In mid-1961 I was stationed at Ft. Benning, Ga., with the 10th Field Artillery as a field communication wireman. A buddy and I were volunteered by our First Sergeant to spend a few days at the pistol range to load the automatic clay pigeon traps for a handful of non-commissioned officers.
The first day and a half, it was kind of boring; they were busting the pigeons too regularly. So we decided to “spice it up” a little. We knocked the centers out of a few clay pigeons and loaded them intermittently on a couple of machines. Then they were missing too many! All of a sudden over the intercom we could hear a lot of cussing. So we took off the few that were still on the machines in case they came down to see what we were up to.
With the center knocked out, clay pigeons just don’t fly right!