The great majority of my shooting is for work, testing and evaluating firearms, ammo and related gear. You might think of that as a gunpowder-scented version of paradise—and I’m certainly glad I can make some money at it—but it’s Work with a capital “W.”
It demands painstaking preparation, physical and mental concentration, analytical thought and voluminous note-taking. Just packing all the required gear—chronograph and camera with tripods, tools, spotting scope, selected targets, even target stands and lumber in case those at the range are shot to splinters, and more—can be a chore. The aftermath can be drudgery too, measuring targets, examining brass, compiling notes, and the dreaded writing part. There’s no “grab-your-range-bag-and- just-go” type of work shooting. And sometimes all that work amounts to ashes. There’s satisfaction in it when all goes well, but still…
The remainder of my shooting is for training purposes, and that’s nearly as demanding as work shooting. I’m going for more accurate shots, shaving seconds and pushing myself—hard. I’m usually doing that kind of shooting with two or three others from the GunBums crew, and that always gets competitive; that’s just who we are, and the pressure’s always on. Ya know how sometimes you get this vague, nagging notion something’s missing, and you just can’t nail it down? Yeah. This nitwit needed a nudge. I got it.
The Nudge
My cousin MacKenzie is our family “ammo factory.” The Lake City gang would feel at home in his reloading room. I stopped by to drop off a bucket of spent brass and noticed he was putting ammo packs into a can marked “Poots.” I had to ask. He laughed and explained they were soft-shooting rounds for Uncle John’s Terry Tussey-built 3-inch .38 Special; his “Pure Pleasure,” he calls it. At that instant I realized—with a pang of guilt—the element I’d been missing.
Back about 1980, when Uncle John was commanding officer of his agency’s SWAT unit and master gunsmith Terry Tussey was an up-and-coming young pup, Uncle John had Terry build out and enhance two handguns for him: a Series 80 Colt Government 1911 and a 3-inch barreled roundbutt K-Frame from Smith & Wesson’s custom shop. The Colt became his primary sidearm and the 3-inch, with its bobbed hammer and silky double action-only trigger, was his backup. A decade later when Uncle John mustered out on a disability pension—“half pay with full bills”—those two guns had to be sold.
Twenty years after that, the “roaming pony” came home, freshly rebuilt—and Terry simply built Uncle John a new look-alike of the long-gone “Tussey .38 Extra-Special.” I wrote about the Colt’s homecoming in my Guncrank column in the May-June 2010 issue of American Handgunner, and the Tussey .38 in the May-June 2016 issue. You can read both online in Handgunner’s digital versions. Interesting stories, but they’re not the point of this paean.
In the churning chaos of life, sometimes the best things, the seemingly littlest things, go by the wayside—and their absence is out of all proportion to their size. I grabbed the can of “Poots” and a couple more boxes of commercial .38 Special and took them to Uncle John for a refresher course in Pure Pleasure Shooting. He’s a regular participant in our group shooting exercises, but we know he frequently sneaks out for solo “steam relief” sessions. The original Tussey .38 defended his life. The “Tussey .38 V.2” soothes his soul. Here’s how it works:
Go light. Take only the bare necessities to launch rounds; no timer, no tape, no peripheral and definitely no chronograph! Put away your watch and cell phone; purge your mind of goals, ego and expectations. Sit. Have a snack, sip some coffee or a cold drink. Look at the clouds and think of those you love, good times, whatever makes you smile. Take deep, easy breaths in through the mouth, out through the nose. Un-crink your neck, shake your arms loose. Let go. Laugh.
Uncle John stapled some big paper plates to a backer-board. When I started to draw a dark dot in the center of one he stopped me: “Don’t,” he said. “It doesn’t matter.” Don’t think about defensive scenarios or competition stages. Don’t look for tight groups. He caught me checking one—that Tussey .38 will shoot clovers—and poked a thick finger at me. That’s not what you’re here for.
You just relax and enjoy the feel of the piece, the push of recoil, the muffled pop of your shots, the smell of burned gunpowder. Peep the sights or just point and squeeze. If your shots go where you wanted them to, fine. If not, that’s fine too. It’s like Zen, but you don’t need to chant a mantra. The gun will do it for you. It took me a while, but I got it. Hardly a word passed between us—and it was one of the most relaxing afternoons I’d had in a long time. How do you know when you’re there? Maybe when you get the same feeling as sinking into a comfy recliner after a tough day; that Ahhh… This is right sensation, when all the knots come undone and stress bleeds away.
Maybe you already do it. Maybe you sorta-kinda do it, and could do better at it, wring more satisfaction out of it, if you just give it a little thought and put a bit more into the prep-and-process of getting into it. No goals, no expectations; not a routine, but a ritual.
Doesn’t Take Much
Your Pure Pleasure Gun doesn’t have to be a dinger, doesn’t have to be pretty, not even terribly reliable. Maybe it’s a fussy, cranky old veteran; an obsolete clunker; a gritty surplus P-38 with a pitted bore, a worn-shiny 1950 Colt Challenger .22 salvaged from a tackle box, a clumsy, underpowered Enfield No. 2 Mk 1, an H&R .45-70 Shikari you shoot like a mortar—it doesn’t matter as long as it pleases you.
I asked what a few others shot for the pure pleasure of it. For our Big Cheese editor, Jeff John, that’s a Remington Model 8 in .30 Remington and a Colt 1902 in .38 ACP. Both are handload-only propositions, but Jeff says they’re worth the effort.
“The long recoil system of the 8,” he said, “Shoots unlike any other rifle,” and the operation of the mechanism simply fascinates him, though it proved to be a dead end in design evolution. The allure of the Colt 1902, for Jeff, is its oddly graceful handling, “Designed before anyone had pre-conceived notions of gun fit and a belt pistol could have a 6-inch barrel.” All they have to do is please him—and they do that.
Roy Huntington, our Publishing Potentate, took a half-second before laughing and naming his pet: A 1903 Colt Pocket Hammerless in .32 ACP. Because he’s Roy, and he can’t help himself, years ago he had Novak move the magazine release to the side like a 1911’s, install an extended safety, tiny Novak sights and forward slide serrations. “No reason to have it at all,” he chuckled, “But I shoot it all the time just to enjoy it.”
My Pure Pleasure Gun? That’s where my guilt kicked in. Our last multi-state move was 28 months ago—and it hasn’t been out of its case since then. What about yours? Connor OUT