When you live in the country like we do, you have to find novel ways of entertaining yourself. So it was with a little bit of excitement that I accepted our neighbor Kevin’s invitation to come over and shoot skeet.

Now, I don’t have much experience with firearms, but Kevin does. He also has a large pit in his yard that is a failed attempt to build a pond (it never fills up with water). Being the enterprising man he his, he turned it into a shooting range.

The way this works is thatl a small “clay pigeon” ($4 for a case of 90 at Wal-Mart) is inserted into a launcher. The shooter then takes aim out over the “pond” and calls out “pull” (or “now” or “yank the string, dammit” – one doesn’t stand on ceremony at Kevin’s). The shooter then tries to hit the little disk before it self-destructs upon hitting the ground. You have about two chances at this, as the third would probably put a hole in Kevin’s pier.

We both missed horribly for the first 20 or so shots, with Kevin managing to nick one, but then I managed to “get it” and started hitting them pretty regularly. I got three in a row and a something like 7 out of 10 before it got too dark.

I’d never really identified before with the “gun nuts” but I have to admit it was a lot of fun, and I’ll probably be stopping by Wal-Mart for shells soon.

Beats watching “Nick and Jessica”.