"We have a fairly limited amount of time to turn you into a killing machine,-¿ David Petzal said as we drove to Camp Fire, a private men's shooting club in Chappaqua, N.Y. It was a warm Friday in July, and Dave, a laconic man with a salt-and-pepper beard who has been this magazine's resident rifle expert for 25 years, was taking me to his off-site office for a lesson.

That morning I shot my first target, a cardboard bighorn ram, with a .22 at 100 yards, firing prone, and then kneeling, and then offhand (for purposes of humility). Dave has a slow and deliberate way of speaking and a way with language that is dryly hilarious, and he delivered instructions in a courtly drawl. As he moved through the basics; the importance of inhaling, exhaling, and then squeezing-"not pulling-"the trigger; of relaxing, focusing, and keeping steady hands; we both noticed that mine were shaking. A lot.

"Do you drink coffee?-¿

"I'm afraid so. The stronger, the better.-¿

He looked at me and shook his head. "Caffeine is not your friend. How much do you weigh?-¿

"I don't know. About 105 pounds.-¿

"Think of yourself as 105 pounds of inert matter. With a trigger finger.-¿

The .22 felt light, the gun equivalent of training wheels, and it fired with an insubstantial pop, but Dave was testing a beast of a weapon, a synthetic-stocked .338, and its booming recoil was a reminder of what lay in store. My serious gun, the elk-dispatching one, was a magnificent Dakota Arms .300 Win. Mag. rifle borrowed from its owner, Paulette Kok, a friend of Dave's. Its stock, handcrafted from a blank of English walnut, had been shortened to 121?2 inches. The Dakota was elegant and lethal and sat imposingly on the rack. To be honest, it frightened me.

Slam that bolt! harder! abuse it!-¿ I was lying on my stomach, shooting the .22 at a fluorescent orange gopher. When hit, the steel target made a bright pinging noise that I liked. Dave felt I wasn't being authoritative enough with the action. He wanted to hear it snap open and shut smartly and see bullet casings flip into the air. "Use your palm,-¿ he told me. "Stop grabbing the bolt with your fingers.-¿ By now, my third lesson, we had ranged farther afield, driving another 60 miles north to Tamarack, a manicured hunting club in New York's Dutchess County.

On this range I could practice 300-yard shots by climbing a hill and grazing the top of a cornfield. It seemed impossibly far. "You should be able to make it,-¿ Dave said firmly. "The mistake people make is not trusting their rifles. These things are deadly accurate from a long way off.-¿

For the time being, 75 yards was challenge enough. Today I would warm up with the .22 and then move to the bigger gun. After a 30-minute session of small-caliber gopher abuse, Dave handed me three .300 cartridges, threw his pack down, and put on earmuffs. The Dakota had a heft and a certainty about it, and as I lay prone, pressing my cheek along the stock and adjusting the scope, I almost felt comfortable. Breathe, exhale. Squeeze. BOOM! The gunshot felt smooth, a profound bass explosion with a silky kickback and unspeakable power. My legs jerked in a spasmodic froglike gesture. It wasn't a very pretty demonstration of form, but I had managed to hit the target in a reasonable spot, and Dave seemed to have faith.

"You flinched,-¿ he said. "But I'll take it. You're 105 pounds of what?-¿

"Inert matter.-¿

As the summer passed, Saturdays at Tamarack became routine. It made for a long day-"two hours on the train, another hour in Dave's truck, two hours on the range, and then back again-"but I was seeing results. My hunt was set: October 20 in western Colorado, a state with a healthy population of 30,000 elk. Over the weeks I shot and shot and shot and began to rend paper in a more consistent manner. Perhaps I had become a little cocky, or perhaps I was simply being careless on the day I split my forehead open with th