Hey ya'll,
My whole family back home has been using guns for hunting and saftey for years now; however I have always been terrified. I decided to get to know guns and gun saftey, laws, etc.. better to educate myself and get over this fear....so I enrolled in a gun saftey/chl class. Fantastic, well versed/knowlegable instructor....
And then we went to the gun range. Let me preface this by saying that I have been to indoor ranges with my Dad before so was well aware of how loud they can be. This was a supposedly well reputed outdoor range though.
We drive up and there are numerous bays with 3 walled earthen berms. There were several competitions going on at the time in bays adjacent and farther down.
We got out of the truck to set up the tables, papers, etc...and I have to say my female intuition was in full RED alert. There were what seemed to be bullets flying through the air over are head and it was pretty clear from the sound that there were shotguns being fired on the other side of the berm...however in our direction. When I asked if this was safe and why aren't people shooting in a monodirection ala an indoor range, the answer was because of the type of competition going on. He also reassured me that the berms were both thick enough and high enough to prevent any bullets from entering our area.
This did not calm my fears in any way, shape, or form.
While the guys were continuing to set up I swear I heard "whizzing" and air right past my head and felt dirt being kicked up around us. We were no where near the skeet area so I mentioned this to the guys. They said it may be rock fragments. This still didn't seem normal. I was voicing my concern with them saying I was "just being overally paranoid" when literally, it seemed like warfare. Gun blasts opened up fairly rapidly and our whole area was peppered with the whizzing and flying dirt. Enough so that our instuctor commented "what the f*"....and that's right about when I felt something hot hit my neck. and I shouted "I just got hit by something".It was painful as all hell and my first thought was "i just got shot". I pulled my hand and there was no blood. Yay! our instructor asked immediatly asked if I was ok, instructed us to get behind/next to his truck and he went sprinting to the next berm to tell the people what had happened.
He came back, checked on me, apologized but said they were probably going to move the targets. The bb/bird shot was being fired into the ground, ricocheting up and over the berm. Needless, to say for my VERY FIRST GUN EXPERIENCE on my own...I was not moving from behind the truck because you could still very clearly here the whizzing and shot. And that's when, literally within the next minuet the guys gut peppered again.
We packed up asap and hauled ass out of there...making a stop by the adjacent berm to give them a polite (they did have loaded guns) piece of our minds about their negligant saftey and then to the front office to let them know.
My long winded questions are: 1) How common an occurence is this to be hit by shotgun ricochet?
2) If the people were notified that a person was just hit b/c of how they were firing/aiming are they in neglect to KEEP doing this action with the same outcome and 3) is that common for outdoor ranges to have people basically shooting at others...with just a wall of dirt in the way???
Needless to say, this did nothing to ease my fears.
My whole family back home has been using guns for hunting and saftey for years now; however I have always been terrified. I decided to get to know guns and gun saftey, laws, etc.. better to educate myself and get over this fear....so I enrolled in a gun saftey/chl class. Fantastic, well versed/knowlegable instructor....
And then we went to the gun range. Let me preface this by saying that I have been to indoor ranges with my Dad before so was well aware of how loud they can be. This was a supposedly well reputed outdoor range though.
We drive up and there are numerous bays with 3 walled earthen berms. There were several competitions going on at the time in bays adjacent and farther down.
We got out of the truck to set up the tables, papers, etc...and I have to say my female intuition was in full RED alert. There were what seemed to be bullets flying through the air over are head and it was pretty clear from the sound that there were shotguns being fired on the other side of the berm...however in our direction. When I asked if this was safe and why aren't people shooting in a monodirection ala an indoor range, the answer was because of the type of competition going on. He also reassured me that the berms were both thick enough and high enough to prevent any bullets from entering our area.
This did not calm my fears in any way, shape, or form.
While the guys were continuing to set up I swear I heard "whizzing" and air right past my head and felt dirt being kicked up around us. We were no where near the skeet area so I mentioned this to the guys. They said it may be rock fragments. This still didn't seem normal. I was voicing my concern with them saying I was "just being overally paranoid" when literally, it seemed like warfare. Gun blasts opened up fairly rapidly and our whole area was peppered with the whizzing and flying dirt. Enough so that our instuctor commented "what the f*"....and that's right about when I felt something hot hit my neck. and I shouted "I just got hit by something".It was painful as all hell and my first thought was "i just got shot". I pulled my hand and there was no blood. Yay! our instructor asked immediatly asked if I was ok, instructed us to get behind/next to his truck and he went sprinting to the next berm to tell the people what had happened.
He came back, checked on me, apologized but said they were probably going to move the targets. The bb/bird shot was being fired into the ground, ricocheting up and over the berm. Needless, to say for my VERY FIRST GUN EXPERIENCE on my own...I was not moving from behind the truck because you could still very clearly here the whizzing and shot. And that's when, literally within the next minuet the guys gut peppered again.
We packed up asap and hauled ass out of there...making a stop by the adjacent berm to give them a polite (they did have loaded guns) piece of our minds about their negligant saftey and then to the front office to let them know.
My long winded questions are: 1) How common an occurence is this to be hit by shotgun ricochet?
2) If the people were notified that a person was just hit b/c of how they were firing/aiming are they in neglect to KEEP doing this action with the same outcome and 3) is that common for outdoor ranges to have people basically shooting at others...with just a wall of dirt in the way???
Needless to say, this did nothing to ease my fears.