I spent all day Saturday and Sunday morning at the Boomershoot site. The ground was a little wet in places but with just a couple days of sun it will be in fine shape. The daffodils Barb and transplanted almost three years ago look better than they did last year. Maybe I will transplant a few more sometime this summer. I would love to have the entire front of the shooting line berm covered in daffodils for Boomershoot each year.

I tested three different Wi-Fi antennas (you can see one of them which appears to be poking up out of my car in the picture above). I wasn’t happy with the one I had last year and I have replaced it. It gives coverage over a much greater area and gives faster download/upload rates as well. The only part of the shooting line without coverage with my cell phone are a few positions on the west end of the shooting line. If those people really want coverage I can put something up pretty quickly on the day of the event.

I put the target boxes on the shelves, cleaned off the target assembly tables, swept the floor, filled up the generator with gasoline, started it up (it started on the first pull!), filled up the spare gas cans, filled up the water barrel, and did a final inventory of all the target materials. I started to make some sample targets and found the ethylene glycol dispenser had a serious leak. Better now than we are trying to start full production! Barb picked up a replacement today.

I took the new rubber bands for holding the targets on the stakes to the Boomershoot Taj Mahal and cleaned up the scraps of foam insulation left over from when it was applied last summer.

Before.

After.

On Sunday I made a ghetto ice chest out of a cardboard box and some 1.5” thick foam boards I had laying around:

That is for transportation and temporary storage of the dry ice we use to keep the targets cool between manufacture and use. They degrade and become inactive after a few days at normal temperatures. This process is slowed down at lower temperatures.

I think everything is ready for Boomershoot until the day before the event when we start pounding target stakes.

There is still time to sign up.

I received an email today from the Boomershoot Precision Rifle Clinic Instructor. He wanted me to post this guidance about the clinic and Field Fire:

30 March, 2016

Fellow Clinic and Field Fire Shooters!

This is my 18^th year running training at Boomershoot and want this year to be as safe and enjoyable as past years.

Most of you have read this many times but for those who are new, please pay heed.

This year the Clinic will be using firing positions 60 and 61 which are mine for Boomershoot so the Field Fire people are free to set up on their reserved firing positions.

Field Fire will start at around 1030 on Friday. On Saturday it will start when I can ensure it is safe to shoot which should be around 0930.

Clinic Shooters need to arrive by 0845 and Field Fire shooters can come and go as they please. Do use the back way into and out of the firing line when we are hot so we can avoid having to cease fire continually.

Field Fire shooters must check in with us and get a wrist band showing they have registered and paid. If you want to shoot Field Fire but haven’t registered, see us and we will get you registered. If you show up and want the Clinic, we may or may not be able to take you but do ask.

We will have a cease fire for an hour starting around 1200.

We use a air horn to start and stop firing. One long blast means cease fire and two short blasts means you can load and shoot.

When you hear a cease fire, put your rifle on safe, unload, and come off the rifle.

In the past, people have seen something to warrant a cease fire and have been good enough to call ‘Cease Fire!’. If you hear someone call a cease fire, do so, put your rifle on safe, unload and come off the rifle. We will figure out what is happening and when it is safe to shoot again, we will blow the air horn twice. No one ever got in trouble for calling a cease fire on their own.

If you want to put out paper for a short range zero, please get me or one of my cadre to inspect its location before you blast. Your bullets must go through the paper and into the side of the hill where the steel targets are placed.

No tracer or incendiary ammo unless you get permission from me. I will have to get permission from Joe.

My steel targets are for .30 caliber and under. If you want to shoot your .338 and .50 cal at steel, you will need to bring your own steel.

Of course, soft lead black powder rounds are fine on any target. Blast away.

Before you go blasting at steel at the top of the hill (700 yards), ensure you have a zero so you don’t shoot over the hill top. In addition to our safety road guard, there are houses and farms down range on the other side of that hill so please, know your zero before shooting at those targets. If you shoot at those targets and your spotter sees no trace or splash, do not add elevation and try again. Go back to a shorter range target and make sure you are hitting it before going back to 700 yards.

At about 1500 each day we will do a cease fire and Joe with his assistants will place two small and one large explosive target along the 375 yard berm specifically for you and where you want them placed. We will bring spray paint so you can mark your targets. When I have ensured everyone is safe, we will shoot our targets. I give 15 minutes for you to shoot YOUR targets. After 15 minutes I will inform the firing line that any target left untouched can be shot by anyone (poaching). After about another 15 minutes I will call a final cease fire and we will walk the line ensuring everyone is completely off their rifles. Once I am convinced the line is safe, Joe and his assistants will put in the targets for the High Intensity shoot.

When you see how many targets are along the 375 yard berm, and that despite being painted, many look like yours. Please play by the rules as best as you can before I allow you to poach.

If you want to remove your rifle from the line; make safe, unload, visual inspection, then put it in your rifle case and remove it from the line.

If you want to maintain your rifle at your car or truck, remove the bolt and maintain your rifle at your car or truck.

If you are new to the Field Fire, you are in the minority. About 90 percent of Field Fire shooters have been to multiple Boomershoots and Field Fires. If unsure about something, ask one of them or one of us.

If you have questions, please feel free to write me at eaecon@comcast.net.

Thank you!

Gene Econ

There are still positions available for Boomershoot 2016. Sign up here.

For the first time ever I’m placing an advertisement in a local paper for Boomershoot. I have placed few classified ads in the past and one with Western Shooting Journal in 2013 with, as near as I could tell, zero return on my investment. This time it is with the Orofino Idaho paper the Clearwater Tribune.

Orofino is the closest town to Boomershoot and this is where the out of town participants find their hotel rooms.

Here is the ad which will be running in the weekly paper for the next three weeks:

I’m hoping to get some local people to participate. It’s rare than anyone closer than 50 miles away attend and I find that somewhat odd.

Barb and I were out running errands this morning and we stopped at Walmart to pick up what I think is the last remaining components for Boomershoot targets (we should have also picked up some rubber bands but I’ll get those sometime this week during lunch). As we were approaching the checkout counter I told Barb, “This is sure a strange combination of stuff. I wonder if they will notice and say something.”

People noticed. They said things:

Clerk : What are you going to use all that <baking component> for?

I hesitated and thought about it for a second or two. He was still ringing stuff up and I hadn’t paid for it yet. If I told him the truth it could delay our departure. Before I could decide what to do he continued:

Clerk (with a smirk on his face): Are you going to use it with the anti-freeze?
Guy in line behind me: With all that anti-freeze, you could make quite the <dessert component>.
Joe (addressing the clerk with a big smile): Actually, I am going to use them together. I make explosives with them.
Clerk: Excuse me?
Joe: I use them to make explosives.

The clerk’s hand froze in midair over the keypad and the smile on the face of guy in line behind me disappeared into blank, ashen colored, stare.

I continued:

Joe: I have a license to make high explosives. I put on a shooting event each year with exploding targets. People come from all over the country to shoot at them.
Clerk: Where do you do this at?
Joe: Idaho.
GILBM: You come all the way over to Washington buy this?
Joe: I live over here but put the event on in Idaho because I need a lot of land and tolerant neighbors. I have the property and the right neighbors over there.
Clerk (hands moving again): Oh. I was thinking maybe Mount Index.
Joe: Nope.

I finished paying for the components then Barb and I quickly loaded up the car and left before the cops could get there.

We are slightly over two months away from Boomershoot 2016. If people want to attend they need to sign up soon.

Barb put together a Boomershoot 2016 flyer I have been emailing to gun clubs and leaving at gun ranges.

I think she did a really great job on it. If you know of a venue where it might be of interest to people please share it.

I just completed the Boomershoot 2016 section at Café Press. It has over 100 items all using this image:

This is the ten year anniversary of that slogan. It is also the personal favorite (as he has told me several times) of Kevin Baker. Who, coincidently, will be attending Boomershoot 2016.

The products include various styles of shirts, cups, mugs, water bottles, tote bags, a baby blanket, a teddy bear, diaper bag, calendar, posters, framed print, hoodies, and, of course, the ever popular Boomershoot classic thong.

There is a President’s Day sale on until midnight tonight (PST). Use the code POTUS25. So get your order in today!

I just realized that Boomershoot 2016 will be at the same time as Earth Day 2016. Which, of course reminds me of something Michael Justice said while participating in Boomershoot 1999, “Celebrate Earth Day by blowing up a small part of it”. You too can participate, sign up here.

And while we are thinking about Earth Day here are some wonderful predictions made on Earth Day 1970:

“Civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind.”
• George Wald, Harvard Biologist

“Population will inevitably and completely outstrip whatever small increases in food supplies we make. The death rate will increase until at least 100-200 million people per year will be starving to death during the next ten years.”
• Paul Ehrlich, Stanford University biologist

“By…[1975] some experts feel that food shortages will have escalated the present level of world hunger and starvation into famines of unbelievable proportions. Other experts, more optimistic, think the ultimate food-population collision will not occur until the decade of the 1980s.”
• Paul Ehrlich, Stanford University biologist

“It is already too late to avoid mass starvation.”
• Denis Hayes, chief organizer for Earth Day

“Demographers agree almost unanimously on the following grim timetable: by 1975 widespread famines will begin in India; these will spread by 1990 to include all of India, Pakistan, China and the Near East, Africa. By the year 2000, or conceivably sooner, South and Central America will exist under famine conditions….By the year 2000, thirty years from now, the entire world, with the exception of Western Europe, North America, and Australia, will be in famine.”
• Peter Gunter, professor, North Texas State University

“Scientists have solid experimental and theoretical evidence to support…the following predictions: In a decade, urban dwellers will have to wear gas masks to survive air pollution…by 1985 air pollution will have reduced the amount of sunlight reaching earth by one half….”
• Life Magazine, January 1970

“Dr. S. Dillon Ripley, secretary of the Smithsonian Institute, believes that in 25 years, somewhere between 75 and 80 percent of all the species of living animals will be extinct.”
• Sen. Gaylord Nelson

“The world has been chilling sharply for about twenty years. If present trends continue, the world will be about four degrees colder for the global mean temperature in 1990, but eleven degrees colder in the year 2000. This is about twice what it would take to put us into an ice age.”
• Kenneth Watt, Ecologist

I have a prediction of my own about Earth Day 2016. The people who attend Boomershoot and blow up a small part of the earth in Idaho with us will have a great time.

Final Boomershoot 2015 statistics:

With nearly four months to go and only about 10 days worth of entries we have the following statistics for Boomershoot 2016:

I find it interesting that for 2016, even though we have 29 fewer overall participants so far, we have almost as many Saturday High Intensity participants. And that the Precision Rifle Clinic participation is so low (three on each day) for both Friday and Saturday. Yet the field fire participation is nearly that of 2015.

First a quick reminder that entry for Boomershoot 2016 is now open for everyone now. Sign up here. There are almost half of the positions still available.

I made a Christmas Day pilgrimage to Boomershoot Mecca. The things I do for this event…

The county road was compact snow but that wasn’t a real problem. The road into Mecca was more problematic:

If I had really wanted to drive in I probably could have shoveled the berm away and made it in and probably back out again. But I had snowshoes with me and didn’t really want to risk getting stuck. My best option for getting help to get unstuck was brother Doug who was 40 miles away and wouldn’t be back until late. I went the snowshoe route.

Even though it was very cloudy and snowing it was pretty:

I installed the last coat rack, warmed my toes, dug the foam insulation out from around the 2500 watt inverter, tidied up, and did an inventory of supplies.

The temperature inside when I arrived was 32F. After an hour or so the 1500 Watt heater warmed it up to 39F. It was pretty nice in there.

I keep getting asked about Boomershoot 2016. Yes. There will be a Boomershoot 2016. I’m (occasionally) working on the software to handle payment by credit card. I used Google Wallet for most of last year’s event but they discontinued that. I’m converting to PayPal but I just haven’t found the time to make much progress. I’m hoping that I will get it done over Thanksgiving vacation.

When I have it finished and tested I’ll let everyone know the registration dates.