Charles A. "Skeeter" Skelton was born on May 1, 1928 in Hereford, Deaf Smith County, TX, – the heart of the High Plains and the old Comanche and buffalo country and grew up during what’s known to history as the "Dust Bowl Days". The son of a merchant, rancher, farmer, and hunter, he developed an early interest in firearms, especially handguns, doing his first pistol shooting with his father's Colt Woodsman .22 when he was five.
Skeeter began acquiring and studying handguns during his adolescence and developed a strong attachment to large caliber single action revolvers. Perhaps partly owing to his interest in firearms, he spent only a brief time in college after serving in the U.S. Marine Corps and elected to follow law enforcement as a careCharles A. "Skeeter" Skelton was born on May 1, 1928 in Hereford, Deaf Smith County, TX, – the heart of the High Plains and the old Comanche and buffalo country and grew up during what’s known to history as the "Dust Bowl Days". The son of a merchant, rancher, farmer, and hunter, he developed an early interest in firearms, especially handguns, doing his first pistol shooting with his father's Colt Woodsman .22 when he was five.
Skeeter began acquiring and studying handguns during his adolescence and developed a strong attachment to large caliber single action revolvers. Perhaps partly owing to his interest in firearms, he spent only a brief time in college after serving in the U.S. Marine Corps and elected to follow law enforcement as a career. He served as a city patrolman in Amarillo, Texas, as a U.S. Border Patrolman on the last horse patrol in Arizona maintained by that agency, as deputy sheriff and then sheriff of his home Deaf Smith County, as a narcotics agent for U.S. Customs, and finally as Special Agent in Charge of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, from which position he retired in 1974 after an accident that nearly crippled him. After his retirement, his interest in firearms remained, and he acted as a consultant to various firearms manufacturers and occasionally demonstrated their products.
In 1966, Skeeter started writing for Shooting Times and was the magazine's Handgun Editor for 21 years. His first piece was a "Handguns" column, which appeared in the July 1966 issue. He authored more than 400 articles for Shooting Times and most of them were collected in four books: Skeeter Skelton On Handguns, Skeeter Skelton's Handgun Tales, Good Friends – Good Guns – Good Whiskey: Selected Works of Skeeter Skelton, and Hoglegs, Hipshots and Jalapenos: Selected Works of Skeeter Skelton.
Skeeter Skelton passed away on Sunday, January 17, 1988, at Sun Towers Hospital in El Paso, Texas....more
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