Guess what Maggie and I learned how to shoot? A .22 rifle!

Imagine that. For some reason Jr. had to bring a .22 rifle to the farm! And after a deed was done, he took the chance to teach us how to use a rifle! I’ve always wanted to learn how but never had a chance. He showed us how to hold it and how to load it and how to use the safety and all that. Boy, taking that first shot was SO hard! I think it took me a whole 3 minutes standing there to get the courage up to pull the trigger. But it was really cool. Oddly cool.

My tree survived though. It swayed at the LAST minute and was able to avoid my shot. Of course, it was a WHOLE big pasture away, but still, that tree, it was pretty sneaky.

He also showed Maggie and she was much better at it, though it took her awhile to pull the trigger too. I think you worry about the recoil and the whole experience more than you probably should, but when we were done, we were both thinking it was pretty cool and ready to learn more.

Maggie says she is ready to do in the next varmint that gets caught in our web. And I believe she’s serious. I watched this raccoon meet his end and was not super happy at all that we had to do what had to be done, but the stress and discomfort from seeing our beloved hens torn apart and killed, and our birds all frightened and us all up in arms and outside in the middle of the night to protect our birds… well, that made it a little easier to deal with. I hope this is the last of this two week massacre, but I know it’s probably not. We set the traps again, but didn’t catch anything last night. We’ll do it again for a few nights.

Thank goodness…. I hope we have an end to this hard learned lesson.