And Now We Shall Do Manly Things (13 page)

The men shooting at the range, just twenty or so yards from where I stood eating my delicious and cheap cheeseburger, moved with a sort of wordless efficiency. Each was thrown two targets and each had two shells in his gun. The clay pigeons went up, then
bang! bang!
and that man lowered his gun, broke the breech, and reloaded while the next man took his shots. When the fourth man in line was done shooting, he turned and followed a path to the other end of the line, and the other shooters moved one station to their right. It happened in continuous flow, each man shooting, reloading, and moving on, like a well-choreographed dance.

I watched the men, all of whom appeared to be middle-aged or older, decked out in khaki shooting vests, wide-brimmed caps, and rose-colored glasses, until I finished eating, then decided to use the remaining ten minutes of the lunch break to have a look around the facility.

The main building, where I got my lunch, consisted of two central dining rooms roughly the size of a suburban family room. There was a large stone fireplace, above which hung the Fairfield Sportsmen's Association crest—the name carved in a circle around two crossed shotguns, two crossed six-shooter pistols, and a concentric-circled target. It wasn't a particularly attractive crest, not the kind you'd expect to find in a Scottish castle. It kind of looked like it had been designed as an afterthought or as a placeholder and before they could have a new one made, a member had whittled one and someone in a leadership position decided, “Well, we've got it—might as well have it hung above the fireplace.” And all around the walls hung pictures of illustrious former members—two Olympic trapshooting champions, the founders, and prestigious guests. There was a large corkboard covered in notices very much like the one that hung in the student union in college, where students offered rides or advertised for roommates. I found homemade fliers with notices of guns for sale, offerings of private concealed carry licenses (which are required in Ohio for anyone who wishes to pack heat when they go to, say, the grocery store), and a couple announcing planned hunting expeditions to Wyoming, Colorado, and New Mexico for which space was still available. Just call Steve on his cell phone and he'll give you the details.

The whole place felt less like a retreat or the kind of facilities you'd find at a country club than a clubhouse, like the one on
Little Rascals,
but housing more weapons. The furniture was worn, almost shabby, and the sodas were served in Styrofoam cups. The more time I spent lingering, the more I could see myself spending Saturday afternoons at a place like this, chewing the fat with other sportsmen over burgers and shooting a few rounds of skeet before heading home to mow the lawn or take the kids to baseball practice.

I then wandered across the large central parking lot to the pistol range. The club encompassed perhaps eighty heavily wooded acres running along the Great Miami River, and clearings were cut to facilitate different shooting sports. The shotgun ranges were the central feature, but leafing through the brochure I picked up from Clara's counter, I saw there were also facilities for pistol and bow shooting.

The pistol range was perhaps a quarter the size of the main shotgun ranges and off to one end of the property. I kept my distance as I walked up and watched as a half-dozen men, clad in blue jeans and the kind of button-down sporting shirts that feature a tab that fastened just below the shoulder to keep the cuffs out of the way when you roll up the sleeves. And straps on the shoulders. I liked those, the hunter's epaulettes. They all had holsters strapped to their legs and were taking turns moving through an obstacle course of some kind. Each would move from one wooden frame to the next, taking two shots from each and reloading at every other one.

I stopped a man as he was walking away and asked him what they were doing.

“Urban combat,” he said. “That's the club pistol team.”

Urban combat? In a small clearing in the midst of a dense wood? There was nothing urban about it. Not even suburban. Not even exurban. And pardon my literal sensibilities, but wouldn't combat require some sort of returned fire? Sometimes, I guess, men never outgrow playing army like they did when they were eight.

“The targets are set up to simulate a hostage situation,” he explained and as he did, he pointed out the cardboard targets. They were roughly the size and shape of a human torso and every station had two of them. One represented a terrorist, the other a hostage. The person who shot the most accurately, without hitting a civilian, in the shortest amount of time won. It was like a video game, but with real guns.

It was a contradiction, in a way, from the shotgun shooting I had just watched. On one hand, the shotgun shooting was venerable, graceful, and steeped in a rich shooting tradition. With the pistols, it was tactical, aggressive, and based on a decidedly modern premise. Both were shooting and both were games, but they seemed to be worlds apart. Aged steak versus MREs; leather and deeply stained walnut versus tactical nylon and aluminum.

I was intrigued by the pistol shooting, but I was drawn more toward the clay pigeons and wide-brimmed hats. I've never been all that good at video games, and the extent to which I exhibit aggressive behavior is pretty limited. Plus, I like the way the clay pigeons exploded when they were hit and turned into a mist of orange dust. It seemed satisfying in a way shooting a paper terrorist never could be. Call me old-fashioned, I guess.

T
he rest of the afternoon went much the same as the morning—one of the instructors stood at the front of the class and read, talked about, or segued from a chapter, then provided verbatim answers to the review questions in the back of each section. In total, we covered six of the nine chapters in the book that day, learning everything from the component parts of a crossbow to how to behave at game check-in centers on the off chance that a news camera happens to be present (the hunting community, apparently, is very media conscious).

Tim covered in great technical detail the proper way to load a musket—“This is on the test,” he admonished, though it plainly was not—and the complicated mechanics of a compound bow and arrow. Matt was efficient with his instruction on the “attitude of safety” every hunter must adopt, and Arthur continued to frighten me. I think it had something to do with the relish with which he recounted tales of limbs lost due to improper cleaning of a gun.

I wouldn't say Arthur particularly enjoyed gore—more that the idea of putting the fear of God into us made him feel somehow important. Given that he would be the one grading our tests and signing our certificate of completion, I felt obligated to not only listen but nod along in reverence with every one of his haunting anecdotes.

The class ended just after three, and I drove the forty-five minutes back home, where I was greeted by my wife and kids. They asked how the day had gone and I told them all about Tim, Matt, and Arthur; about the exploded shotgun barrel and the training I had received on dealing with the media. I told my wife about watching the men shoot clay pigeons and paper terrorists and admitted to her that, foreign as the world of hunting and shooting had been, I was getting excited about it. I told her that I could imagine joining a club like the Fairfield Sportsmen's Association one day and prattled on a bit about my romantic visions of becoming a crack shot and respected member.

“Arthur scared me,” I said, “but I really liked the people I met, and I think I'm starting to get comfortable with the idea of hunting.”

“That's nice, dear,” she said dismissively. “I'm glad you had fun at your class, but we need to be over at Anne and John's in twenty minutes for a cookout.”

A tad deflated, I realized then that learning to hunt was my thing, not hers. She may have accepted that I was committed to seeing this thing through, but I shouldn't expect her to share my enthusiasm. Plus, she hadn't been there and, even if she had been, I don't think she would have found the concrete walls, worn furniture, and exploded clay pigeons quite as romantic as I did. In fact, I would wager that if she had been with me and seen the clubhouse, she might have been mortified and begun to clean. Hunting was my thing, but organizing? Well, that's hers.

I
didn't sleep well that night. I kept imagining myself accidentally shooting off a toe, because I could not remember the proper method of installing a tree stand. Or finding myself staring down a charging grizzly and not being able to properly identify the frizzen on my muzzle-loading rifle. I was still thinking about Kosta and beating him, but the more I tried to remember every detail of what had been covered, the more I worried about just
passing
the test.

I tossed and turned in bed for a while before getting up around two and going out to the living room, retrieving my iPad and reviewing chapters one through six until I nodded off.

I woke up the next morning and discovered I had fallen asleep sitting up on the couch. The iPad was off, but still in my lap and when I turned it on, the last page of chapter six was on the screen though I had no conscious recollection of having read all the way through it.

I had a moment's pause—Was it really worth going back? Was this really me? Perhaps Rebecca's response to my dreamy excitement was a sign that I was doing something I shouldn't be. For months I had been fixated on the idea that learning to hunt would somehow make me feel like more of a man, more like my dad. But maybe I was already a man, the man she had married. Maybe this whole hunting thing was me trying force some sense of identity, to shoehorn myself into a greater sense of comfort with who I am. But was it really me?

I thought about the first day objectively. It had basically been a drawn-out and tedious retelling of course material I could have read in less than an hour. Granted, I would have missed out on all the interesting bonus material, such as the mechanical differences between military-grade triggers and those used on civilian weapons. Or how, if fallen upon at just the right angle, an arrow with a broadhead tip can bifurcate a man's torso without the slightest bit of pain.

But, after a lifetime of not hunting, of not being the sort to find himself enamored by a gun club, I wondered if I was trying too hard to change, to become something I never had been and never wanted to become. It wasn't just the pressure of the test—it was the questions about who I am and who I want to be as a man that created the doubt.

I thought long and hard in the shower and over a cup of coffee as I got dressed—this time in a pair of jeans and a nondescript polo shirt. I sat back on the couch to check my e-mail before heading out the door and noticed I had a new message on Facebook from Kosta.

It read: “98. Beat that, sucka.”

That did it. Suddenly, my neurotic ennui lifted and I was once again steeled in my resolve to beat that little bastard, no matter what. The mere possibility of being able to hold that over his head—at the Thanksgiving table, say, or when he receives the Medal of Honor for heroism in the army—had me so excited I skipped my usual second cup of coffee. I kissed my wife and kids, all of whom were asleep in their beds and headed out for my second day of training and, ultimately, the final exam.

T
his time, I found the path to the club with ease, having remembered the particularly grimy and dilapidated trailer home situated near the entrance, and walked into class fifteen minutes early, resuming my place at the front of room. Although I had kept largely to myself the first day, the delirious anticipation with which I awaited the test overcame my desire to not be noticed. Whenever a question was asked, I found myself in competition with the articulate kid on the other side of the room—shooting my hand into the air with the enthusiasm of a second grader in need of a bathroom break.

I was like Ken Jennings, the greatest champion
Jeopardy!
has ever known, on an amphetamine bender:

Who can tell me the difference between a conservationist and a preservationist?

My hand is the first one up.

“A conservationist advocates the responsible usage of natural resources and a preservationist insists they not be used at all.”

Why is it important to store ammunition of different types separately?

Again, my hand.

“In order to avoid accidental usage of the wrong ammunition in the wrong gun, which could result in damage to the weapon and serious injury, perhaps even death.”

Had I not been so focused on acing the test, I might have considered my actions with a bit more remove and given myself a wet willy for being such a brownnoser. But, as it was, I didn't care. Not even in the slightest. I was in the know-it-all zone. It was freshman English all over again, only this time there was no girl to impress. I was letting my inner geek out and he was tearing up the course. I couldn't wait for the test, but unfortunately I had to. We had three chapters to cover that second morning and were told that a guest would be visiting the class. Every bit of me wanted to skip ahead, but I couldn't. I liked this newfound competitive edge and wanted to take a crack at the test before the adrenaline wore off.

The Hamilton County wildlife officer, a pleasantly officious man, showed up midmorning to give a little talk about what he does and how hunters should interact with game wardens in the field. He was dressed all in green and wore a tactical belt complete with a telescopic club, handcuffs, and a .9-millimeter semiautomatic pistol (which, incidentally, differs from a rifle only by length and, thanks to a rifled barrel, creates spin on the bullet as it leaves the muzzle—not the barrel—to ensure in-flight stability and greater accuracy).

“Don't do anything if I walk up,” he said. “Most of the time I'm just there to check in with you and see how you're doing.”

I can't say I was really engaged in his lecture, as I was thinking only of how this tiny little man was further delaying my taking the damned test.