Kiriakou’s skeet shooting began as an accident of training. Having worked through pistols in the shooting house, the class moved to the Remington pump-action 12 gauge — a weapon John Kiriakou had never handled, having never fired a rifle or a shotgun in his life.[1]
The instructor was an old southerner near his eightieth birthday with a cheek full of chewing tobacco. “Okay, youngster. So you’re the one who ain’t never touched a gun before.” He asked whether Kiriakou knew why they used the Remington pump action, and gave three reasons: buckshot will kill anyone breaking into your house; they are easy to load, fire and clean; and — racking it — “it makes that bitchin’ sound.” Kiriakou says he still laughs about it.[2][3]
The plates
The drill was to knock down steel plates the size of a pie plate. Kiriakou hit both at seven metres, both at twelve, both at twenty-five. Told to try three at a time, he asked how one loads the third; the instructor showed him to hold a cartridge between two fingers of the left hand and feed it as the action opens. He did three, then four, and never missed.[4][5]
The instructor took him aside after dinner and said it would sound crazy, but he thought Kiriakou could be a competitive skeet shooter. “And that is how I became a competitive skeet shooter. And I was darn good at it.” He shot at clubs around Washington and as far away as Warm Springs, Virginia on the West Virginia border — clay pigeons and, as he puts it, all kinds of stuff.[5][6]