Fido (your beloved family dog) in a previous life.

And we thought catch & release fly fishing was weird.

Murderer. Tomorrow, you die.

The Lone Gunman

In the interest of not getting it completely wrong at tomorrow’s sporting clays for charity shoot, I hit the shooting range today (abandoning the BWO hatch), and pretty much annihilated everything that was thrown in the air. Everything.

Naturally, I’m tempted to call Vegas and make book on my odds of my getting 50% of tomorrow’s sporting clays targets, yet my greed joy is tempered by the simple knowledge that all of today’s targets were headed pretty much directly away from me, and died around the 40 yard mark.

In other words, easy pickins’.

Still, there’s now hope I won’t be forced to slink from tomorrow’s contest like Ike Turner at a NOW convention. Instead, I can hold my head aloft and score one for the “I’m-in-way-over-their-head” Undergrounders everywhere.

We’ll see. For now, there are a pair of barrels that need cleaning, and lots of gear to forget to pack for tomorrow’s shoot.

Expect a report, and don’t be surprised if I beat the Vegas spread.

After all, I hate orange saucers. And this one’s for Fido.

If I'm going down, I'm going down shooting...