......... teaching Eldest to manage a 20 Guage pump-gun so she could hunt turkeys.............. She tried my 12 guage when we were out dove hunting in September, and was now scared spitless of any and all shotguns. No amount of explaining the physics of why the 20 guage would kick 1/2 as much or that 90% of recoil is all in your head made any difference........ She just would not put the gun to her shoulder- the best I could get her to do was hip shoot the thing, and she flinched horribly at that. I was on the verge of giving up on turkey hunting this fall, when I recalled how tough she had been on the soccer field earlier that day. The heaviest girl on the other team had tackled her (and not as in slide tackled, soccer style, but mid nineties Nebraska O-line pancake block style, as in run over and fall on top of style) and she had gotten up and played on. I asked her "Why can you get smashed or kicked while playing soccer and play through it, and you can't bear to have this itty bitty shotgun shove you in the shoulder?" " 'Cause I'm not thinking about how it hurts when I'm playing. I'm thinking about the game! Now all I can think about is the gun is going to kick me!"
Eureka!
Up to this point, I had put 2 clays out at 20 yards or so, and told her to shoot them. (After about 15 shots, she had accidently hit one.) I put a couple more clays out on the ground there and told her "Now imagine those clays are the heads of turkeys. You just about have to hit them in the head, because their feathers make pretty good body armor....... Here they come. Don't move suddenly....... very slowly........... gun on your shoulder, cheek on the stock ........... front sight on the left one's head, squeeze thBOOM " and the left clay disappeared in a puff of dust. " Daddy, I got it and it didn't hurt at all!" " Your permit says you are allowed two turkeys, get the other one." "Oh, OK......"click-clack BOOM. Dusted the other one. "Daddy, I can get two permits, right ?" Four clays then. BOOM click-clack BOOM click-clack BOOM click-clack BOOM. Three of four. The 3rd and fourth shots went low because she was taking her cheek off the stock to see if she hit the target. I fixed this by mixing in empty shells with live ones ....... inside of 15 minutes she was dusting 4 of 4 at varying distances, even though I put one down in a hole so she had to stand up to shoot it......
