I'm not fazed by or opposed to firearms. My only gripe with them--like giants lacking furniture and living in a Lilliputian world--are the folks with 20/20 vision squeamish in letting someone borderline legally blind to try shooting. It's a serious uphill battle for us, and I'm of the mindset to say, "Hey! Anything you can do, I can do better/And I may do anything better than you!" *grin* And if Jeff Sorenthal, the first-ever blind person to scale and summit Mt. Everest, can do that, I can shoot a firearm. He had guides, yes; guns have laser sights and scopes these days. The technology's just dazzling; the naysayers are so 18th century.
My families were big in hunting, skeet shooting, rifling, and occasionally crossbow hunting. Desperate to give it a go, but the adults were always shook to the marrow in letting me try because I'm albino and have borderline legal blindness on the legal blindness side, I pouted and sulked on the sidelines. But, there's a wicked writing academy I'm itching to get to this September, and it's hosted by the HOWDUNEIT Forensic Series author, POLICE PROCEEDURE AND INVESTIGATIONS, Lee Lofland. I'm hoping I'll try a few rounds; if I have someone better sighted with me when I hold a gun not scoped or with a scope on the firearm. This way, I know I'll do fine.
I didn't like my stepdad much when he was with my mom, but I did love shooting and hunting (motorcycles, too, but he never had one, darn it :)). Anyway, he had a .22 and an old one at that. I forget the maker, but did know the bullet and I still have that casing someplace. He asked out of the blue if I wanted to go. Putting aside my feelings and striking an uneasy alliance with who he was, I jumped at the chance, and looked through the scope. Once the crosshairs were trained, I made sure my mounting arm was locked, but not overextended, put my index finger on the trigger, and pulled.
The sound was like I'd blown a cannonball round and the ringing it left in my ear was incredible. I didn't mount my left hand/arm, which gave me a nasty kick to my thumb, and I offered the desert the loudest, nastiest combination of swear words I knew how. He laughed at me and said though I didn't hold the butt grip tight enough, but for my first--and only--shot fired, I did it right.
"What do you mean," I asked. "Did what right?"
He nodded at the ridge some fifty years away from us that Sunday afternoon. "Go look."
I did. Lying in the Arizona sun, eyes wide open and looking more like an exploded jar of strawberry preserves than endtrails, lay a buck jackrabbit. The casing from that bullet was warm in my pocket and burned my thigh as I looked at that kill. Oh, sure, rabbits die all the time, but this one had its belly ripped open. From a single shot fired. By me. I wasn't sure how I felt about it, especially since I didn't see nothing in the scope but sagebrush and an empty Miller Lite can he'd mounted on a post. But if what cops say is true about having to shoot people to stop a crime and feeling torn up inside over it, I got an inkling of their same feelings on that day. Even though my stepdad explained it was friendly fire and it sometimes happens, I never went again, because my stepdad refused to use clay or paper targets after that.
When I was around four or five, my auntie and uncle, both up in years and living in central VA, reminded me of the time when he'd scored a buck. I did remember that, too: it was a beautiful black and brown deer, with antlers that reminded me of polished wood. It was strapped to the hood of their car, and I asked will it get up and walk away, since its eyes were still open. They said no, it wouldn't since it was dead. I found it grisly fascinating, but complicated to pinpoint how I felt, even though the tears flowed anyway. It wasn't because of my age then, but the shot it took. I've still mixed feelings about hunting and the result of such things, but I'll never oppose it on the surface.
As a writer, I'll harness these feelings and use them in my works because they're certainly going to be easier to convey in storytelling that way. And I'm hoping to get to this retreat--"conference" is such an overused word, isn't it?--to pick the brains of an ME, a detective, a cop, and to really feel a firearm and an arrow in my hands again. Because like the website says: Better to sweat it in the brunt work now than to have JERSEY and the Pedregon/McGuinness Chronicles bleed red ink later.
As for that buck's meat? Nope, never got any venison from the shot. And to this day, I've yet to try some :). My uncle took the deer head to his men's hunting hall and had it mounted, though.
~Missye
Twitter haiku
1 hour ago


