Author: Holly A. Heyser

I remember so vividly the day I went to buy my first shotgun.

My boyfriend Hank and I drove a couple miles down the main drag of our dilapidated 1960s-era suburb to our local hook-n-bullet store, an utterly charmless building with windows boarded over and painted, and not so much as a sprig of greenery anywhere in the parking lot. It was ugly even compared with already-low neighborhood standards.

One more duck.

That’s what I told myself Sunday afternoon as I crept through a patch of nut grass in the marsh, bent low over the water to minimize my outline, straining to keep an eye on the birds without them seeing me.

Maybe I should’ve taken that shot.

As the morning chill dissipated, the sky brightened and even distant duck sightings grew more infrequent, it was becoming clear that Charlie and I were about to be skunked. On opening day, no less.

Skeet is not a game to me.

I don’t keep score. I ignore many of the rules and conventions. And I like to blaze through a round fast. Really fast. All I’m doing is trying to stay sharp for wingshooting. I don’t particularly want to be an expert at shooting inanimate clay disks.

I am not a gun nut.

I don’t flip the pages of high-end gun magazines, staring at beautiful guns and sighing wistfully. I don’t need a different gun for every type of hunting I do. And about the only engraving I need on a gun is a serial number.