GUNS Magazine March 1958

SHOOT AT HOME?
A
GOOD MANY YEARS AGO, a spindly, overalled,
barefooted kid squinted down the octagon barrel
of an antiquated .22 rifle and knocked a pine cone hellto-breakfast
off a sun-bathed log. I was that kid, and
I'll never forget the thrill of that moment. Since that day,
I have fired some sort of gun at least once a month, except
during the time spent in military service. (No, that's not
a misprint. Like many GI's, I did less shooting in the
Armed Forces than out.)
It has been fun all the way; fun when I was a growing
kid, fun in all the later years, in the field or at targets,
with whatever gun happened to hold my interest at the
moment. But it took a growing son of my own to teach
me what I really wanted from the shooting game, and
what I could get from it.
By the time Ronny was eight, he had been out to the
range with me several times, first as a spectator and later
as a pupil. Remembering my own cartridge-starved youth,
By HERBERT J. ERFURTH
I spent plenty of time coaching him, making sure he got
to burn up at least a box of cartridges every week-end. The
small-bore target bug was biting me hard at that time, and
Ronny spent many an afternoon tied into a miniature
version of my own shooting sling, trying to punch out
scores with his little single shot.
I still have some snaps taken at the range, showing
him with a brave smile on his face and a target in his
hand. Maybe it was that smile that finally got through
to me. At first, when it dawned on me that he was doing
all this more to be with me, or more to impress the other
kids on the block, that for the fun of shooting, I couldn't
believe it. It was fun, darn it! It had been and still was
fun for me; why not for him?
We shot, and shot some more. We shot, and then walked
down and marked the targets; shot again, squinted
through the spotting scope, made corrections, talked some,
and went on shooting. He was polite about it, tried hard
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