Love: Dale Tate, Sarah Connor and me

Something about getting a new gun is a little scary.

Not scary like the first time I bought a gun, when every step of assembly had me terrified that I'd do something wrong and either break the gun or blow up the house. (I know. Totally stupid.)

Nope. The fear now is something different: What if I can't hit the broad side of a barn with it? What if I don't love it?

I expected that fear when I got my first rifle, because I'd dropped $1,000 on the gun and scope, and the last thing you want after that kind of outlay is buyer's remorse.

But I was a little surprised that I still had the jitters about the new 12 gauge Beretta 3901 I won in a California Waterfowl raffle last month.

I'd been wanting to switch from a 20 gauge to a 12 gauge when the 3901 fell into my lap, so I was feeling pretty lucky. I got what I wanted, right?

Yes. But I guess I was wondering if all the things I'd feared about a 12 gauge when I started hunting - the things that prompted me to buy a 20 gauge in the first place - would turn out to be real problems. Would the extra weight and recoil be more trouble than they're worth? Should I have just stuck with my 20 gauge and traded in the shotgun I won for, perhaps, a target rifle? Read more...
I picked up my gun on Tuesday - having endured my 10-day waiting period - but before I could give it a test drive, I needed to take it to gunmaker Dale Tate for a fitting.

A gun fitting before pulling the trigger even once? Yessir. I shoot left-handed. Shotguns come from the factory cast for right-handed shooting (not to mention for men's proportions). Just as I wouldn't wear a pair of shoes that don't fit, I wouldn't bother shooting a shotgun that doesn't fit, because it just throws your shooting off way too much.

So I took a drive down to Dale's shop at the Camanche Hills Hunting Preserve in Ione on Friday morning to see what he could do for me.

Dale dutifully looked at the Easter card I'd brought him...

(Thanks for sending me this, Hoot!)

... then got to work.

"Let's have a look here," he said, hefting my new gun.

It stood out in his workshop. The 3901 is 7.2 pounds of Plain Jane, a sturdy, just-the-facts-ma'am shotgun with synthetic stock. Dale's shop is filled with the kind of shotguns that are works of art - some that he makes, others that he simply repairs or adjusts.

I think this was the first time I'd ever seen a synthetic stock in the place. I wasn't even sure he could do the fine-tuning on a synthetic stock that he could do with wood, which lends itself to precise filing.

"It's not as elegant as the 391," I said almost apologetically as he inspected it. The 391 - which is what my 20 gauge is - is the newer version of this gun.

Dale peered at me without lifting his head. "Holly, it's a gun," he said. "It's a free gun."

True dat! And there was really no reason to worry about the 3901 - it's gotten great reviews from the likes of Philip Bourjaily.

Dale then had me do that thing I hate: Mount the gun so he can put his face right in front of the muzzle and stare down the barrel to see where my eye is sitting (like my friend Sarah did in this photo on the left for a fitting he did in 2008).

He took apart the gun to see what kind of fit he could get by repositioning the spacer that comes with the gun, and we went out into the field for testing, first on the patterning board, and then on clays.

I hit the board just fine, of course, but the clays were giving me more grief - you know, those pesky moving targets. So we went back into the shop, where he did some filing on the stock to get the precise angles he wanted (synthetic stock definitely not a problem). And when the gun was all put together again, we returned to the sporting clays course.

I shot OK, but not great, at some quartering-away targets. Dale was clearly hoping for better.

So was I.

"Dale, I totally suck at going-away targets," I told him. "I hate trap. I mean, I know I need to master it, but..."

So we moved to targets that were a little more ducky - incoming! - and tried again.

"Ready?" he asked.

"Yup."

Pull. Target flies. I raise my gun. Pull the trigger. The clay is smashed to bits.

"Again," he said, handing me another shell.

Repeat performance.

"Again," he said.

Threepeat.

We did that with a good dozen shells and he looked at me and said, "You're fine."

We were done! I was ready to take my gun out into the world.

* * *

Somewhere between that trip to Dale's shop and Sunday morning, I decided to name my gun.

I'm not sure why, particularly since I didn't name either of my first two guns. Maybe it's because saying "my shotgun" would no longer work, since I have two now. Maybe it's because it's my first black gun.

One of my friends named her shotgun Sheena. Nice, but I've never been into the jungle motif. I was looking for a different icon. Someone badass and sexy, but in a tough kind of way. It took about 0.3 seconds for this image to come to mind:

Yep. Sarah Connor. My hero from Terminator II. So that's my new gun's name.

I took Sarah Connor out for another spin on Sunday. I had a screeching headache, but I just wanted to put a quick 50 rounds through her, just to recapture that feeling I'd had Friday morning at Camanche. To reassure myself that this was my new girl.

The gun came up to my cheek perfectly almost every time, and clay after clay exploded in the sky. Not all of them. I'm not that good. But the vast majority of them.

The gun definitely has more kick than my 20 gauge, but I already knew from Friday that my shoulder would be no more sore than it normally is when I hit the range after having gone two months without shooting. And while I definitely noticed the extra weight of the gun, that disappeared every time I yelled "pull" and the stock just seemed to float up to my cheek.

Of course, my head was really pounding now. Note to self: Little explosions next to face exacerbate headaches.

But headache or not, I was a happy woman. This gun was truly mine.

© Holly A. Heyser 2010