Nineteen years ago, I made my first steps toward accurate shooting. I decided to build a dedicated shooting table that would stay up on the front porch. This was big step along the path. Prior to this, I had been going to a range to sight in rifles, but I had my own 200 acre farm now.  I could shoot off my own front porch. The previous year, I had tried a few different improvised rests, including shooting over the top of a hay bale. 

This shooting table I made was not a very elaborate affair. It consisted of scraps of 2X6 and 2X4 from stuff I had hauled home from work, four oak skid runners for legs, and a frame build from scraps of T1-11 left over from siding the house. I had both it and a stool nailed up in a couple hours. It gave me a stable platform from which to shoot.

It was portable; I could remove the top from the base and take it places. That used to be a huge boon, because it meant I could sight in my muzzleloader at 50 yards, by carting the bench out to a flat spot in the middle of the field and firing at the target stand from half the distance. I could also move the bench out onto the lawn and fire at 90 Degrees from the normal path and hit targets up to 450 yards from the house.

Over the years, that shooting bench came to mean a lot more. When I am alone at the farm, I frequently eat my dinner at that bench. It has become a bit of a ritual to run down to the farm on the first warm Friday night and eat while listening to the spring peepers. When folks are down, the bench is often a hub of activity now as my sons frequently hold shooting parties.

For just a bunch of scraps it was remarkably strong, solid and resilliant. I came down one spring night to check on recent storm damage, and found it missing. I was quite put out. Who would steal such a thing? The next morning, I was out on the porch drinking coffee and still grousing over the loss when I spied dents in the wet earth. Following the trail, I eventually discovered the bench, in several pieces laying about in the pasture. A small F0 tornado had blown through and sucked it off the porch. It was quite selective; the twister had left a ball of tobacco twine and a few other light items still on the porch. I picked up the pieces, screwed it all back together, and the bench worked good as new.

Sadly, I noticed at the end of last year that the bench was starting to rot. The side most exposed to the elements had gotten spongy, and the legs were not as solid as they had been. I set myself the task of duplicating the bench as best as I could. Despite the setbacks from the past month, I finally got things together and built the new bench on Saturday. Instead of flimsy T1-11 barn siding, the frame is now 3/4″ plywood.  I used deck screws instead of nails. The legs are beefier and the top is made from 2×10.  The original stool is a bit more protected; it is still like brand new.

 

 

 

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