I failed in my primary objective last weekend.  I wanted to get hoods over the locks and hasps to comply with the ATF.  Originally they said the locks and hasps I was using were fine but now I need to put the hoods on them.  Not that big of a deal except I needed a welder out in the middle of the field.  The welder I would have used was in use since it was on the back of a service truck being used in harvest.  Harvest will be over in a couple weeks and I’ll go back and finish up that task. 

What I did get done was fixing some electrical problems and properly storing more of the thousands of pounds of Ammonium Nitrate I bought.  I had stored about 1200 pounds in six garbage cans under a tarp.  I rearranged things inside the metal shed and got that down to about 600 pounds stored under the tarp.  I destroyed several yellowjacket nests inside the shed.  Put out more mice and rat poison.  And finally–I don’t know how many times I have bumped my head on the overhead flourescent light.  I moved it so I can stand upright even while wearing a hat.  More pictures here.

I’m spending today and tomorrow doing a bunch of work on my explosives magazine and possibly some tests on my explosives mixture.  I need to get things taken care of earlier this year.

Walter Gaya was one of the Boomershoot 2004 instructors.  Information about the incident which injured him and is here.  Thanks to AMcLane who left a comment on Kim du Toit’s blog.

Kim du Toit reports on Walter who was one of the Boomershoot instructors in 2004:

Folks, I just heard that SSGT Walter Gaya (the “Walter” in the Walter-Adam Fund) was slightly injured by shrapnel caused by an IED in Mosul.

Thankfully, his wounds aren’t too bad (“He has a wound to one eye [he said he could still see out of it just after it happened] and a wound to his leg that has something to do with his tendon,” from Adam’s Mom), and he’s recovering nicely, and in good spirits, at the Army hospital in Landstuhl. He’ll be returning Stateside for full recuperation and rehab.

Go read the rest as well. Kim is asking for a donation for Walter’s wife.  I don’t even have a job right now and I donated $10–you can do the same.

Early this morning I sent out the following email to the Boomershoot announcement alias (subscribe here).

From: Joe Huffman
Sent: Friday, July 01, 2005 12:44 AM
To: Boomershoot Announcements
Subject: [BoomerShoot] 2006 and 2005 info.

Prices and dates are set for 2006.  Sign up early, get a discount, and make sure you will be a participant rather than a spectator:

http://www.boomershoot.org/general/entry.htm

See also:

http://www.boomershoot.org/2006/blast.htm

Gene Econ put together a great AAR and it took me over a month to get around to letting you guys know about it:

http://www.boomershoot.org/2005/2K5AAR.doc

There are links to hundreds of pictures of this year’s event here:

http://www.boomershoot.org/2005/blast.htm

The Boomershoot 2005 Video by Davis Productions is out now.  I’m sure you can still buy a copy.  Here is my blog posting about it:

https://blog.joehuffman.org/2005/06/30/boomershoot-2005-video/

-joe-
—-
https://blog.joehuffman.org
http://www.modernballistics.com
http://www.boomershoot.org

Tommorrow I will announce the dates and pricing for Boomershoot 2006.  I will send a notice to the Yahoo group when I do.  Please either sign up to be on the announcement list or keep a watch on the web site.  There will be discounts for early entries and with all the publicity we got from the King 5 Evening Magazine show (online video is here) it probably will be a good idea to sign up early.

Scott Davis (Davis Productions) has finished the Boomershoot 2005 video.  Someone in my house must have picked it up and didn’t bother to tell me it was here.  I had seen the case sitting around for a week or two but didn’t look close enough to see the title.  Barb and I watched it last night.  Very nice.  😀

It not as heavy on the interviews as last year but does have interviews with Chuck Hurst, Jack du Toit (Son&Heir of Kim du Toit), and Sara Young.  There may be some others but I forget right now.  There is also video of the fireball opening, the bowling ball motar, and the anvil shoot.  Kirk’s rifle was featured prominately (as he noted in this blog posting).  There is video of Ry and I being rather animated at one of the shooters meetings.  Thankfully our blatherings were muted and music was overlayed.

I’m nearly certain you can still get a copy by contacting Scott.

I got an email from Crystal yesterday.  It said, in part:

Did you send your renewal paperwork in? Maybe it hasn’t been input yet, but licensing data this morning shows July 1, 2005 as expiration and doesn’t indicate a pending renewal. Licensing goes by received date, not postmarked date.

Ouch!  I was thinking it was July 29th, not the 1st.  I sent a reply back thanking her and started hustling: Fingerprints, special photo, lots of forms to fill out, create a map of the water flow near the manufacturing site.  This morning I still had a question and called her.  She had a great answer and said she would call the recipent of my paperwork to let her know it was coming and that Crystal had signed off on things in May.  Crystal called a few minutes later saying things were fine and send it to a different address, directly to the person reviewing the material.  I got it into the FedEx box a few minutes ago.

Note to all the people who filled out the Employee Possessor Questionnaire for the next Boomershoot: Those questionnaires went in with my renewal.  Thanks everyone.

Yesterday I spent essentially the entire day with Crystal.  That last time I had a visit from the ATF it was Sue that came down from Spokane.  I had spoken with Crystal on the phone at least a time or two but this was the first time I had met her. It had come up in my conversation with Sue that Crystal was very likable and fun to be around.  Crystal is a character.  She was constantly making jokes and laughing.  You have to either like her style of humor or get away because it never stops.  I liked it.

Her card says ATF, not ATFE, and her shirt and coat both have ATF in big letters on them–she calls them her “shoot me clothes“.  While at A&W, where we met, she wore a different coat over the top of her “shoot me shirt.“

We talked about regulations and changes since the Safe Explosives Act, and examined my paperwork.  There was one issue that bothered us both as we sort of danced around the issue for a while.  She said I had to have production records for everything I manufactured.  I knew I had to have storage records for everything, unless (I thought) I used the material within 24 hours of it’s manufacture.  She said I needed production records for everything no exception if used within 24 hours.  I couldn’t recall anything like that and I didn’t have them.  I asked to see it in the “Orange Book”. She looked it up and showed it to me.  Ouch.  There it is.  Subpart G 55.123 (b):

(b) Each licensed manufacturer shall not later than the close of the next business day following the date of manufacture or other acquisition of explosive materials, enter the following information in a separate record:
(1) Date of manufacture or other acquisition.
(2) Manufacturer’s marks of identification.
(3) Quantity (applicable quantity units, such as pounds of explosives, number of detonators, number of display fireworks, etc.).
(4) Name, brand name or description (dynamite (dyn), blasting agents (ba), detonators (det), display fireworks (df), etc.) and size (length and diameter or diameter only of display fireworks).

I was sure there was an exemption if it was used withing 24 hours.  She couldn’t recall anything like that and didn’t see it either.  I was looking at the book upside down across the table from her and asked if I could look closer.  She gave me the book and a few seconds later I found what I was looking for.  Just before (e):

Exception: A licensed manufacturer is exempt from the recordkeeping requirements of this subsection if the explosive materials are manufactured for his own use and used within a 24 hour period at the same site.

We both smiled and breathed a sigh of relief.

It turns out I still have a minor problem.  I had the production record information combined with the storage record.  Technically I need to print the production information on a separate piece of paper.  It won’t happen again.

It was typical Boomershoot weather–raining.  She rode in my car out to the Boomershoot site where she inspected both explosives magazines, did inventory and found my count matched hers.  The magazines were clean, properly ventilated, and built according to specification.

Every year I send the local fire chief (not sure of his exact title) an email a few weeks before the Boomershoot.  I describe the methods I plan on using to prevent fires and loss of materials both during and after the event, and I invite him to show up at any time during preparation, the event, or during clean up.  Recently I have been telling him when the ATF will be out to inspect things and invite him to show up at the same time.  This time he accepted the invitation and wanted to bring the assistant chief along.  It turned out the chief couldn’t get away and just the assistant chief, Don, showed up.  After Don showed up Crystal informed me there was a new requirement for me.  I need to notify the local fire chief verbally, and in writing, of the status of the explosive magazine.  “Joe needs to tell you whatever it is you need to know.  They just want to make sure you guys are talking to each other”, she said.  I need to communicate a little more frequently and with more detail, but basically I had been complying with the spirit of the regulation already.  I think I got some “brownie points” for demonstrating I was a little bit ahead of them on that point.

After we finished up the magazine inspections I told Don we were going to dispose of the 32 targets left over from the last Boomershoot either by shooting them or burning them and he was welcome to hang around if he wanted.  He said no thanks.  He has been a spectator for the last three years and next year he plans to be a participant so there was much novelty in standing around in the rain watching Crystal and I dispose of the targets.  So he left as I loaded up the magazine for my evil black “assault weapon”.  Crystal offered to help set up the targets and I asked her to get them out of the magazine while I positioned them.  I told her I didn’t want her slipping in the mud and getting hurt.  If anyone was to get hurt I wanted it to be me.  About 15 seconds after saying that I slipped, with my hands full of targets, and fell on my ass in the mud.  I laughed.  She was polite enough not to.

We got a back about 25 yards and I started shooting the targets.  Nothing happened.  I tried other targets.  Nothing but holes in them.  The stuff was completely dead.  Okay.  We have to burn them.  I piled up a bunch of them and got out my lighter.  It lit after a few attempts and burned for a short time but not long enough to catch the now damp target box on fire.  The lighter wouldn’t ignite a second time.  Crystal didn’t have any matches and I didn’t either.  I drove over to the neighbors place just a few hundred yards away.  No one home.  I called my brother Doug.  He sent my brother Gary over with newspapers and a box of matches.  I got the first pile on fire with the first match but it took two matches for the second pile.  It turns out the burning targets work pretty well as “smoke bombs”:

After the fires were out we drove back to Moscow laughing and telling stories.  I dropped her off at her car, went home, took off my muddy and wet shoes, socks and pants at the door and called it a day.  A very good day.  A welcome change from the rest of my week.

At the request of Kirk.

After Boomershoot 2002 I reported:

The only big down side was a ‘spectator’ that wanted to watch from the road next to the bullet impact area.  I called the sheriff’s office and a nice deputy came out to help “keep the peace”.

There is much, much more to the story.  And if I wanted to be my usual engineer/scientist/anal-retentive self the story would start over 40 years ago.  I’ll spare you that version.  The short version (but probably still more anal retentive than most people care for) follows–starting with, I think, Boomershoot 2001.

Just on the other side of the hill we shoot into the land is owned by someone else who rents it to still another person known, less than affectionately, by some of the neighbors in the area as “The Dwarf“.  The owner of the land is in a nursing home but her daughter, “The Wicked Witch of the Boomershoot“, manages it.  This year the Dwarf harassed the sheriff and prosecuting attorney nearly constantly all day just before the Precision Rifle Clinic until the sheriff finally called me up and asked to come out and take a look at the site with his firearms training officer.  They came out, I got in their Jeep and we drove from one end of the range to the other and talked about things.  The prosecuting attorney and sheriff had looked all through Idaho law and couldn’t find where I was doing anything wrong.  They had even printed out parts of the Boomereshoot.org website where I quoted Idaho law.  They were of the opinion that I was doing everything “by the book” and was being careful the participants knew and followed the law too.  But just to “cover their asses“ they decided they needed to talk to me too.  After looking at the range in detail, talking to me, talking to Gene Econ, and Gene’s assistant Mike Haugen they only had one complaint.  That was that they wished they had known about the event earlier so they could have gotten the county snipers into Genes class before it filled up.  Gene offered to make room for them and give them free slots.  The sheriff politely turned the offer down saying he couldn’t do that.  He didn’t say it, but I think he was concerned it might be considered a bribe.  I mentioned that concern to Gene afterwards and he said he was just trying to be a good neighbor and that he didn’t think of the angle of the offer being taken wrong.  I hadn’t thought of it that way either until the sheriff declined and I heard the note of concern in his voice.  The Dwarf’s one tangible concern, as expressed to the sheriff, was that he wanted to do some farming on the land he rents.  This seemed very odd to myself and the other farmers in the area.  That land was already planted and it was the best looking crop the Dwarf had that year.  What sort of farming work did he want to do on it?  It didn’t really matter, if he wanted to farm the land then it was his decision to do it.  We told the sheriff what hours we would be shooting and he offered to talk to the Dwarf and find out if he could farm during the non-shooting hours.  The Dwarf was very agreeable with the sheriff and he waited until after the Precision Rifle Clinic shooting was done before working up (destroying) his fall crop in preparation for planting a lower profit spring crop.  He then left his tractor in the field just over the hill for the duration of the main event on Sunday.  We took before and after pictures of his tractor and the glass in it just in case he tried to claim a stray bullet had damaged it.  There was no further problems that year.

In 2002 the Precision Rifle Clinic was in progress when I got a call on the walkie-talkie from Brandon up the road watching for traffic near the Witch’s property.  He said there was a woman walking (strolling really) down the road.  She and some guy (it turned out to be the Dwarf) had parked their car and had been walking around up there.  Brandon said I should probably come up to talk to her because things were “kind of weird“.  For Brandon (also known as “Random Brandon”) to say things were weird probably meant someone was doing some really wild drugs.  We shut down the shooting and I drove up the road.  I pulled along side of her, opened my window and asked, “May I help you?”.  The expression on her face went from a contented smile to as if I had just slapped her.  She snapped, “No!”.  Things deteriorated from there.  I told her we were doing some shooting and that we didn’t consider it safe to be on the road.  I would be glad to give her a ride someplace if she would like.  Everything I said was met with an answer that was almost completely unrelated to what I had just said.  She talked about me “owning the sheriff and prosecutor“ and other random outlandish things.  It was a very strange disjointed conversation and I said good-bye, which seem to irritate her also, and drove back to the shooting position on the “grassy knoll”.  I told my story to the people waiting and then called 911 to chat with them a while.  They said no crime was being committed and there wasn’t much they could really do as long as she stayed on the road.  But the dispatcher offered to send a deputy out to “keep the peace” but that would take at least 30 minutes–maybe more.  I accepted and thanked her.  Bob Coval and Michael Thyng came up to me and commented on how dusty the road was and that if it just so happened there was a lot of traffic on the road the Wicked Witch of the Boomershoot (which is how she got her nickname) probably wouldn’t stand around in the dust for long.  It just so happened that Ry had some things he needed to talk to Brandon about that couldn’t be said over the walkie-talkie and he zoomed down the road in his Jeep to chat with Brandon.  The witch had strolled back up the hill and was near Brandon’s vehicle, on a bit of a corner, when Ry arrived.  It was a tight fit but Ry managed to thread his Jeep, drifting sideways just a bit on the gravel road, between the witch and Brandon.  The witch had several inches of dust and gravel filled air between herself and the Jeep but, we later found out, for some reason she decide it was her turn to call 911. This was fine with us because now she was out of sight behind the hill in her car using her cell phone and we started shooting again.  Ry talked to Brandon for a while then came back to the shoot for 30 minutes or so before he had to leave and go back to Moscow for the night.

Brandon radioed in an hour or so later saying a Country Sheriff’s vehicle was on the road behind him and someone was talking to the two people in the car.  It was a deputy who soon interviewed Brandon, then came down to the shooting area to interview me and asked to talk to Ry.  Ry was gone but I gave the deputy Ry’s cell phone number and said he lived in Moscow.  We chatted for a while and he said the Witch (he used some other name which I am less familiar with) reported someone had tried to kill her by running over her.  I was tempted to express my skepticism as to her being in actual danger because I was under the impression it took a bucket of water or house falling on a witch to kill her but although the deputy did seem to have a good sense of humor I didn’t think it was wise to exercise it at that time.  He said he needed to fill out a report and wanted to know the events of the day from my perspective.  I told him everything I knew, he thanked me, asked a few things about the Boomershoot and as he left we both had smiles on faces and there were no further problems that year.  I don’t think Ry even got a call from the deputy. [Update: Yes, Ry did have a chat with the deputy.  See the comments sections.]

The next year was quiet.  Nothing from the Witch or the Dwarf.  In 2004 the Dwarf created his own shooting event, sporting clays, just across the road from my parent’s place.  It is open year around and during his big spring tournament this year, the week before Boomershoot, we saw something like four or five vehicles parked over there and heard an occasional shotgun blast.

High Drag Low Speed Operator
Random Nuclear Strikes (and here)
Fun Turns to Tragedy
Kim du Toit

I slept 11 hours last night.  I still haven’t looked at my pictures from the event.  Maybe I’ll be up to doing something other than sleeping tonight.

Here is a picture from Rolf of the end of the day “up close and personal“ stuff:

Update: The Fun Turns to Tragedy link has been modified to be the AAR.

Here are some Boomershoot 2005 videos thanks to Jason Mount.  It includes “Entertainingly Close“ Rolf with his .357.