When he dies, Clem Parnell expects his soul to ascend heavenward. He wants his ashes to be loaded into a shotgun shell and blasted at a turkey.
“I will rest in peace knowing that the last thing that turkey will see is me screaming at him at about 900 feet per second,” Parnell, 59, said.
Parnell and his business partner, fellow Alabama state game warden Thad Holmes, believe other hunters have similar hankerings. This July, they launched Holy Smoke LLC, which offers to load the cremains of customers into shotgun shells, rifle cartridges and bullets.
For about $850, a customer will receive 250 shotgun shells, 100 rifle cartridges or 250 pistol cartridges packed with the deceased’s ashes. Discounts are available for the military, police and firemen.
After most funeral rites, scattered remains become trodden dirt; gravesites go unvisited; and ash-filled urns sit unnoticed, Holmes, 56, said. Loading up a loved one for one final duck hunt would be a more fitting send-off, he said, especially for avid outdoorsmen.
“We want to give people an alternative to celebrate a person’s life,” Holmes said.
Holy Smoke insists that remains are handled reverently by a team of five ATF-trained loaders. There is no commingling of ashes, and unused cremains are returned. Parnell, a Southern Baptist, said all seven Holy Smoke employees are “good Christians, with good moral values.”
“Just because you’re getting shot out of a gun doesn’t make it irreverent,” Holmes said.
But some Christian scholars say Holy Smoke is firing spiritual blanks. “It’s a terrible idea,” said David W. Jones, a professor of Christian ethics at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest, N.C.
“This idea of putting grandpa in a rifle shell or scattering his ashes on a baseball field goes against Christianity. We’re supposed to show respect for ashes, not throw them to the wind,” said Jones, who has written about cremation in the Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society.
Funeral industry experts say Holy Smoke is unique, but not unusual.
Cremation accounted for 37 percent of all final dispositions in 2009, according to the National Funeral Directors Association, and is expected to cross the 50 percent threshold this decade. (RNS)
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