Originally Posted by bassmaster95
Back when I was in trade school I was really shooting a lot. Shotgun was my specialty but I was also exceptionally talented with handguns. I had a Springfield XDS long slide. It was a 4” model. I loved it! Me and that thing bonded. After a little coaching I could hit clays at 100 yards with it pretty easily. One day at school a buddy asked me about the gun and I said yeah I shoot clays at 100 with it he called BS. So I offered a wager. Lunch time we will go to the range. If I can hit 4 out of 5 clays at 100 yards with my pistol you owe me $50. He agreed gladly! Word got around and a few of us wound up going to the range to observe the goings on. Behold I took my first shot barely missing the mark and ol boy knew then he messed up. I hammered the other 4 clays collected $50 and grinned ear to ear for a week!!


Ol boy at work got to talking about shooting skeet at lunch one day, and a new engineer they had just hired worked his way into the conversation. My buddy (we will call him Randy to protect the innocent) got to talking about how he was king of the dove field and he would kick anyone's ass that shot against him. He kept prodding the new kid and asking him if he shot and the kid would just say "A little" and continue to eat his sandwich. After another 20 minutes of ribbing and trash talking, Randy asked him if he was any good and the kid said he could hold his own. Randy told him he had 5 fresh Benjamins that said he would embarrass him. The kid smiled and said "Ok.... where we doing this". They chose some place in Anniston and the time was the next Saturday morning. A couple of us wanted to watch the show so we showed up to check it out. Randy gets out of his truck with an old tattered gun case and pulls out an old ancient Remington 12 gauge shotgun that he'd been shooting dove and rabbits with since he was a kid. The engineer kid showed up and got out of his truck and Randy asked him what he was going to shoot with. He told Randy he thought it he should at least make it fair and decided to shoot his .410 causing Randy and some of the others to erupt in laughter. The kid goes back to his car and pulls out a little fancy leather shotgun case and puts it on the tailgate of Randys truck and opens it up and pulls out a $9000 Merkel .410 shotgun. That kid proceeded to wipe the floor with Randy and his rabbit gun. I don't think I've ever laughed so hard in my life as I did that morning.

Turns out that kid was one of the Top 5 skeet and trap shooters in the United States at the time.

"Some men are mere hunters; others are turkey hunters."

-- Archibald Rutledge