April 2026 (2) - Flipbook - Page 24
Bev on the 805 yard Bu昀昀alo Target at the 2024 Quigley.
in LOVE.
all of my scorekeeper tips in for
I obsessed over the idea of this
years and removed the exact
ri昀氀e for the rest of the afternoon amount of cash needed to bring
and well into the night. When
home the ri昀氀e. At the concluI woke the next morning, I was
sion of the match on the second
still thinking about it. Before I
day, I handed Steve my treahad time to fully wake and brush sured savings in exchange for
my teeth I’d decided to commit
a rather heavy piece of history.
to purchasing the Sharps. I have It wasn’t until after I held the
a very strict rule when it comes
ri昀氀e as mine that I fully realized
to signi昀椀cant purchases in my life the commitment of having such
(mostly steered toward art and
an astounding tool and having
jewelry up to this point) that if
absolutely no idea what I was
the thought of it haunts me long going to do with it.
after I’ve walked away and I’m
I had nothing but the Sharps
unable to shake it, then I need to and the cloth sleeve that it was
commit and purchase the item
handed to me in. No case. No
in question or live with nagging ammo, no prayer how to opregret which is far more uncom- erate this thing. Sure, I’d been
fortable than the bruise to my
watching shoots for years but
bank account. So, I went to the
that didn’t mean I knew how to
little tin can that I’d been saving participate in one myself. There
24
was, admittedly, a momentary
spiral. Just a little one, etched
with panic that I’d made a
mistake and spent thousands of
dollars on something that I had
no business buying. This wasn’t
jewelry I could wear; this wasn’t
art for my house although at
that initial point it did cross my
mind that I could hang it on the
wall for aesthetics as I wasn’t
equipped to do much else with
it, so I could make that work in
a pinch. But in the words of Bob
Ross, “there is no such thing as
mistakes, just happy accidents.”
And that’s how I needed to look
at this. Not as a waste of my
money on an impulse I had no
business accommodating but
as a way to learn and pivot into
something that I’d been longing
to explore for years.
Ron Vandenbrink was the 昀椀rst
one to calm my spiral. He told
me immediately after I bought
the ri昀氀e that it was a great purchase. He con昀椀rmed my belief
that it was a beautiful piece of
work and then promptly gave
me pointers and suggestions
on care, cleaning and use that
I scribbled onto a scrap piece
of paper in my pocket before I
forgot them entirely. On my way
home from the shoot that weekend, I called Spencer Anderson
in Miles City. Being a wellversed shooter himself, I 昀椀gured him the perfect person to
confess my impulse buy to 昀椀rst.
I believe I started the conversation with, “yeah so, I just bought
a 45-70 Sharps ri昀氀e, and I have
no idea what in the hell I’m
doing. Can you help me?” You
would’ve thought I just told him
I got him a ticket to Disneyland.
I think he was more excited for
April, 2026 - Issue #2
