These are a few of my favourite things...

  I was born into "gun people" - a lot of my fondest childhood memories involve shooting or hunting. Many a glorious hour was spent in the company of my father and the hunters in our family. My wife would like for me to make it VERY clear that we were food hunters - if we shot it, we ate it.

  One of my earliest shooting memories was the first time I ever fired a scoped rifle - it was a .22 Hornet owned by one of my dad's best friends. They forgot to tell me that I needed a little distance between the objective and my eye - and although a .22 Hornet doesn't have a LOT of recoil, it's considerable for a five-year-old kid. I was the envy of the all the boys on the playground that following Monday; what with the shiner, the crescent-moon cut on my eyelid, and the lurid tale of their genesis.