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JACKSON HOLE MAGAZINE WINTER 2014
than to pull the trigger. They set everything up and line everything up. All you get to do is sit down and use your finger.” In addition to a variety of shooting experiences—there’s the Multi-Gun & Rifle Shooting Experience I’m doing, and also a Multi-Gun Pistol Experience, a Shotgun Clays Experience, and even an Archery Experience—Humphries and Sherwood offer ongoing education, private instruction, and skill development. LESS THAN FIVE minutes after meeting Morgan and Humphries, I’m holding a Ruger 10/22 rifle. Humphries says I can stand or sit at a shooting table. Morgan points out fewer things can/will shake if I sit. I sit. After all, this is the first time in my entire life I’m shooting a rifle. I want to set myself up for success as much as possible. Morgan suggests I aim for a blue rectangle fifty yards away. Even through the rifle’s scope the rectangle looks to be the size of a sandwich. I think his suggestion a bit ambitious for a firsttime shooter—I want to go for the cutout cowboy thirty feet away—but still I center the scope’s crosshairs on the blue rectangle. I pull the trigger. Milliseconds later, a “ping” reverberates back to me. After hitting the blue rectangle a couple more times, Morgan ups the challenge. At the same distance and directly above the rectangle is a row of three blue, hourglass-shaped cutouts. My iPhone looks bigger. Morgan wants me to hit the crumb on the left. Amazingly, I do. In my resulting excitement, I almost swing the Ruger’s barrel around so that it would be pointing out not at the empty hillside, but in and directly at Morgan. I catch myself, though. Before moving on to handguns, I try a Savage Mark II .22-caliber rifle and also a .223-caliber LWRC AR-15 M6 rifle with a red dot sight. I learn what caliber means. I hit a target more than one hundred yards away. I start to think this beats a day of skiing. HANDGUNS. I’VE SEEN enough movies and television shows, I assume firing a handgun is easy. That assumption is astonishingly wrong. My first shot with Humphries’ Ruger single-action revolver easily misses the target—and I am finally given the go-ahead to aim at the closeup cowboy, which is about the size of a Hobbit—by ten feet. Morgan reinstructs