TARGET #201 BY CHARLIE HAFFNER OF OWL HOLLOW, TENNESSEE

Recommeded by Joshua Foster

A triptych of these showed up on our Loft property front doors late one night after the Capitol Riot, Jan 16, 2021. It was weird, three of these woodchuck targets stapled to an old piece of red particleboard, propped up in a snow drift at our building's entrance. My first thought was that my angry conservative buddies were fucking with me, but the style and geography of Haffner muddied that theory. Idaho is a long way from Tennessee. I removed the targets from the particle board and hung them in the Loft tool room, where I collect all the strange ephemera I find while care-taking the property. Very little exists online about Mr. Haffner, the target's author, though it was clear he was a man of esteem in his field. Message board posts refer to a Haffner target as a nightmare target. Charlie was a skilled and decorated competitive shooter, and well-known in that circuit until his death in 2004. The Charlie Haffner Memorial Gun Range is in operation in Tennessee. One Haffner target is for sale via the National Muzzleloading Rifle Association website. When I showed Target #201 to my friend Lou, an avid shooter, he reported that there really was no advantage, the way it was configured. Damn hard target. I did not find any information as to what the C. M. T. at the bottom of the target actually means.