Slow shot

It's a good thing that I don't have to be a sharp shooter to keep me alive at this point in time.  I may be able to hit my target but I am so slow at setting up the shot that half the time my target hops or runs away.  It also doesn't help that as I age my eyesight is fading. 

My vision is still not too bad, I am not required to wear glasses when I drive and if the light is good I don't need them when I read.  I do need glasses if I'm traveling in an area that I'm not familiar with and I have to read the small street signs.  That will only happen if I'm so close to the corner that I can't make the turn, unless I am wearing glasses to see the sign from further away.  My joke over the last few years is I only wear my glasses when I want to see. 

Unfortunately, this means my glasses are not always near me.  Usually they are in the truck.  This didn't do me much good last night when we were eating dinner.  Lately we've been overrun by rabbits and squirrels so I just keep the loaded .22 rifle on the kitchen counter.  I always make an announcement to the house that the gun on the counter or the table is loaded.  Boy and girl know not to touch it and they've been pretty good about it.  They know I'll bring them into the yard and let them shoot it if they want.  They also know that they are not good shooters yet but I am. 

Anyway, as we were eating last night girl yells out "rabbit".  I hopped up out of my chair, grabbed the rifle and opened the sliding door from the dining room to the back patio.  Where's the rabbit?  I couldn't see it.  They said there on the back driveway to the barn.  I saw a blob in the rock road about 120 feet away.  "Is it where I'm pointing?" I asked them.  Yes it was so I aimed and fired.  Fortunately for me the rabbit was just sitting there for a long time.  I hit it in the head.  Perfect shot. I was able to aim well.  I would have been happier if I could see the rabbit rather than the blob.  They were very excited that I killed it after they directed me to it. 

Today I went to the sporting good store.  I'd like to buy a scope for my .22 Marlin 70.  I don't need anything fancy, I'd just like to know what it is I'm shooting at.  The guy said that he wanted me to bring the rifle in and they'd mount the scope and get it all squared away rather than just sell the scope.  That's fine except I'm not allowed to bring the gun into the work truck (and carrying a rifle into the store would be rather obvious) and my truck is in Nevada transporting Bug-out renters mom to her final resting place (see my posting from last week).  I guess I'll have to wait another week until my truck gets back to see what I'm shooting at.

Because I can't really see my shot, and don't get me wrong my vision is 20/50 so it's not terrible, I am very slow at setting up the shot.  If I don't have around ten seconds to get a good aim then I can't get the shot off.  Usually by then the creature has run into the woodpile or something.  Still, I may be slow but I get one or two creatures per day.  You'd think at some point the property would run out of rabbits and squirrels.  No, not until I get totally fed up and poison them.  One year we were over run with foxes.  That was about five years before I got our dog.  We didn't ever have any problems with rabbits or squirrels.  Almost wish we had the fox issue.  On the other hand, the chickens are happy the foxes are gone.

I really need to set up some sort of moving or revolving target in the backyard and practice shooting faster.   If I was faster at focusing on my target I could get off two or three shots before the creatures scatter.  Once they scatter because I'm shooting they won't come out for about an hour.  It makes it hard to cut down on the critter population when I really only get the opportunity to kill one or two each night because I am too slow on my shots to get more.  Any suggestions?