AHHH Skeet, Skeet, Skeeting (For A Good Cause)

To the window, to the wall,
To the sweat drop down my BIG ‘OL, HONKIN’, JUICY, BA… oh, hello there, friends!

A good chunk of the Barstool gang is up at Shinnecock Hills for the US Open..

…and I, too, have been spending my time in a golf cart. (Er, one that can off-road to a fishing hole and/or drag deer bodies around mountains & such.)

That’s because I was up past the Poconos in Springville, PA (half-way between Binghamton, NY & Wilkes-Barre, PA, AKA Gloriously In The Middle Of Nowhere if you’re a fancy-pants Delco dweller like myself) for a sporting clays shoot.

I got there around 1:30am Friday morning after signing a lease in NYC for a small place with exactly 2 tiny windows facing brick, so it felt good to look up at the stars, hear the frogs (believe they’re saying ‘U-Up?, U-Up?, U-Up’?), & drift off underneath an animal head in a trailer lovingly referred to by my wonderful uncle as ‘The White Trash Inn’ AKA ‘The WTI’.

My Uncle, his friends (Jimmy & Nick) & I, were teammates in Friday’s Hunts For Healing ‘Old Glory Shoot': a charity event of 100% unpaid volunteers (specific to Northeast PA) focused on helping post-9/11 vets & their families get centered with time in the great outdoors. Don’t mind if I do.

This particular shoot involved 25 stations, where each member of your 4 person team got 4 shots, for a total of 100 shots each altogether. Much like golf, you can get to each station lugging your ammo & guns in a cart, or – behold – a tiny baby-carriage-for-guns.

At each station you load your shotgun (in our case, 12 gauge), & when you say “pull“, the 1st clay ‘bird’ (think tiny orange frisbee) flies out from a machine called a ‘trap’. When you shoot it (or if you’re me, miss it), it signals for the next ‘bird’ to fly out of a different trap, usually from a different direction or height. It’s pretty addicting.

Rifle experience in the Marines aside, I grew up going to the mountains, firing BB guns & 22s at cans on strings, and the occasional clay shoot, but this would only be my 2nd year participating in a real competition. And, as usual when I shoot, I was surrounded by people who were waaaay better than I am, but who, thankfully, were too kind to get mad about me dragging scores down. Though I love it, I don’t do things like this often enough to develop any real skill or muscle memory, so the first 10 stations or so tend to be a (s)hot mess.

Despite using my uncle’s extremely nice gun with barely any recoil, I was flinching. My toes were pointed towards the traps instead of where I planned to fire, and I wasn’t following through after my shots. I was aiming right at the bird instead of a little ahead of/under it (aim for it’s ‘feet’!). Instead of keeping my cheek off the butt (::insert jokes here::) until I was ready to shoot, I was glued to it, limiting my view. At each station I was only getting about 1/4 or 2/4 of the birds. Much like how I – a level & balanced person – gets with mini golf, I was starting to tell myself I was an enormous, worthless, big, dumb idiot face, unworthy of love, who should never play again.

…And then around station 13, something clicked (AKA I finally listened to my uncle who was patiently & kindly telling me all the things above the whole time). From then on out, it was nothing but 3s & 4s. I was playing the best game of my liiiIIIIIIFE…

In the end, my turn-around wasn’t enough to salvage my score (58/100), and even though the rest of my team shot great (all in the 80s), we didn’t win. But in a way, we sort of did, because we all got to stuff our faces with legit country BBQ. And we also got to meet vets from all different backgrounds, and have a great time while contributing to something that will help some post 9/11 families who might need a reminder that life can be pretty damn beautiful, & that it’s never too late to make positive changes.

After the shoot, my uncle, his friend Jimmy, & I hopped in the boonies golf cart & headed over to a lake on some land they own. I got to re-visit the quarry where my big brother accidentally hit me in the head with a sizeable sheet of slate when I was 4 (note to self – do not take the term “HEADS UP” literally) & we fished for some bass, blue gills & crappies while I tried to look cool smoking a cigar. They’d been friends & fishing buddies since high school, joined the Navy together, and they still haven’t slowed on bein’ pals in their 70s.

And not to get sappy, but I’m writing this from a brewery down the shore so what the hell. It was great to spend quality time with my uncle for the first time in a while, and it was a solid reminder of what’s important in life. Just 3 old vets shootin’ the breeze, enjoying the great outdoors, and I was all-around happy. I hope the funds raised from the Hunts For Healing ‘Old Glory Shoot’ do the same for others.

If you’re a veteran in the NorthEastern PA area, check ‘em out! Huntsforhealing.org