Random Nuclear Strikes

Yes, I have been able to milk this weekend’s activities for three days worth of posts! I’m quite proud of myself.

So, I’ve been getting emails at my new addy asking from some sick puppies asking me to prove the purple shoulder.

OK then, here’s the skinny: The shoulder itself is almost healed but the upper bicep is a nice shade of greenish purple.

I have warned thou previously and am doing so again. The Analog Wife refuses to look at the damage after taking the pic below the fold. In fact, she says that if I do that to myself again, she is going to punish me by putting everything she regularly needs on the upper shelves in the kitchen and afterwards asking for my assistance in retrieving the items for numerous days afterwards.

So now I know that I will need to buy a step stool on my home from the next Practical Shotgun Match.

Now here you go!
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I thought that I might post a bit about equipment that I used and saw used at the Practical Shotgun Match over the weekend so that folks who are thinking of joining me at the next match or those who have been toying with the idea of participating in 3-Gun matches don’t have to go through the embarrassment I went through with having inferior equipment. I also want to discuss a little about tactics afterwards.

First up, the not-so-good stuff:

This is the basic set up you will need for a Practical Shotgun course of fire.

(My Cruiser-Stock 870, two 55rnd bandoliers and three 12 shell belt pounches)

Unfortunately, other that the ammo and the gun itself, that kit is utterly inadequate for anything other than showing off to your buddies.

The bandoliers, while holding a great deal of ammo and looking cool, hang loose on your body and flop around a great deal. They get caught on stuff and if you lean over to pick anything up, you get hit in the back of the head. Also, once you start unloading shells from it, gravity takes hold and the bandolier rotates on you, ending with the loaded shells at your hip level and usually behind you. Likewise, the pouches are a bit of a pain to load fully and if you don’t have the snaps broken in, a pain to open so as to access the shells.
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Holy crap! I forgot that Jerry the Geek gave me a CD-R of pics and video he shot at the Saturday Blogger Blastorama.

So here we go,

Now, I’m only going to leave this up for a day or two due to bandwidth concerns, but here is the link to some video of Rivrdog shooting Jerry’s Comp gun. It is 4.24Megs so it isn’t too large of a file even for those with dial up.
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After shooting with the gentlemen on Saturday, Rivrdog, Jerry the Geek and I retired to the Dog’s marina and had a couple of cold ones and BS’d some more. I caught some zzz’s on the Loften Girl and got up the next morning and headed out to Sherwood, OR for the Practical Shotgun Match at the Tri County Gun Club.

I met up with Jerry at the range and we got stuff organized. Rivrdog was kind enough to secure an 1187 for my back up use incase Darth Vader decided not to work that morning. Which was good, because Vader told me to piss off and that he wanted to stay in the gun case for the duration of the day, which he did.

Not a good omen.

Jerry kept telling me that I wouldn’t want to enter with both my 1187 and my 870, and he was quite right about that. After coming to my senses I decided that 225 round of shotgun ammo would be plenty and that shooting 450 rounds would just be straight up self-abuse.

He entered the match with my Cruiser-Stock 870 and I entered with the back-up 1187. We paid our entry fees and went back to the truck to load up while we waited to get our squad assignments for the day.

Basically, the match coordinators write down everyone who enters (in this case close to 50 people) and then divide them up into squads of 8-10 people. These squads then start at one of the 10 stages and make the rotation around the different stages as a squad. Each squad has at least two people who can pull duty as a range officer/safety officer and everyone else either pulls stage reset duty or scorekeeper.

That morning, to have said that it was a nice day for shooting would have been an understatement; it was sunny and clear with a nice breeze. After about noon though, the breeze went away and the broiler started. I don’t know how hot it got, mostly because I don’t carry a thermometer around with me, but it was, shall we say, plenty hot.

More on that in a minute.

Stop by RNS tomorrow when I’m going discuss equipment for this type of event. I’ll go through what I took and it plusses and minuses and other equipment I saw there that you might want to invest in.

I’ll also go through some of the techniques I used and some of the ones I saw and let you know what works.

And Now, to the stages! (all pics are ‘click for bigger’)

Here is Stage 1

You started out in the box next to the Range Officer and advanced to the red line going from one side to the other, knocking down the falling steel targets as they became visible to you while being timed. I believe that there were 16 targets in all, making it so that even the folks with magazine extensions would have to reload.
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Well howdy!

Yes, I have made it back safely, if not just a bit drained from nearly 500 miles of driving and two days at various ranges in the greater Portland, OR area.

The drive down from Seattle was a good one and I met up with fellow bloggers Jerry the Geek, Rivrdog, The Poor Schmuck and The DANE along with a half dozen blog readers and lurkers for lunch at BJ’s Brewhouse and Restaurant for lunch.

After feeding our faces and BS’n for an hour and a half or so, we headed off to The Place to Shoot for some, well, shooting. I’d just like to say that it was a great group of guys I met on Saturday and that I couldn’t think of a better way of spending an afternoon.

One thing I have to make absolutely clear is that I am, and have always been, horrible with names. If I can remember to write them down or just get a last name, I’m good, but first names get lost shortly after the intro unless they’re unique. I know it sounds rude, but I’ve had this problem as long as I can remember and it looks really strange to whip out a notepad and pen while shaking hands. I’m also horrible with taking pictures. Once I get to the range, I’m all about shooting or loading and not much for photography, which is why I got fewer pics of that range session than I have fingers on one hand. So if you attended and I didn’t get a pic of you shooting or forgot to mention your name, my humblest apologies.

I’m still going through the pics from the Sunday Practical Shotgun match so those will appear tomorrow AM as there are actually quite a few (though I suspect that my inferior photography skills will whittle that number down a good deal).

But back to Saturday’s Blogger Blastorama (all pics are click for bigger)

Here we have The Poor Schmuck taking careful aim with the Ruger 22/45

For not being a regular pistol shooter, he did damn well, if I do say so myself.

Quote from the Schmuck “I have to get one of these�

Next up we have reader Freddy BoomBoom trying out the CZ83

And last, but certainly not least, Jerry the Geek with his single stack competition Kimber 1911 (with the sweetest trigger I’ve touched off in a good while).

Stop by tomorrow for pics of the Practical Shotgun match and an explanation of the title of this post. Trust me, you’ll want to attend the next one after seeing them.

You should also click on the links of the aforementioned bloggers for their pics and tales of the day. I think I can safely say that everyone had a blast! Which was the whole point.

By the time you read this, I’ll probably be in Portland, OR shooting with the folks there. I’ll be spending the night on the Loften Girl, Rivrdog’s watercraft and then getting up to go to the Practical Shotgun match in Sherwood.

That means that there will be no posting for Sunday until I get home from all that.

I am taking my camera though, so there will be pics to see on Monday. Hopefully lots of them.

Seeing as how Professor Booty has decided, once again, to send a cryptic message talking about ‘The ASSignment’ and then crawl back to incommunicado status, I have no other option than to post the message and the accompanying pic and hope he decides to show up tomorrow or at least write me explaining his situation.

The message was as follows,

“The ASSignment has been transferred in total, and so shall I be. My return will mark a new high point in Booty Dynamics Studies.

The new facility is magnificent. If things go as planned, the entire world will know my name and speak kindly of me only.�

OK Professor, whatever. Damn.
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Well, my adventures with Darth Vader are not yet over.

As I wrote last week, I screwed up the fitting of the Easy-Loader and needed a new follower and probably a new follower catch, which I ordered from Numrich on Thursday morning. A day to assemble the order and $15 worth of second day air later and the parts showed up on Tuesday.

But, Numrich sent me the wrong parts!

The carrier latch is correct, but the carrier assembly itself is out of something like a Remington 1148 Autoloader and didn’t have the tab that interacts with the carrier latch on it.

(click for bigger pic)

Loud profanities followed when I discovered this.

Errors like this have never been a problem with Numrich in the past and I seeing as I have 30 days to return the item, I am waiting a couple days to call them lest I issue threats including the torching of buildings.

The couple day wait was helped by a flyer I found that had been given to me by the gunsmith who built Barak the Boomershoot Rifle when I asked him about the installation of Poly-Chokes.

The phone number on the flyer was to a gentleman named Mike who does a lot of custom barrel and choke work on shotguns. I hoped beyond hope that this guy would have a Remington carrier hanging around he wouldn’t mind parting with for cash.

Luckily he did.

$35 and an hour long drive from my place to Tacoma in rush hour traffic later, I had the part in my hand. It will get installed and tested on Friday for the Portland Blogger Blastorama on Saturday and the Practical Shotgun match in Sherwood on Sunday.

I forsee no problems, provided I don’t transform into King Midas and turn the entire assembly into gold while installing the new carrier (as the metal would be too soft to function). Although, it would be around 12oz of golden 1187 trigger assembly, so maybe I wouldn’t be too unhappy.

But from now on, I follow my new rule: There will be no screwing around with my guns for two weeks before an event!