A bullet casing flies through the air as Kris Paronto takes target pracitce at Bluffs Shooters in western Nebraska.
As I traveled through the back roads of Scotts Bluff County and into the southern edge of Sioux County, I looked all around me. A red-tailed hawk sat on the wooden cross beam of a telephone line watching me as I approached. It kept a keen eye on my car until I stopped. Before I had a chance to take my camera out of its bag, the bird flew away. Knowing I didn’t have the zoom lens to track it and take its picture, I sat for a few moments watching it sail into the distance.
I continued my journey a little farther north to the Bluffs Shooters range for an active shooter training course I had been assigned to cover day one of a two-day event. As I pulled in just after 9 a.m., two men greeted me and told me I could park my car anywhere. They were happy someone from the media had come out to see what they were doing. I was less than ecstatic to be there.