Osama bin Zombie

We firearm enthusiasts of Missouri's rugged Jefferson and Franklin counties are a fun-loving group that likes to get together, talk about and try out firearms, and practice shooting, and later sit in rockers on the porch as the sun sets trying to figure out how to gig frogs without a boat, but mostly we shoot at bulls-eye targets, and now and then we do stacks of cans, license plates, and plastic bottles, and shotgunners shoot at skeets. But I had left over from the days when the gun club met at my place, this one last zombie poster, at one time hilariously funny and now just tasteless and outmoded. So this was our belated good riddance to our country's old enemy. In the photo my friend Morris sets up a juice jug for more target shooting. Morris has a .22 rifle with a mag that holds 25 rounds. Big fun!

My Friend Hawkeye

Yesterday a friend and I walked a trail through Lone Elk Park where elk run free, and she saw, across a lake, a couple hundred yards away, two male elks tangling their antlers, pushing and shoving . . . I said, "Wow. How did you see that?" and she told me that a gym teacher once called her Hawkeye.

Encouraged, when we went back to my place I got out my Benjamin-Sheridan air rifle that I use for fun and squirrels. On the shooting range I set up in my meadow I taught Hawkeye -- who was born in New York City and had never touched a gun -- to shoot, first at coffee cans. On her fourth-ever shot she hit the target, and kept on hitting with jaw-dropping accuracy; a real natural talent. I said, "This calls for a celebration," and got out my Osama Bin Laden paper target, downloaded from a site called Ty's Shooting Interests, which I use only on special occasions. Hawkeye got a bull's eye on her second shot. I gave her the target as a souvenir to take back home to the big city.