Category Archives: Boomershoot

Boomershoot is a long range precision rifle event with high explosives as the targets. This is about Boomershoot in general and sometimes just explosives.

Special Boomershoot pricing for British subjects

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Previously I announced half price entry for Boomershoot 2006 to Canadian entrants due to the proposed firearms ban in their country and the real reason for Boomershoot.  Considering British subjects have already had their firearms taken away and the news from yesterday on how they are taking the next step toward a police state I’m offering all British subjects free entry.  Furthermore if their current residence is the U.K. and they give me a month’s notice of their intent to participate I will provide the rifle and ammo.  All anonymous of course.  Send me an email, encrypted if desired (PGP key below), to reserve the position, show proof of citizenship and/or residency upon arrival and get in for free.

Arrive a couple days early and I’ll show you how to make reactive targets as well.

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Heads up!

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I don’t know if this is something to be looking out for or if it’s
just some random event. But from watching my sitemeter I discovered the
following. The ATF (“Executive Office of the Asset Forfeiture” no
less!) just did a web search for the words {exploding targets}. 
Regardless of their intent I doubt that it will affect Boomershoot much
since we don’t sell them just provide the opportunity to shoot at
them.  But it might affect Tannerite
and others.  Or it could just be they wanted to purchase some for
their own amusement.  Further conjecture on my part would be
unwarranted.

Domain Name   atfonline.gov ?
(United States Government)
IP Address   199.196.144.#
(Executive Office of Asset Forfeiture)

199.196.144.17
ISP   Executive Office of Asset
Forfeiture
Location  
Continent  :  North America
Country  :  United
States  (Facts)
State  :  Virginia
City  :  Dulles
Lat/Long  :  39.0853, -77.6452 (Map)
Language   English (United
States)
en-us
Operating System   Microsoft Win2000
Browser   Internet Explorer 6.0
Mozilla/4.0
(compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.0)
Javascript   version 1.3
Monitor  

Resolution  :  1024 x 768
Color Depth  :  32 bits

Time of Visit   Dec 12 2005 11:28:00 am
Last Page View   Dec 12 2005 11:29:42 am
Visit Length   1 minute 42 seconds
Page Views   2
Referring URL http://www.dogpile.c…7/top/-/Moderate/0/1
Visit Entry Page   http://blog.joehuffm…ploding
Targets.aspx
Visit Exit Page   http://blog.joehuffm…merite
II Tests.aspx
Time Zone   UTC-6:00
CST
– Central Standard Time
CDT – Central Daylight Saving Time
Visitor’s Time   Dec 12 2005 1:28:00 pm
Visit Number   52,344

Special Boomershoot pricing for Canadians

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Considering recent news from Canada and the real reason for Boomershoot I have decided to give Canadians entering Boomershoot 2006 a rebate of one half the price their entry fee.  Payable upon showing their Canadian drivers license or other proof of Canadian citizenship at Boomershoot 2006.

Boomershoot and survivalists

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Boomershoot 2006 just got a mention on Survival Blog.  There weren’t any permalinks that I could find so it’s on the main page for now and probably will go into the December Archives at the beginning of next month.  This blog is written by James Wesley, Rawles.  Rawles wrote an interesting book that is a cult classic in survivalist circles.  It has gone through numerous versions and titles.  Currently it’s called Patriots: Surviving the Coming Collapse.  Starting in about 1998 (I think it was in the version called “TEOTWAWKI” (The End Of The World As We Know It) Rawles gave credit to me under the name, which he chose, “Huff the dynamite shooter” for comments I made on previous versions.  I couldn’t see that he used any of my suggestions but it was nice that he made mention of my input.

The novel takes place just a few miles from where I currently live near Moscow Idaho.  It’s an interesting read even if there are some errors and oversights that I find distracting.

Boomershoot t-shirt slogan

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It’s time for me to create the next Boomershoot t-shirt (and mugs, hats, thongs, etc.).  If you have a slogan you think would especially appropriate let me know and if I use it I’ll give you a free shirt, mug, whatever with that slogan on it.

Send your entry to slogan@boomershoot.org.  Enter as many times as you like.  I will be the final judge on what is used.  All whiners complaining about not winning will receive an ammonium nitrate prill as a consolation prize if they show up at Boomershoot 2006 to claim it (valued at $250/ton–one prill weighs approximately 1 grain).  Boomershoot helpers, friends and family members are all welcome to submit entries.  Deadline is December 15, 2005.  Here are previous years slogans:

  • 2001–THE BIG BANG!
  • 2002–Guns.  Explosives.  I was there.
  • 2003–Project Fireball 2003
  • 2004–A ton of explosives.  Fun beyond measure.
  • 2005–Exercise your freedom with guns and explosives.

Update: The slogans proposed so far.  I don’t want people entering duplicates:

  • BANG — BOOM — COOL!
  • A practical alternative to a wholesome day at work. [I think I would change this to “A wholesome alternative to a practical day at work.”–Joe]
  • A magical land full of rifles and explosives.
  • Good marksmanship has EXPLOSIVE rewards!
  • WHOO-WEE! That blowed up REAL GOOD!  [obscure SCTV reference]
  • Take your shot from the Grassy Knoll.  [get all sorts of Google traffic from JFK theorists.]
  • The smell of cordite. The sound of thunder.
  • Heads up! Here comes the anvil!
  • Prometheus suffered so you could do stuff like this. Don’t be ungrateful.
  • Welcome to Joe’s World!
  • Freedom smells like gunpowder
  • Feinstein’s worst nightmare: Families. Guns. Fun.
  • Sight alignment, trigger squeeze, holy shit!
  • Guns, Explosives, and the Pursuit of Happiness
  • Blow Shiite up
  • Famous potatoes explosives
  • Reach Out And Blow Something Up
  • This is my target.  There are many like it.  But this one explodes!  [based on the Rifleman’s Creed]
  • Peace Through Superior Marksmanship [I think I would change this to “Freedom Through Superior Marksmanship”–Joe]
  • The blood of the enemy!
  • Vini. Vidi. Boom. [I came. I saw. I blew stuff up.]
  • Don’t know Jesus??? I’ll make ya Holey !!! Braaappp….
  • Peace, Love, Explosives and Guns.
  • Got boom?
  • Got kaboom?
  • If you don’t get it, then never mind.
  • Life, liberty, and the pursuit of kaboom…
  • I shit you not – we shoot bombs. [Hint to others.  We NEVER use the ‘B’ word at Boomershoot.–Joe]
  • We shoot bombs. [Ditto the previous comment.]
  • Get a big BANG for your buck.

Boomershoot 2006 is filling up

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The online entry has been a big hit.  Some women have purchased gift entries for their husbands and numerous other entries have resulted in a big rush.  I have a total of 19 slots filled now.  In 2003 that many positions weren’t taken until February 7th.  In 2002 it wasn’t until February 28th.  Get your entries in soon unless you just want to be just be a spectator.

Unless you sent a snail mail in the last week everyone should have received their confirmation email by now.  If not let me know.  I was really slow in getting some of the confirmations out and there’s a remote possibility I lost one or two.

Sunday afternoon accomplishments

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This afternoon was much more productive than my wallowing in self-pity this morning.  I accomplished a bunch of stuff and still have other things in the queue:

  1. I purchased 200 rounds of Winchester Ranger self-defense ammo in .40 S&W.
  2. I purchased 50 rounds of 52 grain moly coated Blackhills Match ammo in .223 for testing purposes.
  3. I implemented on-line entry for Boomershoot 2006.
  4. I posted Eugene Econ’s details on the Precision Rifle Clinic for Boomershoot.org.
  5. I fixed various errors on Boomershoot.org web pages.

Explosive goodness

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Sean sent me this link early this morning.  We then chatted about where to find an old washing machine (he has an old one but isn’t ready for it to be deconstructed yet) and a place to try a similar experiment of our own.  I suggested a dump–we might find the desired object(s) and wouldn’t have to clean up afterward.  Sean said it was a good idea and maybe we would get lucky and ignite the methane escaping from the rotting organic matter in the dump.  That was when I realized it wasn’t such a good idea.  It would be impossible to determine the minimum safe distance from which to view the deconstruction of the home appliance(s).  If the entire landfill went up in one fireball…. well… it would be thrilling until it came back down on top of us.

A new source of exploding targets

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They cost about $2.00 each and from the video I’m guessing they are equivalent to a few ounces of “Boomerite”.  Nice packaging.

Boomershoot queries

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Apparently there was a repeat of the Evening Magazine episode on Boomershoot.  I just received several queries about the next event.  Get your entries in early this year!

Idaho dissed

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I’m with Ry on this one.  Don’t like Idaho?  Wonderful!  Stay away!

As for attractions he forgot to mention Boomershoot which brings people in from all over the North American continent.

Australia foils major attack

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Interesting info from Australia:

Australian authorities believe they have foiled a major terrorist attack, arresting 15 people on Tuesday during raids in the country’s two biggest cities of Sydney and Melbourne.

The arrests come less than a week after Prime Minster John Howard said Australia received intelligence about a “terrorist threat”.

Other sources include:

Assuming they arrested people about to carry out a terrorist attack, BRAVO!

The most interesting portion to me is the email I received a two weeks ago that I didn’t report publicly at the time:

From: XXXXX@optusnet.com.au
Sent: Monday, October 24, 2005 1:02 AM
To: joeh@boomershoot.org
Subject: HELP!!!!

hello, i was just on ur website and me and a friend want a bomb big enough to blow up a car or anything along those lines of how big the thing is we want to blow up can u please help us? if u can can u please send me what i will need and how i go about making the bomb? thnx from grim.
 
I didn’t reply.  But I did respond:

From: Joe Huffman [mailto:joeh@boomershoot.org]
Sent: Monday, October 24, 2005 7:23 AM
To: ‘webteam@mfbb.vic.gov.au’
Subject: I need contact info for the Melbourne Australia police.

I received the following email and need to forward it on to the appropriate people.  The IP address of the sender indicates they are in Melbourne.  Can you help?

Joe Huffman
Moscow, Idaho, USA
Voice: 208-301-4254

[snip]

On 10/24/05, osac@joehuffman.org <osac@joehuffman.org> wrote:
The following message was sent from  http://www.ds-osac.org on 24 Oct 2005

I received the following email and need to forward it on to the 
appropriate people.  The IP address of the sender indicates they are 
in Melbourne Australia.  Can you help?

Joe Huffman
Moscow, Idaho
Email: osac@joehuffman.org
Voice: 208-301-4254

[snip]

I received replies:

From: OSAC Feedback
Sent: Monday, October 24, 2005 9:24 AM
To: XXXX@joehuffman.org
Subject: Re: I need contact info for the Melbourne Australia police.

Dear Mr. Huffman:

Thank you for your interest in the U.S. Department of State’s Overseas Security Advisory Council (OSAC).

In response to your e-mail message, the information has been forwarded to the appropriate authorites.

Thank you for your concerns.
Sincerely,
Marsha Thurman
Overseas Security Advisory Council
Bureau of Diplomatic Security
U.S. Department of State

 

From: PANTAZI, Angelique
Sent: Monday, October 24, 2005 6:41 PM
To: Joe Huffman
Subject: RE: I need contact info for the Melbourne Australia police.

 

Hello Joe

Thank you for sending through this email.  I have forwarded it to our Commander of Emergency Management.

Kind regards

Angie

Angie Pantazi
PR/Events Co-ordinator
Metropolitan Fire Brigade
456 Albert St
EAST MELBOURNE VIC  3002

Tel: (03) 9665 4394
Mob: 0400 919 778
Email: [deleted]
www.mfb.org.au

The chances are slim that I had much, if anything, to do with the arrests, but the chance does exist.

Walter Gaya in the news

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Walter Gaya was one of the Boomershoot Precision Rifle Clinic Instructors in 2004. His best friend Adam, also a Boomershoot instructor, was killed last February in Iraq.  Walter was seriously injured in July.  Now Walter is in the news again.

As Barb said, “That stinks.  That’s just so wrong.”

Please do what you can.

Update: The news is that things seem to be under control now.  Thanks everyone.

Hunting white-tails and boomers

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Lyle and I took his son out hunting white-tailed deer on Friday.  Lyle didn’t carry a rifle just helped his son to have an enjoyable experience.  We first explored the area where I had seen two deer burst out from under a tree a couple weeks ago.  Lyle and his son saw two (and maybe a third) deer as they ran away from us after we had walked past them in the grass.  I took them out in the woods behind my parents house and Lyle spotted another which we watched run through the brush and up the hill out of sight.  After lunch we scouted out an area where a grass waterway joined an 80 acre patch of woods.  The grass was still green and probably good food.  The timber and field areas have very little food left in them this time of year.  I heard then saw one deer jump up and run deeper into the woods.  We expected the deer would come out of the woods later that evening to feed and we could be waiting for them.  We saw lots of tracks and were quite hopeful of our prospects there.  We went back over near the Boomershoot site and Lyle walked through a small patch of trees and brush where I had seen lots of tracks a few days early.  His son and I sat a 125 yards away waiting for something to come our way.  There was nothing there.  We went back to original patch of a few acres next to the Taj Mahal where Lyle and his son had seen the deer earlier in the day.  His son and I waited at one end of the patch of brush, grass, trees, and ferns while Lyle went to the top end and walked down trying scare any deer toward us.  It worked–a deer burst into the open and ran within about 10 feet of his son.  I was another 40 feet away and managed to get my scope on the deer by about the time it was 100 yards away.  It was on “full afterburner” and bounded out of sight in just a few seconds.

We made up a batch of explosives and put them in some clay pigeons to test the feasibility of Boomer Clays.  I shot them with the highest velocity shotgun ammo with the largest pellets I could find from about 15 yards away.  It did nothing but spread reactive target mix in the plowed field.  We shot the same type of target with Stinger .22LR from 15 yards away.  It went boom.  Next we tried American Eagle .22LR (fairly low velocity) ammo, again from 15 yards away.  It failed to go boom.  I didn’t realize it but my previous, successful, tests with this ammo were from slightly closer.  We switched back to the high velocity Stinger and everything went boom on the first hit.  I don’t know if the mix was slightly different or if it was just because of slightly decreased velocity of the .22 that the mix failed to detonate with the slower ammo and the shotgun.  But it didn’t really matter which.  If the mix was different it meant we couldn’t produce it reliably.  And in addition the shotgun test were with a very long barrel at very close range.  Optimal conditions for detonation with zero success.  Real life shooting would be far less likely to produce results.  If we want to do shotgun boomers it’s going to have to be Plan B.  We cleaned up our mixing equipment and went back to the grass waterway/woods junction to lay in ambush for Bambi.

We got into position at 17:38 about 125 yards from the far edge of the grass waterway.  We waited and waited as motionless and as quiet as we could until 18:30–the last legal minute of hunting for the day.  Nothing.  We packed up and drove back to Moscow.  Between Troy and Kendrick we saw two more deer alongside the road as we went by at 55 MPH.  We saw seven and possibly eight deer during the day but with zero chance of getting a decent shot at one of them.  More opportunities will present themselves and we have until December to connect.

No Bambi today

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I spent the morning hunting a patch of scrub land probably 5 acres in size.  I had seen two deer there 10 days ago.  When I approached the area where they had bedded down earlier I could smell a very strong animal smell.  Similar to the smell of a blanket a dog has been sleeping on.  There was nothing there though.  I saw lots of tracks in the freshly plowed field next to the scub land but there was nothing to shoot at.  To optimize my chances today I should of stayed around until dusk at another location where they come out of the woods to feed on some green grass but I had things I had to do at home and came home early.  I’ll be going back Friday and possibly Thursday. 

I got some stuff done at the Taj Mahal though–preparing for Boomershoot 2006.

Plans for today

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Today is the first day of hunting season and the first time I go hunting.  I would have left much earlier but I had to take Xenia to school.

I’ll be working on the Taj Mahal during the middle of the day.  And perhaps preparing some of the pictures from the rock blasting I did yesterday.  The rock was MUCH bigger than anyone thought and we weren’t able to do much with it.  But we did make some big booms and broke some pieces off of it.  Details later.

The Rock versus explosive reminder

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As I said a few days ago, probably mid-afternoon today, I will be making little rocks out a big rock again.  You are welcome to show up at the range and help out or just spectate.

Handgun Boomershooting

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I had some time to think about reactive targets recently and I know of another material to use rather than the increasing difficult to obtain ammonium nitrate.  The good news is that I know it will detonate with handgun fire and shotguns.  I’ve done it with handguns before.  I did some pricing yesterday and it appears it would cost about the same as the current solution.  It also would not have the problem of spontaneous combustion at some later date.  The bad news is that it is much more bulky to obtain the same boom (the energy density of the material is much lower).  It also does not generate much of a visual effect.  It’s just a loud noise accompanied by the sudden going away of things from the places where they were before.

I may do some experiments to see if it could be modified to provide more visual effects and how we might be able to store and distribute it to the target area.  Ry says, “It’s an inspired solution.”  I’m not so sure.  I did my first experiments with this in my childhood and then again a few years ago.  I rejected it because of the MUCH larger target size.  The only thing I came up with that made me reconsider it was that I could change the aspect ratio and give the target a greater depth to compensate for the lower density while still making it a challenging for the long range rifle shooters.  Not exactly “inspired” thinking.

Also Ry and I came up with some shotgun target scenarios.  There has always been a great deal of interest in this sort of target.  I’m certain we have a solution for that now.  It’s just a matter of creating the launcher for the unconventional targets.  There has also been some interest in a handgun Boomershoot.  This new material should work very well for that application.  I’d want the targets to be at least 25 yards away and supported above the ground to avoid turning gravel and other small objects into projectiles.

Gun dictionary updates

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Much to my surprise the Gun Dictionary page on the Boomershoot web site is one of the most popular web pages on the site (thanks to Stephanie Sailor for suggesting this page).  Even the USPSA has linked to the page on their information for the press page (from the same page they also link to my Gun Myths and Truth page).  Because of that I frequently get requests for the definition of a firearm related term.  Just today I received a request for the definition of ACP, as in .45 ACP.  I updated the page with this definition and a few others.  In the past week or two I have added the following words:

If you have suggestions for other terms let me know.  Feel free to supply your own definition and save me a little bit of work.

Boomerite II tests

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After four days in storage (more than required for a typical Boomershoot event) the mix looked like this (click on a picture to get a high resolution version):


All looks good.  There was only the slightest hint of clumping.


I used the dead tree to hold the 7″x7″ target while doing sensitivity tests. This was after four days of storage. Multiple hits of a .22LR with a target velocity ~1170 fps failed to detonate it. .22LR with a velocity of ~1500 fps detonated it on the first shot. At the time of mixing 1170 fps would reliably detonate it.  The top of the tree was moved rearward and caught by the live tree.


I put four reactive targets on top of four IPSC targets to make it easier to find the targets at 700 yards away.  I also hoped to be able to do my own long distance spotting by moving forward to the targets and see bullet holes in the IPSC targets.  I was not able to do this. There were no bullet holes to be found after firing one shot at each target from 700 yards away.


It was typical Boomershoot weather–wet. I wrapped the targets in plastic to keep them from getting water logged.


I was unable to hit them at 700 yards with my .223 without a spotter. I moved them to 380 yards to test sensitivity to at least get some hits with the AR-15.


The 50 grain VMAX bullets, with an estimated target velocity of 1970 fps, were successful in detonating the targets. I had not anticipated all the plastic scraps. I will return to pick them up. I ran out of time and had to leave.

I have video of the target detonations which I hope to get digitized sometime this week.  In the scope I saw a bright red flash as the targets disassembled in a cloud of smoke but I don’t know if it showed up in the video.

I did not have enough time to do the last test–Boomer Clays.  I did get various types of high velocity shotgun ammo that at least has a chance of working.  Those tests will have to be another day.  Perhaps this Sunday if the range work and rock blasting goes quickly.