Today was the finals for the youth clay shoot that the rodeo hosts. My mom came and joined me to watch the kids shoot, and, by golly, these kids are impressive. Sure, some have tempers and others have varied emotional reactions to missing a clay they feel they should have been able to hit. But the amount of training that has to go into any level of natural talent for them to do what we saw them do today… that is dedication. Guns always make me nervous. Not a single moment today did I feel nervous being around the hundreds of shot guns these kids were handling and carrying around. They are capable and reliable regarding all things shooting, including safety.
And it’s all just really, really cool to see.
I am grateful to be a part of it, as well as a witness to it all. Thank you, God. Keep us all safe, please. In your name, I pray. Amen.
A new girlfriend of mine invited me to come watch a live pigeon shoot today. I went, and it was really cool and I wasn’t scared almost at all, though there were shot guns out the wazoo. Also, real pigeons were being thrown into the air and nailed with shot gun shot constantly. Though, plenty of them got away unscathed (for the most part). It was like nothing I’d ever seen. And, though it was killing a bunch of creatures for sport, I, somehow, didn’t really mind it. I was most bothered by the fact that they pull out the tail feathers when they take them out of the boxes, then by the fact that they then catapult them into the air with a discus throw and then shoot at the birds. As my girlfriend said, in a way, they are doing a service to nature. Pigeons reproduce and overpopulate quite easily, causing infestation problems in different areas. Those areas have groups come in to deal with the infestation. Those groups capture them live, instead of poisoning them all, and then sell the birds to pigeon shoot venues. It’s still kind of nuts, but pigeons very much are rats of the air, so I understand what my girlfriend meant about its being a public service.
This friend is great at shooting live birds, and I had a blast finally getting to see her shoot. She didn’t have a great day in terms of her usual, but it was still really good, and I was properly impressed, nonetheless!
After she finished shooting, she had me try out shooting some pigeons (clay for me, not the real thing!) with a couple shot guns, and I actually managed to hit a handful of those! That was especially fun to do, though I definitely had the initial terror of how loud the bang would be and how much the gun would kick. After the first couple shots, though, I was ready for it all and actually enjoyed it, though it still took a lot out of me emotionally and physically.
Later, she and their gunsmith had me try shooting a few pistols they had there that people often use for concealed carry. I cried after the first shot of the 9mm, but then was clear and good to go for all the rest – no more tears! And I did hit the small plate target on most of my shots! I only missed them for the Hellcat, which felt really weird to shoot and which I did not like. But I got the target even with that one after a few rounds.
One really positive part of shooting the pistols was that I got to see the importance of keeping a gun clean – trouble chambering the bullets and clearing the casings – and the value of high-quality magazines. If the gun is great and the magazine is cheap, the gun is cheap, possibly worthless. We could only load one billet at a time with a certain gun, because the magazine was so cheap it wouldn’t work beyond chambering a single bullet, at which point it promptly fell out of the gun and spilled bullets and parts all over the ground. That was silly and nuts.
So, I got to experience a new shotgun and how still it can be to open and close, compared to a well-used shotgun of s out the same size, easily snapping closed and open. I got to see magazines go wrong. I got to see bullets struggling to chamber. I got to see cases struggling to eject…
Oh(!), and I got to see my man fly over several times in a airplane. That was extra awesome. Just saying. ;P
I started doing all of this activity in order to help my body be happy, healthy, holy…, but now my body really just hurts all over, almost all of the time.
hannah ananas 