Boomershoot 2020 is canceled

At 2:45 AM this morning I sent a version of this email to all entries and the spectator and announcement list for Boomershoot:

Boomershoot 2020 is five weeks away and COVID-19 infections are still increasing across the country. I’ve had several people tell me they are not coming this year. Many states, including Idaho, have travel and social contact restrictions.

I’m canceling Boomershoot 2020.

I’m sorry to do this but both the legal and moral issues don’t give me any other options.

Regards,

Joe Huffman
Boomershoot Event Director
Cell: 208-301-4254

There has been a Boomershoot every year since 1998. It makes me sad to know that continuous record will be broken. I considered rescheduling for this fall but the end of fire season and the beginning of mud season is too unpredictable.

Boomershoot 2020 and COVID-19

Too long, didn’t read, version: I’m going to wait and see until the end of the month before making the decision to cancel or not. The refund policy is here: https://entry.boomershoot.com/Refunds.aspx


As I live just a few minutes from ground zero in the U.S. I’m just as, or more concerned, than the typical Boomershoot participant regarding COVID-19.

I’ve talked to many people about what we should do in regards to Boomershoot 2020.

There are several components to Boomershoot. If the Federal guidelines remain in place and we adhere to them, then the Boomershoot dinner will be canceled.

One could make the case that the rest of the event is not at all that serious of a risk. People are outside with good air flow and, except for the portable toilets, not sharing door knobs or other transfer surfaces. With a big stash of disinfecting wipe the portable toilet point of risk could be managed.

There is another component that is of more concern and not as easily mitigated. Our target production facility has very tight quarters. I have dramatically improved the air filtration since last year but still it’s not nearly as good as I think it should be to be safe if someone were contagious. To top that concern off is the fact that two essential staff members are in the group considered “high risk”.

This leads me to conclude that unless things get remarkably better we should cancel the event.

My day job is working on a Cyber Threat Intelligence team. I get access to other types of threat intel as well. Last week I listened in on a call with DHS regarding COVID-19. There wasn’t any information that wasn’t already public but it was packaged a little bit better. I have also talked to a couple sources that have information that hasn’t been widely circulated. While still technically public information this information leads me to some conclusions.

  1. My expectation is that the seriousness of the situation will continue to get worse for some undetermined amount of time. It may be that summer weather will slow or even stop the spread of the virus. The threat, however, will continue to be significant for months, not just a few weeks.
  2. While things will get worse it’s not going to be life threatening to most people outside of the high risk groups.
  3. Avoiding contact with contagious people is extremely important for people at high risk. Some hospitals in the Seattle area are already at nearly full capacity and are sending injured emergency patients, sometimes, hundreds of miles away to hospitals without a COVID-19 burden.

What this means to me is that if we get some hot summer like weather for the next two weeks and things look summer like at Boomershoot things may be good enough that I will not cancel Boomershoot. I don’t think this will be the case but there is no harm in waiting. We are continuing to get the last of the supplies and will be able to put on a stellar event should we decide to continue.

The refund details are here. Basically, if the event is canceled you will get the option of full credit for next year or a refund of 95% of your credit card payment (details differ for a few people, read the policy). Your choice.

If you have questions or concerns I have not addressed here please send me an email or give me a call.

Joe Huffman
Boomershoot Event Director
Cell: 208-301-4254

Boomershoot 2020 speaker: Kim du Toit

Kim du Toit is attending Boomershoot again this year and he has agreed to be our Saturday night dinner speaker.

I believe the last time he and his son were here was 2005.

Anyone who has spent more than a few seconds around Kim knows he is a rather “colorful” character. His personality fills the room.

He’s publicly called me both “Paparazzi Bastard“ as well as a “National Treasure“. Those blog posts of his are gone but I haven’t forgotten.

I wonder what colorful language he will use this year. Attend Boomershoot dinner and find out.

Boomershoot 2020 registration is now open

Today, as of 9:00 AM PST, Boomershoot 2020 registration is open to everyone. For the last several days Boomershoot 2019 participants and staff have selected their positions. The long range event on Sunday still has 42 of the 76 positions available. The Friday and Saturday Precision Rifle Clinic still has lots of openings with only three and four of the 16 positions taken on each day. The Field Fire, practice on your own with the steel targets with a range safety officer, is an alternative to the Precision Rifle Clinic and doesn’t have a practical limit to the number of people who participate.

The High Intensity events on Friday and Saturday evenings have five and 10 of the 25 available positions still available.

“What are the High Intensity events?”, you might ask. A few years ago Oleg made a great video which captures it:

The Sunday long range event is a little harder to capture. The thumps to your chest don’t come through the filtering of the video camera:

Anette gives you an overview of the entire experience:

And once experienced you will never forget the opening fireball on Sunday morning:

Boomershoot 2019 Fireball from Joe Huffman on Vimeo.

Register for Boomershoot 2020 now for an experience you will treasure for the rest of your life.

Quote of the day—Michael Z. Williamson

Keep calm. Spread the word.  Agitate against such outrages. Buy more guns.  Buy them legally. Buy them privately if you can.  Buy more, more, and yet more. There’s always the risk we’ll reach the point where America tips over. But that’s a chance we’ll have to take.

Because if it’s impossible for the government to seize 300 million weapons (the lowball estimate), it’s way more than four times as impossible for them to seize 1.2 billion.

Michael Z. Williamson
December 15, 2019
The Virginia Debacle, Summarized (And Why You Should Buy More Guns)
[There is more than a little truth to this. But a gun properly buried in the woods and practically impossible to confiscate might as well be in government hands or destroyed. Just one gun, and enough ammunition, in the hands of someone skilled, able, and willing to use it will be of far more use that a thousand guns hidden and unused.

Attend Boomershoot 2020 (sign up here). Learn what your gun can do at a distance, increase your skill, have the confidence to use it if you really need to, and have a whole lot of fun doing it.—Joe]

Boomershoot 2020 registration opens soon!

I finally have the new credit card processing working. I had to move the websites to a different hosting provider. For various reasons, I am abandoning the boomershoot.org domain. Everything is now on boomershoot.com.

Entry opens to Boomershoot 2019 participants on Wednesday December 11th at 6:00 PM PST. When you sign up, the site checks your name in the list of 2019 participants. It will fail to find you in 2019 if you use a different name with this entry than you did last year. The classic is ‘Robert’ versus ‘Bob’. If you can’t figure out why you aren’t being recognized send me an email and I’ll look up your entry from last year.

Entry for everyone begins on the first day of winter, Saturday December 21 at 9:00 AM PST.

Sign up soon so you don’t lose your favorite position (or something close by) to someone else.

Boomershoot 2020 update

Entries for Boomershoot 2020 have been significantly delayed due to technical difficulties. Some involved the hosting provider and some involved a false positive phishing claim on the entire Boomershoot.org domain by Google Chrome.

I have moved to a new hosting provider and will be abandoning Boomershoot.org. The new domain is Boomershoot.com which I probably should have been using all along. I’ve made good progress recently and am certain the remaining issues are “just work” rather than difficult problems.Boomershoot.com is now functional but has a few issues regarding bad links.

Last Monday the ATF came  for a routine visit and the only issue of any significance is that I need to remove a branch from a tree that is about to grow into the side of the shed which houses the storage magazine. I had been planning to do this anyway and will take care of it before we store any explosive materials.

As a side note, the inspector will be retiring before her next scheduled visit. She told me that after she retires she will probably have something she would like to bring to Boomershoot and blow up. Clean up isn’t an issue with this item so it sounds good to me.

There were technical problems with the Internet connection for the shooting line web cam and the weather station itself. The Internet was working well when I left Idaho last Monday but is still flakey sometimes. The weather station is working most of the time. I suspect it has faulty hardware.

The weather station has a wireless connection to the “indoor” observer unit which does the actual upload to Weather Underground. When I’m on the local network I can connect to the observer and see that it has problems connecting to the exterior sensors. It had worked fine for many months but then it got flakey. Then it wouldn’t work at all. It is supposed to work at a distance of up to 300 feet and with my sensor only about 100 feet it should work. But I suspected the tall grass, particularly when wet, between the observer and the sensor was blocking the connection. I moved the sensor to within 10 feet of the observer unit (see the picture below) and it works much better but it still has problems sometimes. I need to contact the manufacturer and perhaps get a replacement.

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Boomershoot 2020 prep

Last weekend I was at the Boomershoot site doing some preparation for Boomershoot 2020 (May 1st, 2nd, and 3rd). Among my tasks I created a new site for the opening fireball. The opening fireball for Boomershoot 2019 was a little too warm for comfort. So I found a location further away from the spectators and built a sand platform similar to the one for Boomershoot 2019. It also happens to be in a location with much better visibility from the web cam.

Had you been watching the Boomershoot Live web page you would have seen this as I worked on it:

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The sand platform serves two purposes. One is to raise the explosive targets high enough they can be easily seen by the shooter from a safe distance over the grass and ground. And the other reason is safety. Many years ago the site had farm buildings on it. Every once in a while we find scraps of metal from old machinery and things like door hinges. Making craters with explosives in this soil risks discovering such scrap metal in the form of a projectile. Putting the sand below the explosives eliminates this risk.

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Another task I worked on was replacing the air filters at the explosive production facility. One of the reasons we had excellent detonation rates this year was the quality of the KClO3. It is much finer than than what we obtained from our previous supplier. This had it’s drawbacks as well. The three little air cleaners were overwhelmed by all the dust in the air. Here are the filters:

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I think I need a better means of dust control for next year.