No, not TV: the other sort of shooting. With, like, guns, and everything.
A couple of weekends ago, I found myself with a group of gentlemen (perhaps ‘Gentlemen’), clay pigeon shooting. Now, I’ve never held a gun in my life, except possibly a wonky air rifle at Hull Fair when I was about nine. I’ve certainly never fired a twelve-bore before. So I wasn’t exactly expecting to be any good at hitting small, fast-moving targets.
I decimated the first seven clays. Overall, I hit with twenty-two out of twenty-six shots. This is, apparently, rather good going.
Now, I’m not entirely sure how I feel about this. I have something resembling a healthy loathing for what labours under the doubtless-undeserved blanket term ‘gun culture’. Further, I’ve no desire to be any good at shooting anything: It’s not a skill I think I can use on a regular basis. Nor even a sporadic basis. And the process of actually firing a twelve bore is, frankly, dangerous, scary, and painful. I didn’t even have the satisfaction of seeing my clays disintegrate, since I had my eyes shut at those moments. Well, the thing you’re holding goes “BANG!” right next to your head, it seems reasonable.
However, there must be some vestigial competitive aspect to my nature, since I did actually enjoy trouncing the other shooters. Particularly the cocky Aussie. And it’s always a delight to discover novel and unexpected aptitudes, something one assumes occurs less frequently as one ages.
So… clay pigeon shooting? I rock. Apparently.