“People enjoy participating in sports they love, and golf lines up with sporting clays. But who needs another golf tournament? Fifteen years ago we found something different with sporting clays, and people responded. Our event has become the biggest of its kind,” said former NFL quarterback and television announcer Boomer Esiason of the Boomer Esiason Annual Sporting Clays Pro-Am, scheduled for June 10 and 11 this year at Elk Creek Hunt Club in Owenton, Kentucky. “You can only have so many golf tournaments and black-tie events as fund-raisers. Our staff at the Boomer Esiason Foundation (BEF) are always thinking of new and interesting ways of raising funds. The fun aspect is the number of people who have never fired a shotgun before, who come to our event. They’re out there with the master shooters, the pros, who are teaching safety and respect, teaching the proper techniques. I find really interesting the number of women who love doing this,” Esiason says and includes Natalie Wainwright in that group—she’s the program director of the Boomer Esiason Foundation and has helped to arrange sporting clays tournaments in her home state of West Virginia; that shoot has typically happened in the fall. Esiason continues: “At the end of the day, if you can’t have fun raising the money, why are you doing it?”

I have some bad news. There’s a bourbon shortage—and it’s only getting worse. Unprecedented domestic demand and export growth, combined with the lack of quality American white oak with which to make barrels, and distillers earmarking bourbon for flavored products—grrr, don’t get me started on flavored whiskey!—are destroying the supply levels in your local liquor store. It doesn’t help that the mainstream media picked up on this shortage situation and have made it front-page news.

The consumer rush to buy bourbon makes purchasing mainstay products difficult, and it can be nearly impossible to find limited-edition releases. While this is frustrating to all bourbon lovers, I’m quick to point out that bourbon takes time to produce. The majority of the products on shelves today were distilled and put into barrels anywhere from 5 to 12 years ago. Nobody predicted today’s demand for bourbon. But if you’re a patient and aggressive bourbon hunter, you can find the bourbon your palate desires.

Here’s a short list of things I love: wild brook trout, snowstorms, wood-canvas canoes, pointers, and—of course—shotguns. For the past 30 years, I’ve been obsessed with shotguns. I’ve worked lousy jobs to buy them, flown across oceans to admire them, and walked away from promising careers to immerse myself in them. I’ve contributed countless hours and thousands of dollars to this passion, and I don’t believe a single one has been misspent. Collecting fine, old shotguns has been one of the most rewarding activities of my life—and, in many ways, one of the most revealing.