yet another "bad day at the range" rant

[themic]

good parts:

i found a national forest range. cheap, empty, outdoors.
i shot for the first time in lord knows how long.
i pulled out the old rifle and rifled barrel for the shotgun.
my wife came out with me and did some shooting too.

bad parts:
bam bam bam bam bam bam. no holes in paper.
repeat above.
again and again.

from pistol, to pistol, to rifle.
fine, i got holes in the paper with the rifle, about 3 inches off at only 50 yards.

tired, frustrated, angry... i picked up the shotgun, put in some rifled slugs, raised and shot. iron sights. 1 inch from bullseye at 50. 1 inch from bullseye at 100. two fence-posts formerly used for holding targets: gone.

shame about the fenceposts... but that felt real good.

 

[FedDC]

Hope you remembered to clean up all the targets, fenceposts, and casings Nothing worse than slob shooters leaving a natural range littered with debris. One of my favorite ranges was like that and it got so bad that there was as much brass as gravel and there were trees that had actually been shot down. Tons of broken glass bottles, shot out cars, and even left over food wrappers. Sucked when the range got closed down...

 

[mountain_cowboy]

Destroying public property at a Nat. Forest range was a pretty a-hole thing to do, no matter how good it felt.

 

[mattf7184]

Thanks for caring about everyone else who uses the PUBLIC range...

We have a public range in North FL where idiots shoot up the safety signs etc, and VOLUNTEERS come and have to fix and clean the range because of the damage these people make....and then you are going to wonder why they shut the damn range down and you have to go pay at a private club!!!

 

[cobb]

two fence-posts formerly used for holding targets: gone.

Your joking right?? ?? ??

Or are you really that big of a **** bird?

 

[OEF_VET]

I've got to join in with the majority opinion here: destroying two target stands just to boost your self-confidence after a bad day of shooting was a pretty crappy thing to do. It's behavior like that that causes one of our local ranges to constantly look like this:

Next time, try bringing your own target stand if you're going to blast it to smithereens.

 

[S_O_Laban]

I very well could be wrong... as Themic is the only one who can clear this up, but... after rereading the original post, it sounds like he was shooting at the bulleyes on his target and unintentionally destroyed the posts. He did say it was a shame. I don't get the picture from his post that he was deliberately trying to destroy any thing, but I could be wrong....

 

[themic]

oh holy jeez yeah

dudes my paper target was on a 6" post sticking out of the ground. I hit the bullseye, and it took out about half the post.

hell i spent half an hour fixing up other posts and wire hangers out there, and cleaning up the trash around. i was planning on bringing out some other posts for next time, since all that was there were about 6" stubs on the ground.

whoa, i left the wrong impression guys. national forest range is the best place i've shot. i'm not going to turn it into hell.

i did feel good to hit a bullseye traget with a slug gun with iron sights, yeah. i didn't think i was even going to hit paper.

my apologies to everyone here. please do not think of me as a that type of shooter. i'm certainly not. never have been, never will be.

 

[themic]

just to add clarification:

it was my first time at this range, and the only way to put up a target was on the short remains of fenceposts, which were already well shot away. it's unfortunate that there was no wire between the posts anymore, so taht you can't mount a target off the post. and it's a shame that i'd forgotten how destructive a slug can be. but i really didn't expect to hit the paper at 50 and 100 yards, when i couldn't hit paper at 25 yards with everything else.

sometimes it does feel real good to pick up a gun and shoot it well, even if it was a mistake to shoot it so well. guess i got a bit carried away when i worded the original posting.

 

[OEF_VET]

themic,

Apology both accepted and proffered. I hope you can understand why some of us may have jumped to the wrong conclusion, based on the unclear wording of your post. In my case, it was also affected by the latest damages done to our local range, after much effort on the part of myself and several other THR members to clean it up.

Frank

 

[themic]

thanks, OEF_VET. it means alot.

i can totally understand, given the worn-down condition this range was in, and the extremely poor wording i had in my original post.

on a side note - i was actually glad to see this range had an honor system - $3 per car. talked to a fellow tuscaloosan here and he said it's worlds better since they'd instituted that about a year ago. new roof, benches, and a porta-john all came a few months after the honor system started.

 

[mountain_cowboy]

I misunderstood. Sorry for that.