King's Corner: Learning to Aim

My father believed a missed shot mattered.

Most of us can trace parts of who we became back to habits or responsibilities that seemed small at the time. A skill practiced repeatedly. Someone whose respect mattered more than we realized then. Childhood often forms us quietly long before we understand what is happening.

On the small Wisconsin farm where his mother Julia had brought him after leaving New Jersey during the Depression, ammunition cost money, and missing meant wasting something valuable. If you brought home birds for supper, accuracy mattered. If you didn’t, you walked home empty-handed, which tends to improve concentration.

The western world Bobbie had dreamed about was real now, though not in the way dime novels imagined it. Nobody on the farm cared much about swagger or fast talk. Competence mattered. Carelessness rarely lasted around tools, livestock, harsh winters, or loaded guns.

Julia’s Christian faith had already taught Bobbie that freedom and responsibility belonged together. Out on the farm, the land itself seemed to reinforce the lesson daily.

Makwa, his Ojibwe Indian friend from the nearby reservation, understood that instinctively.

When the two boys practiced shooting behind the farm, Makwa rarely hurried. He paid attention to wind, distance, posture, breathing. Bobbie began noticing that the difference between a good shot and a poor one was often patience.

That irritated him at first.

Not long earlier, Bobbie had secretly pushed a BB into the target bag near the bullseye just to win one of their shooting contests and avoid washing dishes afterward. But somewhere between embarrassment and admiration, he began realizing Makwa cared less about winning than becoming accurate.

Out there, respect was rarely given for confidence alone. People trusted what you could consistently do.

So Bobbie practiced.

Not because anyone forced him to.

Because he wanted the respect that came with competence.

He learned to slow his breathing before squeezing the trigger. He learned that jerking impatiently almost guaranteed a miss. Ammunition was too valuable to waste proving frustration to a paper target.

That discipline slowly spread into the rest of his life.

Before long, adults trusted him with responsibilities that would astonish many people today. He sometimes rode buses or trains carrying his shotgun across town to hunt birds in nearby fields, then returned home in the evening with his day’s catch hanging over his shoulder. Conductors occasionally admired the birds and asked how the hunting had gone.

No one panicked.

Adults extended freedom to children they believed could handle it responsibly. Lose that trust, and the freedom disappeared with it.

And Bobbie desperately wanted to be worthy of it.

Julia helped shape that too.

She could have held tighter to the frightened little boy she had brought west from New Jersey. Instead, she allowed him room to grow into someone more capable. Julia understood that boys do not become steady men by being held too tightly forever. Some lessons boys eventually learn from the wider world, not from their mothers alone.

Bobbie walked more than five miles each way to school year-round because rural life offered few choices. In spring and fall it was simply part of life. Wisconsin winters turned it into something sterner.

The same steadiness that improved his shooting helped him endure those long walks through snow and bitter cold. The land that gave freedom also demanded something back in return.

The more time Bobbie spent outdoors, the more he developed respect for animals too. Hunting taught him accuracy and patience, but life on the farm taught him something gentler too: animals were part of the world he was learning to respect, not merely things to shoot at.

Bobbie was still learning, of course.

He once returned home after an unsuccessful hunt in such a foul mood that he blamed nearly everything except his own shooting. The wind was wrong. The birds moved too quickly. The ground was uneven. Eventually, after listening patiently for several minutes, Makwa simply asked, “Did the birds know all that?”

Bobbie later admitted this was irritatingly difficult to argue with.

Still, he kept practicing.

There’s something revealing about aiming carefully at anything. Both Julia’s faith and the land around him taught similar lessons: actions carried consequences whether you acknowledged them or not. A target has no interest in excuses. Impatience shows up immediately. So does distraction, pride, inconsistency, or overconfidence.

Most of us eventually discover the same thing in one form or another. The habits we practice repeatedly — patience or impatience, discipline or carelessness, responsibility or excuse-making — slowly shape the kind of people we become.

And slowly, almost without realizing it, Bobbie was learning lessons that reached far beyond hunting.

Freedom first drew him west. But out there he discovered something else too: those trusted with the greatest freedom were usually the ones who had first learned restraint.

That idea shaped him for the rest of his life.

Years later, even after living through war, hardship, and countless adventures, my father still respected people who could do difficult things carefully and well. Competence, in his mind, carried a kind of quiet dignity.

Looking back, I suspect God was teaching him through the same lessons the land itself demanded: patience, honesty, discipline, responsibility, and restraint.

Learning to aim carefully at something changes you.

Eventually, it changes who you become.

Jeff Headley is pastor of the Dayton Valley Community Church, and a storyteller who blends humor, honesty, and hope. His weekly column reflects on resilience, grace, and the surprising ways faith shows up in ordinary life.