Every once in a while I run across something in the shooting world I consider special. Quail Creek Plantation is just such a place. My old friends Greg Widmer and Jim Wineman, fellow range safety officers from when I worked for FWC, invited me to go on a day trip over to Okeechobee to check out this unique shooting range for some world-class sporting clay shooting. Greg used to be a member back before he squandered his first million and had to go back to work, so he knew all the particulars of the place and made our reservation.

I was really looking forward to this outing, as I don’t get a chance to shoot clay birds often and this place was said to be top-notch. Also I knew that any trip with Greg was sure to be like a day with Larry the Cable Guy. Jim’s humor tends to be more academic and calculating. Greg is the guy who phoned me when I was in the emergency room in absolute agony with a bad gallbladder. He told me he had run into my doctor down in Fort Myers at a 7-Eleven. “Yes,” he drawled, his mouth obviously full of Copenhagen, “Dr. Razhish owns several 7-Elevens down here and he has some stocking work to do at one of his stores, so he might be running a little late. But as soon as he gets done he’ll be on his way up to the hospital to take out that old gallbladder for you.” Gallows humor at its best.