Christmas 2016...

Three Shotgun Shells...

Because my son and his wife hosted our family's Christmas this year and thanks to yesterday's warm weather my family and I were able to break away from the traditional sitting around inside the house because it's too cold to go outside and have a little fun in true redneck fashion.

One of my son's Christmas presents was a new skeet thrower.

By the time we finally got it put together we realized it was much stronger and sturdier than his old one we decided we had no choice but to test it out.

The only problem was the giant mud hole at the one and only entrance to his pasture.

Solved.

Because everything was wet and muddy I figured we'd have to walk out to his pasture so I went about looking through his garage for a tarp or something we could use to sit the clays and ammo while we were shooting when I heard someone backing up to the garage door.

It turned out to be my son in an old Jeep Cherokee he bought for $300 a year or so ago and is in the slow process of restoring (I didn't even know it ran) popped open the back hatch and said, "load er up."

We threw in 4 shotguns, 15 boxes of shotgun shells (10-12 gauge and 5-20 gauge), 4 cases of clays, (90 each) and the new thrower and slammed the door shut and headed out.

Because of the (deplorable) condition of his old Cherokee (restoration project) I had my doubts about being able to get through the giant mud hole I mentioned earlier.

Because one was all smashed up and the other one had long ago rusted out, the two front front fenders had been removed. There was a short in the wiring which led my son to tearing the entire dash apart and throwing it in the back seat, and the exhaust was shot.

I asked him if he was sure his old junker (restoration project) would make it. He just laughed and said, "you worry too much, old man."

Just before we hit the giant (about 50 or 60 feet long) mud hole at the entrance to his pasture he stopped to put it 4 wheel drive, smiled, and said something like, "hang on."

The mud hole was everything I expected it to be, muddy and sloppy, and because of the missing front fenders, we probably shot mud 20 feet into the air, the windshield was covered but his old junker (restoration project) was more than up to the challenge.

Once we got to the other side my son just smiled and said, "told ya."

And like any true 32-year-old redneck would do, he backed up and hit it again.

Anyway, we got everything set up and started shooting.

Because it had been quite some time since we'd been shooting I was out of practice and missed more than I shot but that was soon corrected.

We hadn't been down there but maybe 30 minutes when my wife with her .22, daughter-in-law with her .410, son-in-law, (who is still fairly liberal and hasn't shot a gun in years) my youngest son and his girlfriend all came walking down and together we all had a blast.

But like everything else in life, sooner or later all good things come to an end.

The wind picked up and it started drizzling again.

We loaded the guns, ammo, and the thrower back into my son's junker, (restoration project) and with a smile on my face, I wished the rest of the bunch good luck on the walk back to the house and opened the passenger side door.

What I didn't realize was that my wife was standing right behind me and slid into the seat before I had a chance to do anything about it.

She laughed and said, "yeah, good luck."

And there went my ride.

I gotta admit, watching my son hit that mud hole from my new vantage point (walking) was pretty cool. But because his mom was now with him he didn't dare take a second shot at it.

On the walk home we laughed at shots we'd taken and missed and bragged about the one's we'd made.  I encouraged my youngest son's girlfriend to stick around and told her we'd make a redneck our of her yet. 

She just laughed and said, yeah, good luck with that.

As for my (still fairly liberal) son-in-law, he had a great time and said shooting may very well become one of his new hobbies.

Maybe there's hope for him yet.

Obviously I can't predict the future with any reliable degree of accuracy.

But one thing I can predict with certainty is that Christmas 2016 is one they'll remember for the rest of their lives