Boomershoot 2010

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.

Step Spotter Shooter
Target Acquisition Spotter locates a target and relays it to the shooter Shooter confirms the correct target with the spotter. The shooter also makes the correction to parallax for the new range.
Range Spotter estimates the range to target and proper elevation adjustment. Shooter confirms elevation change and dials the scope.
Wind Spotter estimates the wind and dope changes necessary Shooter confirms wind doping change and dials the scope.
Target Hold Spotter specifies the hold for the crosshairs on the target. Shooter hold in that position and waits for the fire when ready command.
Fire Spotter issues the fire command. As quickly as consistently possible the shooter puts the round down range.
Follow Trace Spotter follows the trace to impact. The shooter calls his shot. IE did it break where did the shot break on target? Was it on the hold or elsewhere?
Adjustment Spotter uses the shot call and actual impact to adjust the point of impact. Shooter confirms elevation and wind changes
Go to Target Hold

 

As you can see above, most of the work sits on the spotter not the shooter. If the shooter can shoot under a MOA at 100 yards, is confident in their ability, can count, and accurately call their shots. They can squeeze the trigger on a rifle and hit a target 700 yards away 7 inches in diameter. It all really rests on the spotter.

Calling shots for some is difficult; the key is maintaining concentration on the sight picture up to the break of the shot and remembering it.

I do it a little bit differently by concentrating on each aspect of a shot, breathing, trigger squeeze, sight picture, and thinking about what was not consistent about that last break. I know how a good shot feels to me, if it did not feel good I think about why it didn’t. I learned this technique while being taught competition rifle and pistol. My drills involved calling the shot without looking at the paper.

If for some reason you still feel uncomfortable, hit up the PRC with Gene. I have no qualms shooting at 700 yards now, but the first day on the line at a PRC I was nervous like the people I talk to now. Especially in that wind, I usually got calm winds when shooting, so I called it a baptism by fire. A lot of people feel the long range shot is magic. It isn’t, it is a spotter and the fundamentals of shooting. (Plus Modern Ballistics never hurt either.)

If you’re nervous about shooting at long distance, swing by my position and I’ll get you a boomer on the berm at minimum.

Boomershoot 2009

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.

Anvil Shot

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.

Stress Relief, Death to pumpkins

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.

We then crated up the poor little victims and moved them to their zone of destruction.

This was a pumpkin that was in dire need of destruction. It was molding and becoming extremely soft. Big enough however it required two to move.

Six pounds of HE however would deal with this quite well. Besides the two that were rotting on top, well that was just nasty when it covered my hand.

We then proceeded to their destruction, first my wife, ladies first and all…

Followed by Kris…

And finally, here’s the video of my shoot. Along with a pic. Joe said “Just the big one left, give me a count of two so I can get the whole thing.” Sweet!!!! So I get to shoot this mother! AWESOME, Thanks JOE!

And as a final closing statement, we found pumpkin chunks 71 yards away. It quite literally rained pumpkin. Wife got hit in the leg, nothing major, I danced to get out of the way. The final dance move was to the right.

We drove back through Orofino to eat at Ponderosa, and gassed up outside the Casino for a low $2.18 a gallon. Thanks for a mini vacation Joe, much, much appreciated.

Weapon Malfunctions and Machineguns

A man loaned his AR-15 rifle to a friend to take it to the gun range for some target practice. Nothing strange or unusual here, a good friend wants to use a rifle, ok just make sure to clean it before you give it back. Evidently however the firearm malfunctioned and fired a burst before jamming.

The owner of the firearm was convicted of illegally transferring a machinegun.

His home was searched without a warrant, with standard “Jack-Booted Thug” tactics. Testing of the firearm even indicated that it was not a “machinegun” by definition. Unsatisfied with their tests they repeated them and discovered that there was a malfunction, a hammer follow, which caused it to fire multiple rounds.

The whole case stinks to high heaven and from experience I know what it’s like to be prosecuted for a felony that is complete and utter B.S. Luckily mine wasn’t firearm related and was eventually dropped, however my case was another incident of someone not having much to do and wanting to make a name for himself.

The BATFE even realized the futility of their argument by the way they prosecuted the case. Instead of charging the owner with possession of an unregistered machine gun, or any of the other crimes pertaining to machine guns they went with transferring. Why? Because proving that a transfer occurred is a very easy task, and the BATFE is the group responsible for determining if it’s a machine gun, it backs the owner into a corner, and allows the BATFE to do whatever they please.

At the request of the local ATF agent, the FTB tested the gun a second time using a brand of .223 ammunition known for having sensitive primers. Those tests resulted in intermittent, unregulated, automatic fire and jamming due to hammer-follow, but this time the FTB concluded that, under strict interpretation of the law, the gun´s malfunction did make it a machinegun.”

I find this more of engineering for a failure as opposed to an actual failure. Spend enough time you can always come up with a method to make something fail without modification. If you put in the incorrect ammunition and the weapon explodes throwing shrapnel doe it qualifies as a pipe bomb? I only ask because the barrel acts as a pipe, and the powder causes the explosion, and the pipe eventually fragments causing injury. Seriously the Jack Booted Thugs need to be done away with, along with the FBI. Instead of actually going after people who intend to do harm to normal, productive, law-abiding citizens they instead feel it necessary to attack and imprison those who are productive for society. That failure is exactly that, failure and nothing more. Why are they so obsessed with attacking non-violent otherwise law abiding member of society, maybe it’s because we don’t refer to them as our more holy than thou saviors.

-B

Boomershoot 2008

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.

I went to Boomershoot and the precision rifle clinic. There’s some really nice pics inside!

Above is the opening to the shoot. Joe had to get close because he winged one of the jugs of gas and couldn’t get the boomer to detonate.

I learned a lot from the two days at the clinic, also got some reminders of things that I haven’t had to worry about shooting pistol lately. The only real comments I have to anyone interested in coming to Boomershoot is that you need a spotter. Shooting at targets 700 yards away, 4 or 7 inches across depending on the target is difficult if not impossible without one. For those who don’t know the math, that is 1 MOA at the largest. Without your spotter you will have no real consistent feedback of your impact. You’re not shooting at a paper target that will have a hole in it. If you’re lucky you might see a change in the dirt surrounding the target. I’m defiantly going back next year for both sections. I’m already working on what my goals are going to be. Friday was miserable for weather, but I look at it now like a baptism by fire. Shooting long distance in winds was never something I had really done. On Friday we had sleet and a win out of 3 O’clock between 7-12 MPH, with gusts to 20 MPH.

The anvil shoot after lunch was awesome. I had a nice sequence(site is down) of pics that shows the whole thing but I’m just going to post the most impressive ones here.

That thing flying up is a 75lbs anvil. And yes ACME is written across the side. Below on the is the anvil at its peak height. Estimates put the anvil at about 110 feet. Next is the impact with the nice spurt of dirt. At the very bottom is the hole left in the ground by the anvil. Yes it’s still in the hole.

I also got to have some other fun. There was a M1917 Browning water cooled machine gun. Not only was I able to take pictures of it…. They also let me shoot it.

After lunch they put up a low flow toilet, packed it with about 6 pounds of explosive, filled the bowl and tank with gas, put up some flares and the following videos were born! The second video can be found here.

The weather was quite nice after Friday. It was so nice in fact that I turned a bright red with a toughening of the skin on my nose. I’ve said it before and I will say it again, this weekend was totally worth it. Please note the circle on my forehead for my hat, along with the coon eyes from my glasses.

Anyone who met me that weekend feel free to drop me a line. Large thanks to Eugene and the other clinic instructors. Your advice was quite helpful. See you all next year!