Most AWESOME Boomershoot fireball video ever

Jason used to enthusiastically participate, including volunteering, in Boomershoot every year. He, his wife, and kids didn’t attend for several years but made it to Boomershoot 2021. At the time I knew he had video cameras set up from various angles but forgot about it until he sent me a message:

I finally got around to editing my fireball video. Happy new year!

It’s the best Boomershoot fireball video I have ever seen:

Sign up for Boomershoot 2022 and experience the next fireball yourself. It’s an experience you will never forget.

Quote of the day—PeacefulMountain

YOU DIDN’T MENTION THIS CACHE WAS DOWNRANGE OF A 3 DAY EXPLOSIVES FIREARM EVENT!

I was in Pullman on business this weekend and I made it my goal to find all the old caches in the area. I wasn’t planning on going for any caches today but when I realized I still had 2 hours of sunlight left in the day I made a run for this cache, and I was not prepared. I had only 1 primitive map downloaded, and no nearby caches.

But I insisted anyway, and I made it to the area just in time. When I turned down the paved road I discovered that there was event today, and I could practically drive straight up to GZ. But what’s with all these signs that say Boomershooot, and this line of gun stands? And what looks like a firing line. Turns out they were in the middle of a firearms and explosives event and the cache was downrange.

Luckily they were just all camping, drinking beer, and telling questionable stories about Seattle life.

I found the cache easily, and signed the log just as the sun was setting.

Thank you Joe Huffman for the cache!

PeacefulMountain
May 1, 2021
Via email from geocaching.com.
[I try to make my Geocaches a little more interesting than most.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Gene Econ

Joe, I’m going to keep coming back here until you and I can take a position on Saturday for Field Fire and then on Sunday and shoot all day without worrying about anything but enjoying ourselves.

Gene Econ
Boomershoot Precision Rifle Clinic Instructor
May 2, 2021
[Gene has been the Boomershoot Precision Rifle Clinic Instructor since the second Boomershoot event in 1999.

As he was about to leave after shooting Boomershoot on Sunday he approached me to say good-bye. In addition to saying good-bye he pointed out that we are getting to the point, “We won’t be able to do this forever and need to get some younger people to take it over.” He shared his plan for his side of things and I shared my plan. We independently arrived at the same conclusion and developed independent plans. After my sharing he told me what I now have above as the QOTD.

As I haven’t shot a long range boomer in nearly 20 years that sounds like a good plan to me.—Joe]

Boomershoot target production

Wednesday afternoon Tim, TJay (mostly) and I began folding boxes for the targets. The boxes come as flat pieces of cardboard cut and formed in all the right places to be easily folded into a box. Here is what things looked yesterday morning:

20210430_084218

That is perhaps half of the boxes. Kim, Jacob, and I folded more boxes this morning. Others folded still more boxes during the day.

This was the target production crew this afternoon:

20210501_121025

This was the result by 5:00 PM:

20210501_164126

I think there were three more crates of targets I added after this. With the addition of those additional crates there are over 830 targets with nearly 1600 pounds of explosives.

And this doesn’t count the nearly 700 targets already consumed yesterday and today. Boomershoot is, literally, a ton of fun.

Quote of the day—Kim

Gun powder and sunshine make me nostalgic.

Kim
April 29, 2021
[Daughter Kim was at the Boomershoot staff dinner last night. At the table with us were Tim and T.J.

Tim told a story about his mom making homemade bread and he didn’t really appreciate and realize big of a deal it was that she did that. When he was young he didn’t want to eat it because he wanted bread just like the other kids at school had. When he was in the last couple years of high school he liked it because it tasted so good. His mom died on the same day he graduated from high school. Because he was still young and wasn’t fully aware of how special that homemade bread was he had never told her that he appreciated it.

Kim then asked me, “Do you remember how when I was young you would take me to the matches at the Lewiston Pistol Club?”

“Uhh… yeah.”

“Well, now, gun powder and sunshine make me nostalgic. I told someone at work about this and they said I need to tell you. I hadn’t done it yet. Tim’s story reminded of that.”

There was a bit of a pause and then T.J. said, “She’s a keeper.”—Joe]

Quote of the day—Barb L.

It will be glorious!

Barb L.
March 31, 2021
[Last Friday I took the day off from work and drove to Idaho to purchase something for Boomershoot. It was delivered and installed on Monday.

It will primarily affect some of the staff making their jobs easier. It’s amazing how you do something a particular way for years never realizing how much faster, easier, and just smarter a simple change will make to your work flow.

For example, for years we made the reactive targets on a folding table (or two). Our backs hurt from bending over the tables for hours. Then one day either Ry or I realized we could put concrete blocks under the table legs and raise the table top up to a height that allowed the target makers to stand straight. Wow! Why did it take so long to think of such a simple improvement?

Another example. For the first couple of Boomershoot events the targets were placed directly on the ground. Even though the grass wasn’t very tall you couldn’t find the target from 300+ yards away. And at the end of the event we couldn’t find them as we walked the field looking for the left overs. Leaving explosives around is almost certainly frowned upon by the ATF and the neighbors. We tried double stick tape to attach them to stakes. It rained that year and the wet stakes were not stickable. The next year we make somewhat elaborate target stands out of milk cartons which were stapled to the stakes (scroll down to the fourth picture). They were time consuming to make, the staples tended to pull out, the targets would be blasted off the little stands by nearby detonations and it was hard for shooters to distinguish the target from the target stand. Finally, I realized a single #64 rubber band to hold a target on a stake worked great. It was cheap, quick, and easy to attach a target.

Those are just two of many things we have made dramatic improvements in the work flow and experience of the participants that were “obvious” in hindsight. And so it is with the latest improvement. It is a bit on the expensive side but the Biden/Harris administration (ironic, huh?) was a big help.

I’m not going to spoil the surprise for staff, but it’s going to make event setup and breakdown/cleanup a whole lot easier. Barb is correct, “It will be glorious!”—Joe]

Boomershoot 2021 apparel, mugs, etc.

The Boomershoot 2021 shirts, mugs, water bottle, drinking glass, etc. are now available for sale here.

Even if you can’t be there as a participant or even a spectator you can have a mug to remind you to prepare for next year and advertise to your friends who will want to join you next year when you partake in one of the greatest shooting adventures in the world.

Here is the image used:

BoomershootShirt2021

Don’t you just have to have a picture of Brandon realizing he was too close?

Kim du Toit and Boomershoot 2021

I have been meaning to send an email to Kim du Toit asking if he was going to make it to Boomershoot this year. He agree to be the dinner speaker last year and when we canceled it almost everyone, including Kim, agreed to just roll their entries over into next year.

I hadn’t gotten around to sending the email to verify his attendance and then, just today, he posted on his blog that he plans to attend and is in the process of preparing.

I think Kim attended Boomershoots in 2004 and 2005. I delete my registration lists after about a year for privacy reasons but I found this picture in my collection of Boomershoot pictures from 2004:

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And I found this blog post from 2005.

That was sixteen years ago. Wow! That’s a long time to go without a Boomershoot.

Boomershoot 2021 – sign up soon!

Boomershoot 2021 is a go. But will you be there?

The last day for entry is April 23rd, this is six weeks away. But the Precision Rifle Clinic and Field Fire registration closes at midnight on March 31st. That is just two and a half weeks from now!

After having so many restrictions for the last year it’s time to get out and makes some noise with the rest of us!

Sign up soon so you don’t miss out:

From a first time Boomershooter

I made a few minor technical corrections. Other than that this is word for word from an email I received from Brian K. about his first visit to Boomershoot:

“Go ahead, shoot a few rounds!”

A kind offer from the Boomershoot attendee I was spotting for.

His spotter had to cancel last minute, so I had the novel pleasure of walking this gentleman in at 700 yards.

Now he was spotting for me!

“I should start at the 375 yard targets,” I attempted to wimp out.

“I’m already sighted in at 700 yards. Just go for those” he insisted.

Remembering everything Appleseed taught me, I fired my first round at a 7″ explosive target almost a half mile away.

Miss. But less than 10 feet off, so not terrible.

Miss. Miss. Miss. Am I going to hit *anything*?

Miss. Miss. Hit!

700 yards is so far that you can bring your eyes up from your scope, see the detonation, and let out a holler of joy before the sound reaches you.

I scored a few more hits at 700, including a single first round hit.

I learned two things at my first Boomershoot:

  1. I am capable of far more accuracy that I know
  2. I need to practice far more than I do

Thankfully Boomershoot is just three months away and there is still space on the Sunday firing line so you can discover how well you fare vs small explosive pizza boxes at half a mile.

Imagine Boomershoot 2021

To the best of my knowledge Boomershoot is the last publicly accessible “dynamite shoot” in the country and perhaps the world. For 40 years there were one or two each year in Gateway Colorado. June 8, 2019 was their last one. Cancellation details are here.

There were a few shoots in Missouri back in the 2006 timeframe. But they have been gone for a long time.*

There are some explosives and fireballs at Knob Creek each year. But there aren’t 1,500 or more targets consuming over a ton of explosives.

Via “(no attribution, please)”:

Imagine:

On July 4th 2021, Congress passes the America’s Freedom From Fear Act.

It prohibits all gatherings of 5 or more people when shooting firearms, outside of sanctioned shooting range events and licensed hunting events.

You would now risk jail time if you went to Boomershoot in 2022, and Joe would risk far more jail time to host the event. Boomershoot is toast.

How will you feel about how you spent April 30th to May 2nd 2021, The Last Boomershoot?

There’s still space available.

Don’t wait.

We’ve had a surprising number people sign up this month. There was nothing since at least early April. Then starting on January 3rd.through today there were 11 different positions reserved or people added to existing positions,

There are still 28 positions left and if the weather cooperates I can make space for a couple more. If you are thinking you might need an opportunity to hone your long range rifle skills this is the place and time. The earthshaking, echoing, thunder of a Boomershoot target is most pleasurable feedback I know of for connecting your bullet with a target.


* There is a very sad story to go with this. It’s not really appropriate Internet material but I’d be glad to share if you ask me about it face-to-face sometime.

Not a contradiction

Via Far Right Of Right@FarRightOfRight:

DefundThePolice

If you think this is a contradiction you probably made the mistake of thinking they were telling the truth when they said you don’t need guns because you have the police. As we have known for decades they have a culture of lies and deception.

With that established fact in mind we can generate hypothesizes and test them against the facts. If we include the newly established fact that they want to defund and abolish the police as we know it what can it mean?

The hypothesis which seems to best fit the data is our political opponents wish to harm us and/or take our property.

I’ve been collecting examples of “They want you dead” for some time now. The recent looting demonstrates the validity of the “they wish to take our property”. That they wanted us disarmed and dependent upon the police followed by defunding the police demonstrates not a contradiction, but consistency with this hypothesis.

Are there other hypothesizes which match the data? Are there other data points which invalidate my hypothesis?

Discuss. Then take appropriate action. Consider preparing for Boomershoot 2021. Sign up is here.