The Jackpine Savage tries 3 Gun Competition

As a proud Jackpine Savage, I've been shooting since I was barely a sapling. I took to rifles immediately and later pistols with equal relish. Shotguns, however, were not my favorite. That's an understatement. It's more accurate to say that I hated them for many years. My dislike started with my first encounter.

For those of you that knew my dad or have at least heard stories, you won't be shocked to find out that he had my shoot a 3" magnum from a seated supported position when I was nine. I remember the noise, and sliding backwards, then falling backwards. It took a few minutes to get feeling back into my shoulder. The moment left an impression. Later, when I found out that the best duck weather was in a cold downpour, I was further soured. Finally, shooting a shotgun at a moving object in the air requires to forget the opposite of the discipline of the rifle.

Shooting a rifle requires (as I learned from my father),  1. Consistent cheek to stock weld. 2. Sight picture. 3. Breath control. 4. Steady squeeze on the trigger.

A shotgun requires learning the lead distance and slapping the trigger. There is no luxury of breath control and no sight picture or a steady squeeze. It takes practice to switch from one to the other, and my hatred for the shogun drastically reduced my desire to put in the time.

Flash forward 30 odd years and I heard about 3 Gun matches. There is no false advertising, it requires 3 guns, a rifle, a pistol and... a shotgun. But, and it's a big but, there are no or at least very few targets flying through the air. In short, I could shoot it like a rifle against fixed targets. I can do that.

When it came to choosing my three, the pistol was the easiest decision. I already had a Springfield XDM .40, but for accurate fast shooting, I followed the online advice and got a 9mm XDM. The only thing it required were a few extended mags and a precision trigger kit. I went with the Powder River Precision trigger kit and dropped the pull down to around 2 pounds.

I had no idea how much I would actually like it, so I didn't want to go broke. I sold a few pieces I wasn't using. A Mini 14 and a couple of pistols and got a Mossberg AR15. It had good reviews, especially for the price. The trigger was the largest complaint, so I dropped in a Timney trigger kit. The stock also left something to be desired, so I upgraded that as well. At first I tried a red dot, but the fact is, my old eyes needed optics, so I replaced it with a 1-4 power. What I got is a bargain AR that shoots like a carbine twice it's price.

Lastly, I needed a shotgun. Since my dad passed, I made sure to take care of the shotgun he loved the most. With it, he won best in Bemidji in Skeet and Trap two years in a row. The Browning A5. His was made in Belgium int he 20's and besides routine cleaning, I wouldn't touch it.  Even if I did, would it work for a 3 gun competition? I did some searching and found an article from a man that blogs as Major Pandemic http://www.alloutdoor.com/2014/04/23/browning-a5-12-gauge-resurrecting-legend-part-1/.

I was sold. I found a 50's era Twelve Light on Gun Broker.com for less than $400, and added the magazine extension, a synthetic stock and a Polychoke without the break (due to match rules), and I was ready.

My first match was a little rough. I had yet to install the trigger kit in the pistol. I had feed issues with my AR until I was told to load only 28 rounds in the 30 round magazines (go figure), and when I got to the last two shells in my A5, I also had a miss-feed that required a longer spring (only $6 dollars).

I also got sun burned and was very hungry and thirsty because I forgot to pack food, water or sunscreen.

Here's what I learned about the people that shoot in 3 Gun matches. They are good people. They enjoy it and they care. Technically, we are competing, though not for a prize, just for the lowest time, but it doesn't feel like a competition. You're just out shooting with new friends and learning. The main goal is the better than you were yesterday. I got a lot of advice and assistance. True, no one gave me half their sandwich, but they did have water and this is a shooting range not an after school special. But still, I felt welcomed.

I made adjustments to my gear and created a checklist of items I would need for my next match. There are several in the Twin Cities area during the summer and I'm sure all over the US. I can see how this could get very expensive for someone that was 20 years younger and had a serious chance of getting good. I am neither. My bargain basement gear works just fine for me. Now I just need to get out there and have fun.

If you enjoy shooting as a sport consider joining me, I guarantee you'll like it. 

Grandma's House

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One week each summer from the age of six until I was ten, I spent a week at my grandma's. She seemed so far away, a whole hour back in Deer River. She lived on Hanson Lake in the house her first husband had built. My sister got a week also, so we each got a two week break from each other.

The first night was always awkward. Grandma had fewer rules than I had at home but I was always tentative and a little afraid. I slept in an upstairs room and it was strange. The smell was comforting, but different and after living in a trailer, even a small house seemed large when it had an upstairs and a basement.

It might have been the different noises or because Amber wasn't there guard me until I slept, but that first bedtime was always hard. There were Peanuts books by Charles Shultz in the room and while I barely remembered the rest of the surroundings, those books were comforting.

The next morning there were always Leo's pancakes. Leo was my grandpa, but we called him Leo. Later, I understood that he was my Grandma's second husband and he never wanted to be seen as trying to take Grandpa's place. I never met my Maternal or Paternal grandfathers, both died before I was born.

Leo was grandpa enough that I never felt like I missed anything. His pancakes were delicious and unlike anything else I'd ever tasted. I had an important job watching the light on the grill and took it very seriously. More like a cross between a crepe and a typical pancake with bacon grease as critical ingredient, I put down more than my share. They also made their own syrup, the traditional way in a large pan outside on an open fire. The whole family would visit during maple syrup season and I would walk through the woods with Grandma checking and collecting buckets of the sap and when it snowed, Leo would make us hard maple syrup candy right from the pan.

They had a real bar in the family room and Leo would take my order like I was a grownup and serve up my kiddy cocktail with the flair of a real bartender. He was a gifted story teller and a man of mystery, with strange gravity defying devices carved from wood like tops and a thing that would suspend a belt on the edge of the table and bounce as if suspended by a magnet. He also polished stones and I loved to look at all them and touch their smooth surfaces.

Hanson Lake was a magic place. Near the dock there were large rocks that could be peeled off in sheets and almost seen though. Closer to the water, giant bullfrogs hid in the tall grass. Leo said he would cook up the legs if I caught one. I caught a few but let them go.

Grandma would take me fishing on the lake. First we would go get supplies. I would always get a toy from the store by the lake and usually lose it before I returned home. One year we got Worm in a Can Cola. The top had two holes, one to drink from and one to let in air. We would gather earthworms from the rich soil and go out near the lily pads and bobber fish for sunnies and then eat them that night, either in a cornbread or beer batter. Nothing tasted better.

One winter we were there when Grandma got a bunch of chicks. We played with them for hours; they were so cute and yellow. That next summer I got to see them all grown up. Grandma collected eggs and we went out to the pen one night before dinner.

"Pick one out."

I couldn't really recognize them all grown up but I convince myself I knew which one had been my favorite and I pointed it out. She picked it up and carried it back to the house. Halfway there, she stopped at a stump, grabbed the bird by the neck and swung it around snapping its neck with a quick twitch of her wrist. I stood by, eyes big and unable to speak. She chopped off its head and gutted it quick, handing me a foot so I could see how the claws opened and shut when you pulled on the tendons. Then she showed me how to pluck it and I helped. By the time it came out of the oven, I was done with my silent mourning.

The Long Walk

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The memories of my time in the Army fluctuate. One day they seem so long ago that it must have happened to someone else and I just heard the story, and other times it feels like I just got back home from Ft Dix yesterday.

I wasn't an Explosive Ordnance Disposal technician for long, yet I was young and it left a permanent impression on me. I did the job back in the days before bomb suits and robots. We walked downrange without hat or blouse, because they could get in the way. We had a hero kit strapped to our legs filled with a blasting cap crimper, a demolition knife, a dive knife, a Leatherman and a role of electrical tape.

During the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, I heard the expression "the long walk" for the first time. It's what the EOD techs now call that lonely stroll downrange to either identify or render safe an unexploded piece of ordnance or Improvised Explosive Device. The Long Walk. It fits. It says so much in only a few words. Yet despite the inherent danger associated with even the most mundane of tasks like blowing up a faulty hand grenade with a block of C-4, I never once remember being afraid.

This is not bravado. I didn't lack fear. I was just under the delusion that I could handle whatever was at the end of my walk. They did a good job at school and later in the unit reinforcing this belief. Despite having lost 162 techs between 1941 and 1985, it seemed like those were things that happened to other people. We needed to believe that, so we did.

This is what I thought as I took another kind of long walk today. The elevator door opened to drab colors, worn carpet and a tired institutional smell. The building is quite different from the one my father died in seven years ago, but the feelings are the same. I was there to visit one of my favorite people in the world and had no idea if she would even know I was there.

Like most people, I had two grandmas. My father's mom passed away when I was eleven. We were never close. She was so much different than the person I thought of as my real grandma. Grandma Dora was always my grandma, and now she's in hospice. She's 95 and has had a full, rich life, but I am greedy. I want more. One more game of scrabble. One more meal shared. One more story told. I sound like my daughters when they were small but I don’t care, I want one more.

The elevator closed behind me and I was afraid. Like the walks I took to see my father in his final days, I feared that I was not ready for what was downrange. I feared that I would not be strong enough for Dora or my mom. Would this be the last time I saw her? Would she know I'm there? Was I already too late?

You're never ready. There is no ready. So I put one foot in front of the other and patted the spot on my hip where my hero kit used to rest and I tried not to think about what could happen. Those things happen to the other guys. Now at home, all I can think about is to hope I have another chance at the long walk, so I can hold her hand and look into her eyes, just one more time.