Sunday morning shooting

This morning's shooting wasn't quite as good as yesterday's. I shot a 339-3X and a 337-3X. A little bit disappointing, but not unreasonably poor. It's still better than I've shot for the record so far, and it's not significantly worse than I shot yesterday. My in-the-black percentage was 85%.

I was sitting and scoring my targets after I got home, and my son wanted to know what I was doing. He's five years old, and my wife isn't quite ready to let him in on the specifics of my hobby. (Remember, this is New Jersey, not some place reasonable.) So I told him I was scoring. I did explain to him how you count up the points, and I pointed out which holes counted as X's. He said he wanted to play that game, so I drew him a target on a piece of paper with the rings marked 10 down to 6. He took a pen and dropped it on the paper, scoring the marks where the pen hit.

I was more than a little pleased when he came running in to the other room in a few minutes saying, "Dad, Dad, I got a 6X!"

It occurs to me, though, that my wife's reticence about exposing our kids to the shooting sports might actually play in my favor. I'd been counting on making the activity something special to do with dad and hoping to hook the kids that way. But given that my wife's turned it into something mysterious, they might be more interested in it than they otherwise would have been. I knew someone a few years ago who loves going to museums based mostly on the fact that, when she was younger, her parents had made trips to museums without the kids because it was something that adults do. Maybe my wife can unintentionally work that same magic with my kids and shooting.