The Bird Feeder Incident
Most people who know me will likely agree that I take pride in the fact that I’m pretty handy with a rifle. Also pretty awful with a pistol… luckily I’ve never had much use for one. Where was I going with this? Oh right, marksmanship! I’ve been feeling nostalgic lately, also I’ve been working a lot so I haven’t had much time to go out for new and exciting adventures. Being an adult is way less exciting than I thought it would be.
I come from a house that really promotes firearms and firearm safety. My dad had a rather genius approach to firearms safety. Instead of hiding all his guns and keeping them secret hoping we would never find them, he kept them safely locked and would show them to us and take us to the range every chance he could. That way they weren’t some big taboo exciting secret, they were just those things that we could only use when dad was around. I also remember my dad showing us pictures, in a gag calendar, of gophers that had been shot, and saying things like “that’s why you’re always careful with guns.” It was pretty gross and maybe a bit extreme but it sure was effective and even to this day I’m one of the most anal-retentive people I know when it comes to firearm safety. But more to the point of our story, we also always had air guns, and we had a pretty big back yard which meant we had our own little shooting range. We were even occasionally trusted to be out there shooting on our own and it all happened without incident… well except that one, let me tell you about it.
I believe I was in about 1st grade at the time, and my older brother and I were shooting his crosman airgun. For the most part we would shoot at soda cans and milk jugs. Years later I was informed, by my mother, that the bottle depot guy would often give her dirty looks when she brought in these shredded remains of cans. By some twist of fate or onset of boredom my brother left me alone to keep shooting his BB gun all by myself. After a while I got tired of hitting the same cans at the same distance over and over, and like many cases of boredom I’ve had in my life since then, this led to a bad idea. My mother had a clear plastic bird feeder on an aluminum post,that sat just above my eye level, but more importantly, it was just a few yard behind my target. I assessed the situation and made sure there wasn’t anything fragile or expensive behind it, like a window. I loaded the gun, steadied myself on our shooting bench/picnic table and let loose with a small steel BB. I heard a delightfully loud “tunk!” as it hit the nearly empty octagonal feeder, and I felt very satisfied. I looked at it through the scope and saw no damage, so I walked up and had a look. Sure enough it looked just fine, so I fired a few more from the table each time being rewarded with that same fulfilling plastic thud that made me feel like I could probably shoot just as good as my dad. For the record, I still cant out-shoot my dad, and I hope I never have to get into a competition with Kyle, my older brother… maybe it’s something in the blood. Eventually I got tired of hitting so easily, so I moved back a bit to our little trampoline and thought, “going that far I better use pellets since they shoot better” I loaded up the gun, lied flat, took aim, pshhk and thunk, I hit it again.. and again.. and again. After a while I moved back to the tree line and found even more success. Eventually I figured I may as well go in, I walked up to the bird feeder and sure enough it was trashed, riddled with entry and exit holes. I can still picture myself looking up at it and feeling the terror of ruining my mothers bird feeder. For those who need a visual, it looked kinda like Bonnie and Clyde’s car.
I did what any 8 year old boy would do. I put the gun away same as always and didn’t say anything to anyone. Of course, someone noticed almost immediately that our bird feeder had been ventilated, maybe they heard it whistling in the wind? It also wasn’t really a case for CSI since I was the only one using the BB gun all day. That said, I wasn’t admitting anything to anybody.. deny.. deny.. deny. That was of course until my dad had a chance to cross examine the defendant during dinner. After some tricky questioning, I was still able to keep my story straight. Then out of nowhere came some classic fatherly trickery. It went something like this:
“well whoever hit that bird feeder must have been a pretty good shot to be able to hit it from the picnic table”
“No, I hit it from the trampoline and then the treeline!”
I realized what just happened and my eyes forced themselves wide open. Everyone looked at me and grinned, it was in this moment in life that I first realized I may not be a particularly clever individual. It was then decreed that I had to apologize to my mother for wrecking her feeder, I also recall emptying out my piggy bank and offering it to my mother as compensation for damages. No surprise she didn’t take the, what I now assume was about eight dollars in loose change. My private range privileges were also revoked indefinitely and my family still likes to reference “the bird feeder incident” from time to time.
The bird feeder incident taught me a few important things about firearm safety, and it not being worth it to lie about your mistakes. I also learnt an interesting child interrogation trick that I feel will come in useful someday if and when I have children.
P.S. Mom, I still owe you a bird feeder and since I now have slightly more than $8 in my piggy bank do you like this one? Its a little fancier than the one I perforated but you’ve got almost 20 years of accrued interest on that debt.
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The Stuff Weekends Are Made Of (Part 2 of 3); Long Range Shooting
The shoot was scheduled to start Saturday morning, however for me it started on Thursday. I arrived at the farm Thursday morning ready to help set up. We began by loading Darrell’s custom built, by him, steel plates and gongs into the back of a side by side ATV and believe me when I tell you these things are heavy. I was informed that their weight is no accident, it turns out even at a kilometer a bullet can still penetrate the lighter steel plates… and even some of the thicker ones. This to me really drove home the importance of knowing what is behind your target when hunting. After the heavy loading I was offered, and immediately accepted, a cold beer. It was very warm that day.
We then drove the little side by side to the 1000 meter target. As we bounced and scraped through the trees and brush along to quad trail, I understood why he opted not to just take the truck. Arriving at our destination involved a rather nerve wracking climb up a steep hill, with a somewhat overloaded ATV. I know it was overloaded because when we stopped and applied the parking break it started to roll down the hill. We immediately blocked up the back tires and began unloading and setting out the new targets among the old along the hillside. When it was all said and done there were about twenty targets on the hill. They ranged from about three meters wide and a meter tall to about four inches by four inches. What grabbed my attention was that this small target had bullet marks on it. While on the hill, Darrell was considering the placement of the targets while I paced and did the same, it was at this point I noticed a large piece of black plywood, an old target. For reasons I still do not understand I grabbed it and flipped it over… snakes, probably five garter snakes, which is about five more than I would have liked to have seen. Two things occurred to me 1. We don’t have a shotgun on us or the quad 2. I really wish we had a shotgun on us or in the quad. I quickly flipped the old plank back on them and told Darrell that we had to do our best to remember a shotgun next time.
The following morning I awoke in a daze in an undisclosed location in a condition that we’ll just call sub-par. I immediately made my way back to the farm for the shoot and arrived at about the same time people were starting to get geared up to get out to the range, perfect timing. The shoot itself was quite exciting and I got to try out a large amount of hardware far outside of my tax bracket. The first gun I shot was a .223 wssm (Winchester super short magnum) at about 750 yards and with a bit of assistance
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| The .223 WSSM |
from the owner, Darrell, and bit of math, also provided by Darrell. I was informed of what to set the scope to and sure enough each shot was bang on with that swinging gong as proof. It really gives a sense of accomplishment even if you didn’t do all the hard work like building and reloading. I asked what the math was that he used, and I was told it was thanks to his ballistics calculator app (yea I guess there’s an app for that too) all he had to do was enter in his bullet weight, velocity, coefficient, and distance of the shot. Naturally I asked what coefficient and I’m still not 100% on this but I believe it has to do with the bullets resistance as it goes through the air and this shaky understanding was only obtained after an entire group had done their best to explain it to me, bless them and their patience. I also spend a majority of the morning acting as spotter for other shooters and chatting with other people at the shoot. Then around lunch time we changed it up, Darrell loaded up his cannon and carefully took aim at the 400 yard plate. I had my doubts he could hit it. The fuse was lit, several cameras were rolling, everyone was covering their ears… then a thunderous boom came out of the cannon followed seconds later by the loud twang of that big lead slug slamming into that 400 yard plate followed by amazement, laughter, and applause.
The day continued on and a long time friend of the family offered to let me shoot his .338 Lapua, an offer I quickly took him up on. I pointed it at the 1000 yard target, adjusted the scope, took aim, took a deep breath and fired, and missed. I repeated this several times and to no avail, oh well you can’t win them all and it was still an amazing view. Next it was on to the 50 BMG this was the one I was drooling over. To the extent of my knowledge it’s the biggest meanest rifle available to us Canadians. I loaded the first round, had someone step in as a spotter for me and took aim at one of the cream coloured targets, about two feet by two feet wide, a gutsy target given my skill with the Lapua. I get comfortable, take aim, squeeze the trigger, and fire. At this point I should probably tell you, shooting a 50 BMG is not like shooting a normal gun first its loud, very loud, so you wear two pairs of hearing protection, small inserts and the large muffs. Second they have a large muzzle break (presumably for user safety) this reduces recoil but as a result has a strange effect on the gun. It seems to float when fired only for a split second but you can feel it. The recoil pushing back and the muzzle break pushing forward the result is a gun caught seemingly in mid air and in limbo only to come rattling and crashing down
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| View At 1000 |
in an all around exhilarating experience. The first shot I fired missed, but not by much, I loaded a second and fired and got a little closer. The third was right on I could see the paint chip, I did it! I shot 1000! That was all my shooting for the day I was happy with that and I know I’ll be back every year, especially if I’m told there will be another delicious pulled pork dinner afterword.
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