Put In A Little .22 Time This Morning

October 2, 2010 · Filed under life in Florida

This area has always been rural but once the main road and secondary road got paved, it’s sort of gone to hell in the sense that even city people in little economy cars that don’t buy their livestock feed by the ton have moved out here. Since I try to be a good neighbor and not accidentally shoot kids off 4-wheelers in the woods behind my house, I haven’t gotten in much target practice for the past few years. SwampMan, who isn’t particularly concerned about neighbor kids or my livestock was out shooting a couple .22s that he, daughter, and SIL had been shooting a few weeks ago. I remonstrated with him about safety. He returned that he was shooting towards the bottom of a barrel, and the bullet would safely hit the ground a few feet behind it. Hopefully before it killed any of the chickens in the pen about 20 feet behind the barrel. I wasn’t really happy about THAT, either, but he said I had too many chickens anyway.

He wanted me to shoot because I hadn’t for awhile. I told him that my filthy house was in desperate need of a cleaning, and that was what it was going to get. He pointed out that it had been such a long time since I’d shot something, I might not even be able to hit the barrel from 20 feet away. Hmmmmmm. Good point.

I decided to build a backstop of sorts, and took some sheets of scrap plywood and pressboard and 2×4 scraps off his truck, leaned ’em up against the fence considerably further away to make it sportin’, and fired a test shot at the bottom of the target. Hmmmm. Couldn’t see any sign that it had been hit. Fired off a couple more rounds, same thing. SwampMan fired further up, and I could see pieces of sawdust flaking off with every hit. We walked up to check, and I could see the holes on the back side of the plywood and the piece behind it, but it hadn’t penetrated the 2x4s. SwampMan decided that I needed to be able to see if I hit it, so he put a piece of sheetrock in front.

Okay, fine.

Deep breath, sight, exhale, squeeze. Move it up a bit, exhale, squeeze. Repeat until empty. Hand it back over to SwampMan to see if he’s happy yet.

“Could you see where you were hitting?”

“Nah.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yep.”

“Come look at it!”

The sheetrock looked as though the holes had been laid out along a ruler in a perfectly straight line up and down with @ 1″ spaces in between.

“I’ve REALLY got to mop the floor and wash some dishes now, okay? Are you satisfied that I can still hit stuff?”

I didn’t tell him that it was quite accidental because I was just shooting, moving up a bit, shooting, and moving up a bit because I really couldn’t see where I was hitting. I could see where I was aiming, of course, but just not where it was actually hitting. There’s a reason I like a shotgun now.

Update: SwampMan just came inside while I was taste testing the beef stew. Almost done.

“I didn’t do it on purpose, so don’t be mad at me.”

Awwwwwww, shit. That’s never a good sign. “Didn’t do what on purpose?”

“I was testing the scope, and it was a little off.”

“Really.”

“And I accidentally killed one of your chickens.”

*sigh* Why am I not surprised? But how can you accidentally kill a chicken that is 5 feet to the side of what you are aiming at? I mean, I would look up and eyeball to see if I was actually pointing toward the target, but that’s just me. I guess I should be happy it wasn’t a sheep. Or horse.

Oh, damn. I better go check.

And he left the dead chicken for me to deal with. I don’t think so. If that thang ain’t gone by morning, it’s getting tossed in his barn.