Reading about what my forum friends are going through along with a couple of close personal friends that are seriously ill makes me grateful to just hurt and ache.
The preparations for the shoot are just about complete. My first shooter friend is arriving in about 4 hours. His motto is, "Shoot early and shoot often." He stole that from the Chicago voters guide.
Yesterday was a lot of weed whacking around target stands, rails, and berms. Target placing and painting. Then I got worried about the mud waller I had created next to the two new shooting benches. We've recently had over 2" of rain and if a raccoon is heavy enough to leave prints, men obviously can't walk on it. Plus I want to keep people from piling their gear, (crap), on the shooting benches. I fixed up a heavy duty school lunch table, painted it to match the bench tops, but needed a place to put it conveniently at hand. Monday I had 16 yards of gravel dropped off from our annual township gravel purchase where residents can buy as many 16 yard truck loads as they want at the township's cost. This year 160 bucks per truck load. So I laid down six yards to extend the gravel pad from the shooting benches all the way to the existing driveway. That'll handle the mud issue. It's the darned hand raking that is tedious.
Another shooting buddy, friend, and nearby neighbor, who is a master metal fabricator, dropped by to provide ten, 5" diamond shaped knock down targets, fabbed up from 3/8" steel. He had them primed and ready for paint, and they are perfect! I put them on the 80 yard rail and squirted them with Rustoleum flat white. These will now be the off hand targets for the match. 5" off hand, centerfire cast bullet rifles, doesn't sound too tough does it boys? There is a 12" swinger for rough zeroing, and a 6" swinger under the rail to warm up on before going for score on the diamonds.
From there we move out to 160 yards. Under that rail there are two 10" swingers for warm up. The on the rail there are two 4", six 6", and two 8" knock down discs. I'm thinking most of the guys are going to want to shoot these from the bench.
Jumping out to 210 yards. There is a 22" sighter gong and two 30' rail road rails. On one there are ten NRA standard chicken silhouettes. On the other there are ten buffalo silhouettes. Two little buggers about 10" long and maybe 6 or 7" at the hump, and eight bigger bison I think are 14" long and proportionately tall. They are replicas of the buffalo on the buffalo nickel. There are also four 10" discs on that rail just for grins.
350 yards has an 18" swinger gong and five of the larger buffalo targets on top of the rail.
Lastly, 440 yards, one 22" swinger gong in the middle under the rail flanked by a 10" and a 12" gong. On top of the rail are five more of the big buffalo. These long distance targets will be shot from the bench I made to go on the Geezer Wagon to elevate the shooter above the prairie grass. There will be a second flat bed hay wagon for spectators to sit on so as not to disrupt the shooter with movement on his wagon.
Fifty four knock down targets for "score", (if we keep score), should provide ample shooting opportunities to burn up some ammo.
Minor spruce up duties today and let the fun commence!
