Smokey Joe
Member
- Joined
- Jan 2, 2003
- Messages
- 2,617
Haven't posted much this past week. Been busy.
Yesterday was the last day of my club's annual "Deer Hunters' Sight-In Days." The club made a nice piece of change, sighting-in people's guns, letting them shoot at 50 or 100 yds, and at our "running deer" targets. We also had a gunsmith on the grounds, a raffle, and sold hmburgers/hot dogs/chili/etc.
But far more importantly, we taught safe gun handling, helped any number of novices become familiar with their firearms, encouraged recoil-shy kids, coached impatient dads, got "impossible" firearms functional and functional guns bore-sighted, convinced lots of people that shooting at a running deer is a waste of ammo, adjusted sights, etc, etc, etc.
It's always amazing, the variety of weapons people come with. Sometimes equally amazing is their lack of practice, but at least they're there, trying to cure that.
Personally, most rewarding was teaching 2 different muzzleloader shooters, each of whom showed up with the gun and all the trappings, still in their store packaging, how to competently load and shoot the weapons. Oh, and always, coaching the kids. Worked I don't know how many from shooting the sandbank to putting shotgun slugs on target, relaxing, squeezing the trigger, keeping a sight picture, and so on. The kids are nice to work with; normally they take coaching better than the adults.
During the lulls, of course there was time for plenty of shooting by the range workers. I learned, for example, that I will NEVER AGAIN fire a .454 Casull. Ever.
It was a long, hard week for me--I'm still tired today. But a good tired, you may be sure. And hunting in general will be the better for our efforts.
Yesterday was the last day of my club's annual "Deer Hunters' Sight-In Days." The club made a nice piece of change, sighting-in people's guns, letting them shoot at 50 or 100 yds, and at our "running deer" targets. We also had a gunsmith on the grounds, a raffle, and sold hmburgers/hot dogs/chili/etc.
But far more importantly, we taught safe gun handling, helped any number of novices become familiar with their firearms, encouraged recoil-shy kids, coached impatient dads, got "impossible" firearms functional and functional guns bore-sighted, convinced lots of people that shooting at a running deer is a waste of ammo, adjusted sights, etc, etc, etc.
It's always amazing, the variety of weapons people come with. Sometimes equally amazing is their lack of practice, but at least they're there, trying to cure that.
Personally, most rewarding was teaching 2 different muzzleloader shooters, each of whom showed up with the gun and all the trappings, still in their store packaging, how to competently load and shoot the weapons. Oh, and always, coaching the kids. Worked I don't know how many from shooting the sandbank to putting shotgun slugs on target, relaxing, squeezing the trigger, keeping a sight picture, and so on. The kids are nice to work with; normally they take coaching better than the adults.
During the lulls, of course there was time for plenty of shooting by the range workers. I learned, for example, that I will NEVER AGAIN fire a .454 Casull. Ever.
It was a long, hard week for me--I'm still tired today. But a good tired, you may be sure. And hunting in general will be the better for our efforts.
Ye Gods, what a monstrosity!!
