My best friend, Russ, died in 2007 from heart attack coupled with complications due to advanced Multiple Sclerosis. His wife Sandy, my wife, Russ's younger brother, a close friend of Russ's and I were at his bedside when he passed.
I had known Russ for about 20 years or so. He had been an avid outdoorsman; hunting and fishing with every spare moment when in-season. He was also an enthusiastic shooter and reloader and was the guy that got me started reloading metallic cartridges. Though I had been reloading shotshells for my 10 ga. and 12 ga. shotguns for about 10 years, Russ was my mentor for all things when it came to metallic cartridges. He had a depth of knowledge of reloading, bullet casting and most things firearms matched by few people I have met.
Before Russ passed away, I used to love to tease him with light hearted practical jokes and things to help keep his mind active. He also needed fine motor skill exercise to keep what he had from degrading any more than it absolutely had to. I would often visit him on a Friday at lunchtime and would stay for a couple hours or three discussing politics, neighbors or whatever was on his mind at the time. During one of these Friday afternoon sessions he began wandering down the rabbit hole of "What to do with his remains when the time comes." He was adamant that he wanted to be cremated, though he was unsure where to have his remains scattered. He was born in northern Minnesota but did most of his growing up and adult life in Arizona. He spent most of his Coast Guard service up in Puget Sound. Then, too, Russ had hunted all over Arizona from down around Patagonia to the Strip on the north rim of the Grand Canyon. Also, in his later years, he had become an annual visitor to Wyoming for a charitable "Helluva Hunt" put on by a rancher during antelope season. So you can understand the dilemma. My tease to him on this particular Friday was: "Well, Russ, after Sandy brings your ashes home, I'm going to ask her for an ounce or two of them and I am going to load you into some shotgun shells as shot buffer and take you out to the range one more time." He just smiled and nodded his head. I could see he liked that idea.
I
did load Russ's ashes into two boxes of 12 ga. shotshells. One box was 1-1/4 oz. 5 shot field loads for upland gamebirds and the other was 1 oz. 7-1/2 shot for clay targets. Most of the field loads I used pheasant hunting in South Dakota with my brother and our sons a year or so after Russ died. A few of the target loads I used during a Sporting Clays shoot a couple years ago near Picacho Peak here in AZ.
This last Wednesday, Russ's brother John and I were at the Rio Salado clay target range for some Trap practice. I had about 15 shells remaining of the target loads I had with "Russ buffer" and showed them to John.
"We gotta use 'em!" He says. "Russ would be really disappointed if we didn't!"
So we did.
As I retreated back to the seats and set my Browning Double Auto into the rack, one of the oldtimers seated there commented on the old Browning: "What is that one?" I told him. "Must be pretty rare. Can't say I have ever heard of one let alone
seen one. By the way what do you have loaded in them shells? I would swear I seen somethin' white come out the end of the barrel with some of them shots."
"I guess that would have been my 'Russell Shot Buffer'."
"Your what?"
"'Russell Shot Buffer'. I promised my best friend, Russ, that I would load some shells with his ashes as shot buffer and take him out to the range one last time. So here we are, and we did."
The oldtimer was silent for a minute. Then he elbowed his buddy next to him. "Didja hear that? They were shooting shells loaded with his buddy's ashes! How cool is
that??!!"
There were maybe six or eight shooters present that heard what we had done and all of them were nodding their heads in approval and all smiling.
It was a
very good day at the range.
