I just finished listening to Alan’s (and Squeaky and PDB’s) podcast on Boomershoot 2009. It was nice. I’ve been reading all the various posts and looking at all the pictures everyone being posted but the podcast was something a little different and I really liked it.
At the Boomershoot dinner I promised I would post a list of all the bloggers in attendance and I will do that (and more) soon. That will probably happen this Saturday when I have some time to do the job right.
For the last two years I have been trying to increase target production and once I felt I had excess capacity I was going to get the cat (bulldozer) out there to expand the shooting line so I could handle more shooters.
This year we finished target production with more targets per unit time than ever before. And we had many targets left over after the event even though we had more shooting hours than usual. And I shut down target production at 1500 on Saturday. We finally have the target production up to a level where we could handle more shooting positions.
That was the plan. But it turns out there are other limits to our capacity that became (more) obvious this year.
After talking to Barb about it for a bit (she is the one that attempts to inject some pessimism/reality into my visions) I think expanding the shooting line capacity would be the wrong thing to do. I should improve the experience for the existing shooters instead. The most obvious thing to do in that regard is to make improvements to the shooters berm. It is too uneven and doesn’t have enough depth in places.
Another possibility is to make it easier to quickly put up more dingle berries. Many more…
The following should be self-explanatory.
From: Joe Huffman
Sent: Wednesday, April 29, 2009 10:50 AM
To: ‘wounded@soldiersangels.org’
Cc: ‘Chuck Ziegenfuss’; ‘Barb Scott’; ‘Jason Scott’
Subject: Boomershoot 2009 raffle proceeds.
Boomershoot (
http://www.boomershoot.org) is an annual long range precision rifle event held in North Central Idaho. Each year soldiers from Fort Lewis attend and for two days prior to the main event help teach Boomershoot participants the science and art of accurate long range shooting. Some of those soldiers later went on to Iraq and Afghanistan and were injured and some were killed.In October of 2007 my wife and I met Chuck Ziengenfuss at the Gun Blogger Rendezvous in Reno. He told us of his injuries and how Soldiers’ Angels helped him. It turns out that it was the second time my wife had met Chuck. She had also met at Walter Reed when she was visiting our nephew Jason Scott who was wounded in Iraq and also benefited from your help.
At Boomershoot this year we held a raffle with the intent that half of the proceeds would go to raffle participants and the other half going to Project Valour-IT. After the event someone quietly came up to me and gave me three $100 bills to give to you.
Below are the reference number and other information from my bank that is mailing you a check of the proceeds. If it does not arrive as expected please let me know.
Reference # | ||||
04/29/2009 | $1,385.00 | 05/06/2009 | DBRBS7UH |
—–
https://blog.joehuffman.org/
http://www.boomershoot.org/
http://www.modernballistics.com/
May No Soldier Go Unloved.
Slogan of Soldier’s Angels
[See my next post for more context. And yes, this is an exact duplicate of my post this time last year.–Joe]
So why not Owner? Owners don’t do NFA. Owners don’t do political organizing. Owners don’t buy 1200 feet of paracord to cause other owners to spends thousands of dollars on ammo they otherwise would not have spent. While I am certainly an owner, I am not an Owner.
Ry Jones
April 27, 2009
Ontologies
[Explaining why he doesn’t fit any of Tam’s categories of gun owners.
The 1200 feet of paracord probably needs some explain for those unfortunate people that did not attend Boomershoot last weekend.
It was Ry’s idea to satisfy a frequent request for moving reactive targets. He did this by suspending camo painted, Boomerite filled, targets from trees. The targets swung, bounced, and taunted the shooters. They loved them and, amazingly enough, nailed the 0.5 MOA (and smaller) targets. Mike, the guy in position 76, who doesn’t even use a spotter asked me “Are those four inch targets dangling on the ropes up there near the 700 yard line?” I told him that before lunch they were. After lunch they were replaced with three inch targets. “Okay,” he said, “There is one less of them now.”–Joe]
It was 33 this morning when I got up. Still warmer than yesterday (29) and the day before (23). Good news for boomer shooters.
Today is the big day and we have 982 targets for them.
Dad! I need more!
Kimberly Frederick
April 25, 2009
[Daughter Kimberly was on the Kitchen Aid mixer making explosives and I was constantly bringing her more 50 pound bags of Ammonium Nitrate. At peak production our team was producing 18 4″ targets in just over two minutes.–Joe]
Yesterday when I got up at about 0630 it was 23F. This morning it was 29F. That should help those who were complaining about the cold at Boomershoot yesterday.
This type of situation happens every year. We know that you, the customer, are looking for mud in your hair; every year, we work around errors where people don’t get to participate at as a full level as they might like. The solution wasn’t optimal (taking explosives made for Sunday and using them Friday), but that is behind the scenes; as far as the customer knows, Mary Boomer Poppins delivered magical explosives when there were none.
Ry Jones
April 24, 2009
Calm down kthx
[Thank you Ry.–Joe]
One of the things that came up while I was telling Boomershoot stories yesterday was my first successful creation of a reactive target. I told them that I got very excited about it and there was a video. No one had seen the video. It’s here. More background is here.
I suppose I should put it on one of the video servers or something but its been at its current location since before YouTube had even been thought of.
The reason I was so excited was that I had been working on trying (off and on) to make my own rifle detonated targets for over two years. After working on something for two years with nothing but failures to show for it you get really excited when one of your experiments works.
Boomershooters get a little taste of that because I make the targets challenging enough that most of them cannot get a target in a single shot. They have to work at it for a while. When they do connect it is a bigger thrill than if they had plopped their gun down on the ground and got a first round hit 10 seconds after going prone. They have to earn their reward. They don’t get as excited as I did when I got my first one but then most people probably don’t have the patience to work on trying to get one to go off for two years either.
We made and people detonated over 500 boomers today. Most of them were from about 20 yards away.
People seemed to have a good time. I just feel tired.
Alan made a lot of the explosives. Kevin Baker showed up around noon. Without having permission from the ATF I had him doing more mundane things like folding cardboard boxes into the proper shape and sweeping off the anti-static rug that goes inside the explosives magazine.
I was a bit concerned about Bonnie doing her first long range shooting at the Precision Rifle Clinic today. I saw her at lunch and asked. She reported things were going well and had only missed (steel targets, not boomers) three shots and that she was having a lot of fun. Great!
Derek is also a new boomer shooter and it’s pretty clear from the pictures and video that he is having a good time.
This was our fireball demo. Notice the milk jugs filled with gasoline on the left and the road flare to ignite the gas on the right.
Here we have the gas mixing with the air and the fireball just starting.
The gas air mixture is in flames now.
The fireball is rising and expanding.
Ry has the most awesome picture of a detonation of a simple boomer I have ever seen.
See also Snarky Bytes and Trigger Finger posts on our day.
Cooley agreed, explaining that the Second Amendment “is significant as having been reserved by the people as a possible and necessary resort for the protection of self-government against usurpation, and against any attempt on the part of those who may for the time be in possession of State authority or resources to set aside the constitution and substitute their own rule for that of the people.” Thomas Cooley, The Abnegation of Self-Government, 12 PRINCETON REV. 209, 213-14 (1883). The individual use of Second-Amendment-protected arms to check despotism, “far from being revolutionary, would be in strict accord with popular right and duty.” Id.
The Second Amendment is a doomsday provision, one designed for those exceptionally rare circumstances where all other rights have failed–where the government refuses to stand for reelection and silences those who protest; where courts have lost the courage to oppose, or can find no one to enforce their decrees. However improbable these contingencies may seem today, facing them unprepared is a mistake a free people get to make only once.
Alan Gura
Robert A. Levy
Clark M. Neily III
February 24, 2008
RESPONDENT’S BRIEF On Writ Of Certiorari To The United States Court Of Appeals For The District Of Columbia Circuit.
[In part, Boomershoot is about being prepared to exercise this part of the constitution.–Joe]
I’m sure someone else will give better reports than me. I’m way too tired. But lets just say the fire last Sunday didn’t scare me nearly as much as the one we had today. And we have a dozen people to fight this one.
Everyone seemed to have a good time and what surprised me most was that they seemed to enjoy me just standing around and telling stories as much as making explosives and blowing mud all over everyone.
And then there was the awesome picture Ry took. The target has HIGH SPEED flames shooting out of the sides just before it is reduced to it’s molecular components–and you can see the bullet hole in the target. I’m sure he will post it sometime. It’s just a question of him having bandwidth, both computer and personal, to do it.
Tomorrow we start cranking out targets while most of the gun blogger crew participates in the Precision Rifle Clinic.
This is an open letter to all the talk show hosts, pundits, party hacks, cheaters, scumbags, sick twisted freaks (you know who you are) and pro-freedom bloggers. We could spend the rest of our lives cataloging the outrageous behavior of nasty, America-hating, ignorant, self-loathing, cultist, freedom-hating, anti-human, leftist politicians including Progressive Republicans. We know they’re bad, OK? If there are three or four people who still don’t get it, that’s all right.
I’d rather try to figure out how we’re going to get some principled Americans nominated so we’re not always forced to choose between bad and worse– between more socialism slower, and more socialism faster. This last national election was a real puker. The Republican Party is, at the moment, just as lost, dumbfounded, selfish and clueless as ever. They’re a herd of does, staring blankly into the headlights of an on-coming truck, and the worst part of it is; they don’t even suspect that they’re clueless. They in the Republican leadership think they have some really clever answers, which amount to more of what got us into this mess. I recently heard it described as rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. That fits very well. The Republicans have some really super great, super ultra smart ideas for rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. No really, listen… (all the while we have this simple, proven model for success, and it’s being ignored.)
We need to change that. You need to change it. I need to change it. There isn’t anyone else. I suppose, since it’s up to us, it will have to be on the local level for most of us, being as we’re not billionaires. That’s OK. We can still do what we can do. A lot of people are jazzed up right now. They just need somewhere to start. Well, pick a place, a local issue or a local politician that needs a hand (or a very public spanking) and get to it!
That there are clueless people is not the issue. There will always be the clueless. They’ll sit on the sidelines, worrying about who likes them and who doesn’t, trying to figure out where the “center” is so they can position themselves in it and claim superiority for having done so, while someone else does the lifting. Are you a sitter or a lifter?
I have a bad feeling that things could come to blows before this government is brought under control, and I really don’t want that to happen. Do you? This country is far too important in the grand scheme of things.
And with that; I don’t have much more to say on here, other than to repeat myself or talk about the weather and what I did last weekend, unless it’s to tell you what I’m doing on the local level to influence politics. Now I think I have some calls to make.
(Note that I placed this in nearly every one of Joe’s categories. It’s relevant to everything we do and every opportunity we want for our kids in the future)
I went to Office Depot today to pick up some supplies for Boomershoot. I bought three pounds (it annoys me they are by the pound rather than the count) of #6 rubber bands, 200 clip on name badges, and a self-inking stamp. Everyone was nice until I told them what I wanted on the stamp. Then I noticed a distinct chill in their attitude.
I’m not sure what it could have been but it must have been one of the following lines:
Extreme Danger!!
Contains High Explosives
FlashTek, Cavendish ID 208-301-4254
Lot 2009-4- Shift 1
I just got a call from a 14 year old kid in Michigan that wanted to know a bunch of things about being an “explosives specialist”. The most memorable questions were:
I also told him that if he was serious about explosives as a career he should consider something other than doing Boomershoot type events. He should look into demolition, mining, and certain specialties in the military. I should have mentioned road construction but I didn’t think of it until after we had said goodbye.
We are shooting what I wanted to from the beginning,…. a pilot for a new show on the outdoor channel. The show would be called “Gun Nuts”, or ‘Tactical TV”.
Nate Murray
Sound Theory Productions
April 20, 2009
[There was a change of plan on the filming for the TV show at Boomershoot 2009. Instead of filming for the Western Extreme/Adventures Abroad TV shows it’s going to be a pilot for a new show. The pressure is on!–Joe]
As I reported yesterday due to a failure in communications one of the Boomershoot spectators showed up a week early on Saturday night. I felt so bad about it that we put on a private party for them. They got the full Boomershoot experience. From helping fold the boxes for the targets (a staff t-shirt will be delivered within a week or two), seeing the targets made, shooting boomers, seeing an awesome fireball (Caleb was some distance away and thought it had enveloped us) and even helping to put out a fire.
Son-in-law Caleb and daughter Kim starting the box folding. We ended up with about 65 crates of empty boxes.
Our guest after hitting her first boomer.
Notice there is still a smile as she prepares to engage the next one.
The second boomer in the early stages of earth movement. Notice the dirt moving outward?
Our shooter was 25 yards from the boomers. Almost Entertainingly Close.
Due to some technical difficulties I shot the fireball target and there was no one on the camera.
This is want it looked like about 15 seconds after detonation. Notice the flames to the far left.
After about 15 minutes of fire fighting. We were very glad it was near the creek and we had buckets to move water with.
Click to see a higher resolution version.
While at the Boomershoot site yesterday I didn’t have cell phone service (AT&T). Last year it was fine. Even yesterday it would, for a minute or so, have “four bars” but then it would go to zero. In one of those bursts of service, around 1330, I received notice I had a voice mail. I immediately tried to call out and retrieve it but even when there was signal indicated the call would not go through. “Oh, well,” I thought, “It probably was just the girls at the house wanting me to pick up something at the store on the way home. I’ll get the message on my way home.”
I checked the voice mail about 1715 on top of a hill as I was leaving the area. A chill went through me. It was someone from work that was, “Just leaving Seattle.” The time on the message was 1100. They expected to be in Orofino by 1700 in time for the Boomershoot dinner. Yeah, that would be in plenty of time for the dinner. Exactly seven days early. “See you tonight they said.” And, I was told, “I found accommodations at the Helgeson.”
They had stopped by my office on Friday to talk to my office-mate and then we talked about going to see Boomershoot this year. They wanted to watch and also see the explosives being made but exactly which Saturday and Sunday was apparently miscommunicated.
I called back but there was no answer and I left voice mail. There is no AT&T cell service in Orofino and I was pretty sure they have AT&T as their carrier. When I got back to Moscow I called their phone again, which went to voice mail, and then the Helgeson. They hadn’t checked in yet. I sent a text message to their cell. An hour later I called the Helgeson again. Yes, they had checked in and got my message but they had just left. I expressed my concern that they might not have cell phone service, which was confirmed. I said I would call back in an hour.
About an hour later they called me from a land-line in Orofino. I apologized profusely for the miscommunication and told them we were going back out to the site tomorrow and they would get a “private party”. They will get to see the explosives being made, get to detonate several boomers from “entertainingly close” ranges, have lunch with my parents, and maybe even test out a new fireball construction method I thought of.
Pictures tonight or tomorrow.