The Legend Of Charley Askins by Skeeter Skelton

Shooting Times Magazine

In The West Wing of a secluded, tile-roofed Spanish home in San Antonio, Texas is a room that is one of my favorite retreats. It’s a large room, carpeted with the rich hides of Polar and Kodiak bears and tigers. A long setee is draped with zebra hides that prickle your back when you sit down for a drink and some talk with the man of the house. Pairs of elephant tusks stand close to bookcases and a maze of racked rifles and shotguns of every description. The walls are spiked with such a forest of mounted heads and horns that the whole effect becomes blurred, and the guest concentrates on the host, who leans casually behind a big wooden desk.

 He is a ruddily healthy man of indeterminate middle age, his compact body kept hard by constant physical activity, his hands those of a working  man. He looks at you with a direct blue gaze that would raise your guard if it weren’t with a soft chuckle as he asks about your health, your family, and the advancement of your career. The smile that accompanies the chuckle is partially hidden by a drooping roan moustache, and overshadowed by the belligerent nose of a Roman centurion.

 He is Col. Charles Askins, my longtime friend, and one of the most interesting – some say the most controversial – men you are likely to meet anywhere in this last of the 1900s.

 Since you are sufficiently bemused by firearms to be now reading the pages of Shooting Times, you know Askins as a prominent writer whose work has appeared in about every gun publication. You might know that he is the son of the late Maj. Charles Askins, the best authority and writer on the subject of shotguns that this country has produced. The salty, knowledgeable, and for the hidebound, often outrageous stories penned by this man of guns are explained and mitigated by a background that would shame the plotting efforts of the most imaginative novelist.

RTWT @ You Will Shoot Your Eye Out

Charles Askins and a feast of Scaled quail, courtesy of his Belgium built Superposed. A backdrop of Soaptree Yucca, photographed somewhere in the desert areas of Texas or New Mexico.