Going Up To Shoot This Weekend
Back in Oregon I belonged for years to a most excellent gun club with superb facilities.I loved bringing friends out to the place and shooting with them. My favorite moments were with people who never shot guns before, like kids or my co worker's mother who wanted to get a handgun for self protection but had no idea what to buy.
Usually I'd go there by myself and devote my time to a specific activity like semi auto drills, rimfire, black powder or checking out special handloads. I went a lot, about once a week, and the place was excellent with ranges where you could be by yourself or go shmoozing with other gunners, and most of the ranges had roofs to keep you out of the rain, which was the usual circumstance up there in the Willamette Valley.
Down here in the SW I looked at a bunch of clubs and they all suck. They restrict members to paper punching. That's fine if that's all you want to do, but real world shooting involves moving around, blasting from behind objects, getting prone on the floor, fast draw and firing at multiple targets.
You want to be a shooter? You need freedom and laxity to hone your skills.
About fifteen miles from where I live down here is the boundary to a national forest. Now boundary is sort of a jurisdictional word around the arid west, a thing I learned when I fought forest fires thirty years ago. When you cross over the cow grating and past the fence, if you look at what's in front of you and what's behind you, go ahead and sc
ratch your head.
Anyway, pull into national forest land and you can do all you want, chief. About a hundred yards in is a big open area that's a shooting area. It's not closed in but then again it hardly rains down here.
I went up there with the mrs a couple of months ago and challenged her to a shootoff between me and my .50 caliber black powder rifle and her .22 magnum Henry.
Now she blasted those water jugs like you really, really don't want to come into our house uninvited. She busted those jugs at 150 feet while I just nicked them.
This weekend I hope to check out a few of my carry pistols that I altered.
I'll probably go alone because I don't want to be bested yet again.
By the way, here's a link to full episodes of History Channel's Tales of the Gun.
Usually I'd go there by myself and devote my time to a specific activity like semi auto drills, rimfire, black powder or checking out special handloads. I went a lot, about once a week, and the place was excellent with ranges where you could be by yourself or go shmoozing with other gunners, and most of the ranges had roofs to keep you out of the rain, which was the usual circumstance up there in the Willamette Valley.
Down here in the SW I looked at a bunch of clubs and they all suck. They restrict members to paper punching. That's fine if that's all you want to do, but real world shooting involves moving around, blasting from behind objects, getting prone on the floor, fast draw and firing at multiple targets.
You want to be a shooter? You need freedom and laxity to hone your skills.
About fifteen miles from where I live down here is the boundary to a national forest. Now boundary is sort of a jurisdictional word around the arid west, a thing I learned when I fought forest fires thirty years ago. When you cross over the cow grating and past the fence, if you look at what's in front of you and what's behind you, go ahead and sc
ratch your head.Anyway, pull into national forest land and you can do all you want, chief. About a hundred yards in is a big open area that's a shooting area. It's not closed in but then again it hardly rains down here.
I went up there with the mrs a couple of months ago and challenged her to a shootoff between me and my .50 caliber black powder rifle and her .22 magnum Henry.
Now she blasted those water jugs like you really, really don't want to come into our house uninvited. She busted those jugs at 150 feet while I just nicked them.
This weekend I hope to check out a few of my carry pistols that I altered.
I'll probably go alone because I don't want to be bested yet again.
By the way, here's a link to full episodes of History Channel's Tales of the Gun.
posted by nolocontendere at 3:57 PM
1 Comments:
I love this story.... I hope I have the pleasure to keep reading Mr. Lipsticks blogs far into the future to look back on. Thank you for sharing your stories.
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