NC Home Grounds Championship Singles
I don’t remember for sure the exact year this little episode took place but I’m guessing 2003 maybe 2004
At the time, there were only about half the trap fields we have today in Bostic. The clubhouse was nonexistent. The administrative duties were taken care of, and the shoot was run out of a small office trailer that would have been sitting behind current fields 12/13 area. There was no upper campground and the “amenities” were limited to porta potties.
What we did have was the good, consistent background that continues to improve as the property matures.
From the start, there were always big numbers broken by someone in every event. In this instance it was Jim Wilson rolling smoke.
We had signed up and shot a late squad as was normal for us at the time. James had run the hundred in the morning and wasn’t letting up on the backside.
Also at the time we were shooting 50/trap and moving one to the right. We moved to the last trap of the event for us with Jim still straight.
As we were making ready to take the line for the 3rd box of the last hundred, Jim started squealing, grunting, whining, dancing around and making several other unintelligible noises and flailing around like he was possessed.
It took us a minute to catch him and get him to stand still long enough to figure out just what had happened. A bee had stung him on his tongue………. Now that we had determined he wasn’t having a seizure, and his problem wasn’t life threatening we started coming up with all kinds of suggestions on how to deal with it.
His speech remained incoherent. You can get the idea of how he sounded by sticking your tongue out, grabbing it between your thumb and index finger, pull it out as far as you can and hold it there. Now talk. Yep, that was it.
Enter our hero, High Pockets Shelley.
Tom had been watching our squad as we were shooting so was there on the spot to render his version of assistance.
Tom had grabbed Jim by the cheeks with his left hand and was squeezing Jim’s face to get him to stick his tongue out as far as he could so he could get at the stinger with an Arkansas Toothpick that had what looked like a 14” blade he had pulled out of somewhere.
Well, Jim wasn’t having any of that for some reason. I mean, Tom was only trying to help. Nice guy right!
James managed to extract the stinger himself and after a few minutes for recovery we continued. Unfortunately, Jim dropped a target or two in the last 50 costing him the 200, or maybe it distracted him to finish as good as he did………
Anyhow, what we witnessed was how unselfish trap shooters are and how willing we all are to assist one another in a time of need.
See you next time wherever it is. Travel Safe, Dan