Since I got back into shooting sports as an adult -- I was primarily an archery kid for a long time, and got into shooting comparatively recently -- I've had a gaping hole in my life. A dark, cavernous, maw. A terrible lacking. A sense of incompleteness, putting my entire gunpowder-soaked life off balance.

I had no shotgun!

I started with a Glock 19. My grandfather passed away and left me a couple hundred dollars, and while a part of me wanted to, y'know, pay my...

So I mentioned we've got three dogs, all girls. They're the closest Mrs. Crit and I have to kids (for now), and they're the first real pets I've had, so they kind of mean a lot to us.

When I was a kiddo, my mom got me a little Scotty dog. For our regular commute we drove past the highway signs for the Golden Gate Bridge pretty often, and I used to get a kick out of how it said "GG Bridge" -- gimme a break, I was like five! -- so naturally "GG" was an awesome...

Hi there, and welcome to the awkward introduction phase of any conversation!

Like any good superhero movie, we're going to start on this adventure with my origin story. Sadly, there will be no radioactive spiders, dying planets and kindly Kansas farmers, or anything like that. In fact, sad as it is to say, I've got no superpowers at all, so as origin stories go, maybe this one's not the most exciting, so I'll go with the short version!

I was born in California...

Supposedly low and left is "too much trigger finger" for a rightie.

What does that mean, exactly?

That avatar is 60 years old.
I still like toys that go bang!

Soon after the cap pistol, I got a Red Ryder BB gun. About that time my dad bought the family farm from his older brother who was retiring from the business. "7 thousand - lock stock and barrel."

"Barrel" included the family dump: about 50 yards up the "lane" behind the barn was a small fenced in area that was grown up with small trees. Anything we'd "recycle" today...