Value Beyond Measure
Charlie Hurd July 21st, 2009
My dad was born in 1930 and served in the Navy during the Korean War. He lives in Botetourt, and we see each other pretty often. The last Saturday in May, he came to help me with a project at my home in Franklin County. After we finished, I asked if he would like to shoot some skeet.
Now ….. I know he owns a .22 rifle, and he has had handguns in the past, but I was unprepared when he told me that he had never shot a shotgun before. That clinched it for me – we had to go break some birds. I’m ntw a great skeet shooter, but I enjoy it and have a good time, no matter how many I break. I figured I could ‘coach’ him well enough to get him to bust some birds.
Dad and I arrived on the skeet range just as a small group was finishing up. Since there were no other shooters, so we went to station 7 and let him shoot some going straight away. He shot both my Citori and a semi. Certainly not a slight or frail man; nevertheless, he found the semi lighter and easier to handle than the double. Within a few shells, he broke his first clay pigeon, at 78 years young! He broke a few more and then decided to call it quits.
The reason I decided to share this story is not that I wanted to tell a tale of skeet shooting. Rather, it’s a story of watching a shooter, new to a sport, pull the trigger the first time. It’s a story whose moral is “It’s never too late in life to try something new”. Time spent with one’s father has value beyond measure.
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