Thanksgiving Skeet
Thanksgiving was a day of learning: my mother and brother and I visited relatives down in Murfreesboro, AR, where my father grew up. This is waaaay out there on a farm in the backwoods of Arkansas. I learned how to mix feed for the cattle (2:1 ratio of corn meal to hay), checked out the chicken coop (ca. 9000 hens and 4000 roosters all in one long building is quite a sight), picked black walnuts, fed the cattle in three different fields (neat tip: drive the round bale of hay up on an incline in the back of the pickup, cut the ties, and let it roll down the fill, unfolding as it goes – you end up with a long trough-like line of hay, so you don’t have to spread it by hand), moved some more cattle around, as well as a bull or two, and also learned how to make sorghum. My uncle Jerry (Kizzia), who was our farm guru and mentor for the day, makes and sells it – it’s an arduous and time-consuming task, and is becoming something of a lost art. Here he is with the pan he uses to cook it:
Here’s the label – you should order some – it’s more than 80% sugar once he’s finished with it. All natural:
You can only get it locally around Murfreesboro, Arkansas, but I bet he’d ship some if you called him up and ordered it.
The highlight of the day, for me, though, was the skeet shooting.
Now, I’ve never fired a gun before. They don’t look kindly on shooting shotguns in New York City. At least, I assume not. So, this was a rare and satisfying experience.
My brother, who’s done this once before, nailed his first one:
I missed the first several while I got the feel of my 20-gauge, but eventually nailed one dead on.
After some more hit and miss, I graduated to the 12-gauge, single-shot, using long brass shells. Holy sh*t. I don’t have any pictures of that one, but I have the shoulder bruises to prove it. I enjoyed that a LOT.
Here’s some dead skeet:
Afterward, I got the nice posed shot, since we were too busy to get many shots while we were actually shooting. Maybe I should make this my new official headshot.
Thank you to Jerry and Aunt Jane for hosting Thanksgiving this year, and to Misty, Paige, Al, Steve, Michelle, Matt, Sara, and Malorie for the wonderful company.
Hope everyone out there had a beautiful and safe holiday.