Charles Askins
Charles Askins, also known as Col. Charles "Boots" Askins, was an American lawman, US Army officer, and writer. He served in law enforcement (US Forest Service and Border Patrol) in the American Southwest prior to the Second World War.
Askins was the son of Major Charles "Bobo" Askins, a sports writer and Army officer who served in the Spanish American War and World War I.
Askins served in the US Army during World War II as a battlefield recovery officer; making landings in North Africa, Sicily, and Normandy on D-day (June 6, 1944).
After World War II, he spent several years in Spain as an attaché to the American embassy there, helping Franco rebuild Spain's munition plants. After his assignment in Spain, he was transferred to South Vietnam, where he trained South Vietnamese soldiers in shooting and airborne operations.
Throughout his twenty-two year military career, he indulged in big game hunting at every opportunity, and continued to do so after his retirement. He held several big game hunting records in his lifetime, as well as two national pistol championships, an American Handgunner of the Year award, and innumerable smaller titles in competitive shooting.
In addition to his hunting and shooting pursuits Askins enjoyed a brisk career as a writer throughout much of his later life. His writing career spanned 70 years, from 1929 until his death in 1999.
His articles appeared in numerous publications (Guns & Ammo, Guns, American Rifleman, and Shooting Times) throughout the 1960's, 1970's and 1980's.
“It is a queer weapon, a shotgun. Every effort to secure additional range is well paid for. A bird may be going away at tremendous speed, "burning the air" as a youngster would put it. Seemingly nothing but chain-lightning, which zig-zagged a bit, could stop him. A crack of the gun and that wild flier is dead in the air, a full forty yards away. Right then the conviction comes to us that man never made another weapon so deadly as the shotgun. However, go back another forty yards, set the bird up on the limb of a tree and you might shoot at him all day and not kill him. The shotgun is a deadly weapon but its range is strictly limited and we are ourselves pretty well convinced that nothing less than a two-inch cannon will regularly kill single game-birds at one-hundred yards, with any kind of shot that can be put in the gun.”