[Jeff Higgins]

I think a few of you might have missed the point. This was no novice shooter - like I said he knew his game and knew it well. He was certainly shooting competitive groups for the production rifle benchrest class. Had no trouble discussing the finer points of hand loading, either - one simply cannot compete in that game with factory ammo. He was really "into it", as we say.

If he were in fact a novice or very inexperienced shooter it would not have struck me as being so odd. We all start somewhere at everything we do... but he was well past that.

I wonder if this has anything to do with this modern "tactical" craze. More and more gun magazines cover the "tactical" scene to the exclusion of everything else. The only calibers ever mentioned are the 5.56 and 7.62 NATO, the 7.62x39, the .338 Lapua, and the .50 BMG. Seems until recently that the gun mags were much more broadly based. They included big game rifles, small game rifles, water fowling guns, upland guns, target rifles and handguns, hunting handguns, etc. You couldn't help but pick up on what the "other guys" were up to, even if you weren't interested yourself.

Oh, and he was certainly happy to learn, even if he was just being polite to some crazy old fart with weird guns. I stopped his lesson short of letting him shoot the .375, though - that would have been mean. Maybe next time, if he's still interested...