Having been a long time admirer of Leatherman multi-tools but not being in a financial position to purchase one, instead making do with cheaper substandard brands, an opportunity recently presented itself to me where I could finally own an original, bona fide Leatherman, so I grabbed it with both hands. I live in Ireland and one of my hobbies is Clay Target Sport Shooting. I guess that Americans could call it Skeet Shooting, although skeet is a slightly different shooting discipline to Sporting. Sporting attempts to simulate live quarry, including rabbits and various types of birds, in field conditions.

 

I have been participating in this sport for about four years now and this year I have even represented my club at national competitions. Each year my club, of which there are about two hundred members, hosts a Summer League and it runs over twelve weeks during the months June to September with weekly shoots each consisting of fifty targets or ‘birds' as we call them. I registered for the competition in June and while browsing the prize list I noticed that eleventh prize was a Leatherman Wave. This was exactly what I wanted! The other prizes didn't matter. The prestige of coming in the top three (which I was very capable of doing) didn't matter. The only thing I wanted from the competition was that Leatherman Wave. You could be forgiven for thinking that winning a competition like this would be extremely difficult, but let me tell you, trying to finish eleventh and exactly eleventh out of nearly two hundred is much, much more difficult. Each week of the twelve was spent mentally calculating, without trying to draw too much attention to myself as I studiously examined the scoreboard, exactly how many ‘birds' I needed to hit that week in order to keep myself in contention for that eleventh spot. Some weeks, if I had dropped a few places, I would have to ‘shoot out of my skin' and score extremely high whereas other weeks, if I was placed too high, I would have to ‘sandbag' and purposely score lower, which again is no mean feat if you're trying not to be found out.

 

In the end, all the stress, the sandbagging and the mental arithmetic paid off because on the 18th Sept 2010 I finally got my hands on my very own Leatherman, which is firmly attached to my belt as I write this and goes everywhere I do. The other guys in the club couldn't understand my elation at coming eleventh (as I said I was more than capable of finishing in the top three) but they wouldn't understand; they don't own a Leatherman, I do!

 

Jason R.

Drogheda, Co Louth, Ireland