Tradition and pig-headed stubbornness.

      There are no other explanations.

      Two months into recovery from a four-artery bypass, I went trap shooting.

      For 10 years, I have gone to the Pennsylvania State Shoot, which draws about 2,000 of the nation's best shooters from 34 states and four foreign countries to Elysburg in rural northeastern Pennsylvania. And every year, I struggle to rise to mediocrity, shooting against several other reporters on the first Monday of the nine-day shoot.

      My usual technique is to yell "pull,"fire somewhere south of Canada, and hope the target makes a wrong turn and flies into the shot. I've hit as few as 8 of 25 targets and as many as 17, but that was with a heat-seeking missile.

      When I received the invitation for this year's 110th annual shoot, I figured since I was doing so well in recovery I'd have no problem on the shooting line. But just to be sure, I asked my three nurses in cardiac rehab. Audrey Schupp, with 24 years nursing experience, suppressed a shriek but quietly said she didn't think it would be a good idea so soon after surgery. Madye Dellegrotti, with 25 years experience, agreed that the recoil from a 12-gauge shotgun may not be a smart way to improve muscle tone on a chest mending with the help of surgically-implanted O- rings. Jean Flick, also with 25 years experience, my chief shepherd and drill sergeant, looked at me as if I had just grown a sphincter that shut off oxygen to the brain. Always competent and compassionate, her "NO!"resounded through all hospital floors.

      Defeated, I e-mailed Dave Comroe, the shoot's publicist, that I would be at the meet, but wouldn't be shooting. He said he would get me a low-recoil gun and light-load shells that further minimize the problem. A health care communications director and trap shoot official, I reasoned, should trump three nurses with 74 years of experience, almost all of it in critical and cardiac care.

      And so, on a Monday morning, I was prepared to shoot.

      "You feeling all right?"asked Bruce Murphy, Monroeville, president of the Pennsylvania State Sportsmen's Association, and host of one of the best-organized meets in the country. Bruce, who has watched reporters shoot and miss for several years, but always makes us believe we're only a pigeon short of a championship buckle, would check my health at least twice more.

      He might have been gun shy. At the 11th annual Keystone Open two weeks earlier on the same field, Kenneth Schatz, Murrysville, a Class A shooter, suffered a major heart attack. Four days later, he left the hospital, scheduled for a three-artery bypass. Schatz, a hard-driving 54-year-old pharmaceutical salesman whom Murphy calls "obsessive-compulsive,"proved worthy of the label. He was at the tournament, but wasn't yet on the line.

      On the line, I was confident. Rehab was going well. My heart and lungs, strong before surgery, were even stronger now. With a borrowed low-recoil shotgun, light target shells donated by Remington, a pillow on my shoulder, and Ken Darroch, Aliquippa, a champion shooter to coach me, I was ready, even if a few persons thought shotgun shock might require me to seek not further coaching but medical treatment.

      A few yards away sat Dr. Lamont Shuttleworth, Pittsburgh, never suspecting he was "on call."Dr. Shuttleworth is 75, a retired family practice physician who is in a motorized wheelchair, the result of hip replacement surgery nine months earlier. But he was planning to compete in several events, probably shooting at 2,000 targets. Unlike some other sports, the Amateur Trapshooting Association encourages those with disabilities to participate; in Elysburg, eight of the 52 traps are specially accessible for those in wheelchairs. Dr. Shuttleworth has already racked up more than 150,000 registered targets, and prior to his surgery had a 96.7 percent kill rate. "It's a bit harder in a wheelchair,"he said, explaining, "It's lower, and harder to swing on the severe angles."A former combat medic in the Navy then the Marines during World War II, he took advantage of the GI Bill to go to college and med school at the University of Pittsburgh. I had no fears.

      Nevertheless, to semi-please my nurses, I decided only to shoot at five birds, not the customary 25. It was my version of a "compromise."

      The first shot was wide, but the second one smoked the target. I finish with 2 of 5. "How you doing?"asked Bruce Murphy. "Feeling great,"I replied, then said I'd shoot "just five more."

      Bob Thomas, 62, Greenville, confined to a wheelchair by arthritis and other problems, his gun placed at hip level, has shot at more than 200,000 registered targets since 1990. A Class- A shooter, he usually gets 80-90 of every 100 targets he aims for with a custom-made 56-inch long-barreled 12-gauge Ljutic.

      My gun barrel was about half that size. At Station 2, I hit three of five targets. With five hits of 10 targets, I "retired"for the year, less concerned about the shock to my chest than what my nurses would do to me when they found out.

      Dr. Shuttleworth and I chatted awhile until I moved on to other stories while he prepared to begin competition. For the first time in more than a decade, Bob Thomas didn't make it to the state championships; he's waiting to have an angioplasty. "But I'll be up and around,"the former truck driver swears, and says he'll be at the Grand American two weeks later in Elysburg. Kenny Schatz, temporarily sidelined by a heart attack, has no doubt he will be shooting again soon.

      Several hundred trapshooters have worked around their disabilities to rise to championship calibre. It just takes determination and some rehab, hopefully with nurses as good as those of Bloomsburg Hospital's cardiac rehab unit who will get me ready to jog the hill to the banks and shoot from all five stations next year.