Finally, there is something to report on and there are two stories on both ends of the spectrum. I will report on them probably in two different instances because there are some life lessons coming.

Last Friday, I took my dad to the range. He inherited a rifle from his uncle who was his lifelong sportsman’s partner. They hunted an fished together my dad’s whole life. And when I was a kid, I was there too. My great uncle Art didn’t have any children of his own so he kind of adopted my dad as a surrogate son.

Last year when I took my dad to the range, we started to take a look his newly inherited Winchester Model 100 .308. The first problem was that my dad had taken the scope off for some reason, I think he said to clean everything thoroughly. He took a couple of shots and it was no where near the target, so we tabled it for later as he needed a bore sight to get started.

Fast forward to this trip. The goal was to get that rifle sighted in and also to try some newly loaded 30-06 in a different rifle and make sure that rifle was sighted in as well. Last year, we had kind of left it in a ‘I think it is OK state’. We were going to see about getting it on the 50 yard target first and then move to the 100 yard target.

The first thing that happened was that when he pulled the trigger, nothing happened. Come to find out, there was no cartridge in the chamber. After some fiddling around, he got one in the chamber and fired. I saw no trace of it around the target or the ground. He fired again, I saw it hit the top of the 100 yard berm. I asked ‘Are you Sure you are aiming the the 50 yard target?’ He said yes. I had no way of knowing for sure, but I estimated that he was 12-24″ high (as you shoot over the 50 to hit the 100). A couple more shots and I saw one hole on the paper at the 100 yard target.

We did more adjusting and shooting, probably after 10 shots my dad suggested that I should try it as we were still nowhere close to getting on the target. I looked down the barrel and it was clearly pointed at the 100 yard target, not the 50. So we gave up, the rifle would need to be bore sighted and we would have to try another day.

Then we took out his other rifle, it was a more than 50 year old Remington 722 30-06. My dad had loaded some new rounds over the winter. After the first shot, the bolt got stuck and the cartridge casing got stuck in the rifle. Again more fiddling, and we got the case out. Long story long here but about every other shot we had a stuck cartridge case. I suggested that maybe we needed to table it and that I wasn’t confident that rifle should be used to for hunting until the sticking case situation could be understood better.

This isn’t a story to disparage my dad. But, between the hobbling out to get the targets or the bolt manipulation or the confusion at what target he was aiming at what I saw was that my dad was becoming elderly. I knew in my head that he is getting into his upper seventies now. But I really hadn’t seen the signs of the transition until this trip.

Hopefully, it happens to us all. But, it also means that I need to pay more attention to what is going on. I definitely get some of my stubbornness from him, hopefully we will be able to work together to make this the best possible life phase transition.

End Your Programming Routine: I guess you can say that I am fortunate to have my dad around at this point. And I know from my wife’s side of the family that dealing with aging parents can have some challenges. Sometimes decisions or lack of action can have consequences. The silver lining is that I am planning another range trip with my dad to get these things ironed out before hunting season.