Sometimes I wonder what it’s like to be a bird.
Funny thought, I know, coming from someone who spends a lot of time shooting birds, picking up their (ideally) limp bodies, disemboweling them and ultimately eating them, seemingly without a shred of remorse as their fat – blessed natural fat – drips down her chin. From where I sit, being a bird shouldn’t seem enviable, right?
But it is.
Does gun fit really matter? Well, I drove 1,320 miles to find the answer.
I wouldn’t make the grueling round-trip drive from Maryland to Georgia just for anyone who claimed to be a gunfitter. This guy was the real deal — by all accounts the best: Chris Batha.
In the wingshooting universe, the principles of conservation and ecology underpin habitat stewardship. Lyndall Bailye, founder of Good Shot Design tweed shooting apparel, is integrating those ideals into a line of traditional British shooting clothes and accessories made of high-tech fabrics now imported into the U.S. by her company.
There’s good news for Zoli fans, and it goes by the name of Norbert Haussmann.
The former president of Blaser USA, 20-year Krieghoff veteran and former owner of Alamo Sporting Arms is now heading up a new joint venture with Antonio Zoli of Brescia Italy — the duo intent on boosting the presence and desirability of Zoli shotguns and rifles in America.
Ever wonder why some people appear so relaxed and natural while they’re doing something that most of us would consider difficult? How their movements are intentional, yet graceful, with a fluid consistency that make the whole process of what they’re doing look easy? I usually think of artists and athletes in this context who have made their talent their profession…you know the painters, pianists, basketball players, golfers, ice skaters, ballet dancers …and, yes, champion shooters.
In the June installment of this column we examined the first form of recoil called actual recoil. I pointed out that all actual recoil comes from the shotshell load itself. As the shotshell load shot charge weight increases and as the velocity of the load increases, so too does the total value of the actual recoil force generated by that shotshell load. Gauge is irrelevant.
Bang! Miss.
Bang! Miss.
Bang! Miss.
It actually went on much longer than that, but you get the idea: I was shooting badly. Very badly.
And to make things infinitely worse, I was shooting sporting clays with four of my new co-workers from the California Waterfowl Association at its annual Staff Day event. Yeah, it’s a duck hunting organization. OK, conservation too, but for the purposes of this discussion, I need to highlight that I was shooting badly — cringe! — a girl shooting badly — among fellow hunters. Guy hunters.
The skiff cracked skim ice as our duck-hunting party worked the oars to push through the cypress swamp of Beaver Dam Lake. Dawn infused the mysterious atmosphere with Mississippi sapphire light while a hand-held torch illuminated the murky water oozing up through the fissures. Our destination slowly materialized as an apparition in the mist. It was a blind, the weathered plywood camouflaged by scavenged, gnarled branches, perched atop stilts, medieval and mesmerizing.
While more than 100 acres of winter wheat blanketed the spring soil not ten yards forward of our position we felt strangely closed in, but it was nice, even intimate. Nothing means more to a young son sitting in the darkness than knowing he’s next to his dad; I can say the same for sitting next to him. We sat, whispered and giggled for nearly an hour before I noticed a silver hue raining down through the treetops over our shoulders. It was just enough to expose the haunting glow of layered fog as it began to roll back its stranglehold on dew-laden wheat. As minutes ticked away so did darkness. The silver hues succumbed to radiant shades of amber and gold as frigid temperatures dropped several more degrees. My son Jacob said I looked like a bull with “smoke” surging from my nostrils.
You’d think that Jack Bart is merely standing on Post 1 of a trap field, high-rib shotgun mounted, ready to call pull. In some circles, though, the 30-year veteran, clays-shooting instructor is straddling a so-called “chasm” that separates early adopters of new technology from a more pragmatic community of “wait-and-see” skeptics.
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