Boomershoot

Sorry for the light blogging lately, I've been taking care of another project for some friends. Joe asked last week if we could help out with a private party. More specifically he said he should be able to handle it on his own, however I know the help makes it much easier. Here's a video of the day's events followed by a detailed description and pictures.

I just finished uploading the 2010 Boomershoot staff cleanup video. It provides a few chuckles with different quips.

I didn't get any video of the shoot down on the berm. We were in a rush because we did a special mini high-intensity event for Michael Bain and his film crew for The Shooting Gallery . I figured since they were filming it they'd probably get better footage anyway.

    Today I went out to the Boomershoot site to help Joe with a private party with some coworkers from Microsoft. We met up around 0800 at "The Breakfast Club" in Moscow. I had French toast which was extremely yummy, however what was totally awesome was the fact they had "Green Eggs and Ham".

Boomershoot 2010 was awesome and a lot of fun. I don't know exactly why, but I ended up shooting the opening fireball for the shoot. Laurel from Politics Guns and Beer was there along with an entourage of help. I spent some time behind the rifle, but I spent more time educating and making sure others had a blast. And I'm glad to say, it appears they did have a great time.

    Youtube has finished processing my uploaded video and my collaboration of the footage for the Friday High-Intensity is now up. Enjoy.

By the way, I'm working on a Boomershoot Video for 2010, but it appears it may just be 480p due to some unforeseen reason. Software is complaining and I can't figure out why. I'll work on uploading it in the morning.

The run up has officially begun. I've got Wednesday through next Tuesday off for pre-run up, PRC, and after event work and clean up. I will be in positions 54/55 this year. Any visiting bloggers are more than welcome to swing by. I'm more than happy to teach you how to snipe some boomers and help you put some rounds down range accurately. (Note: I'll probably walk up and down the line for 45 minutes prior to lunch to look at other hardware and take video and pictures. After lunch I'll be there the whole time.)

I've noticed from talking to some people they are extremely put off at the thought of shooting long distances. They somehow feel it is extremely different than shooting 100 yards. While yes it is different, and experience is a great help it's not actually that different. Fundamentals never change, sight picture, breathing, squeezing the trigger, that's all basic and standard. What is different is the amount of thinking ahead of the shot. Experienced shooters can easily do this mental preparation on their own; however what really makes it possible for any shooter connect to a target at long range is the spotter.

Whenever possible the more experienced shooter is actually the spotter, not the trigger man. Squeezing the trigger is simple and once mastered it becomes second nature. The spotter watches the trace, following the bullet to the point of impact. Here's the basic order of operations and responsibilities of each during a shot.

The video is now posted. For some reason the blog software published the item before I wanted it to be. If you checked the site due to an RSS, consider this a new ping. You can check out the video here.

    As I finally was able to process the video for blogger day, I spent today doing the video for the event as a whole. I used the high intensity event as the main filler while showing all the different pieces of BoomerShoot. Enjoy!

Now that my box is back up and running, CAPTCHAS enabled, and I have a minor break in things. I guess I'll do a post on last year's blogger day. This year I'm going to help with setup on Thursday and let my wife enjoy blogger day. She has an account here, and can blog, but she says she has nothing to write about. Hopefully I can change that.

It started off in the wee early hours of the morning, around 10am I do believe, when fearless leader arrived. Note, awesome video at bottom!

    Last weekend was Boomershoot 2009. Best 5 day vacation I've had in a long time. I even grabbed a high def video camera just for it. The next couple days I'm going to slowly start posting stories and I'll post video as I clean it up and edit it. Why must I edit it you ask, the full high-intensity video is a whopping 768 megs. The anvil and failed fire ball are 1.2 gigs. I do have a video of the successful fireball that we did on Thursday.

    Pictures will also be posted slowly but surely as well. I have very limited internet currently. It's on my laundry list of things to do, but at the top is finishing moving.

Here's a pic from the anvil launch.

And here's the fireball from Thursday.

It was 3 seconds of pure awesomeness followed by 20 minutes of firefighting. I wish I had my camera on a tripod and caught the whole episode. In hindsight it was fun I guess, at the time though it was a little scary. We had all forgotten about Joe's post on Sunday.

I saw a post on Joe's blog last night about heading out to the BoomerShoot site for some pumpkin destruction.

I arrived just after one as was asked. Good timing evidently because he was just finishing up the explosives as the wife and I showed up.

We spent the next bit chatting, I met a coworker of Joe's, Kris, and I proceeded to gut and dismember the pumpkins much like Hannibal Lecter would to feed a man his own brains.

For pre-finals stress relief I decided to pursue something that I have wanted to do for the longest time since I moved to Eastern Washington.