Gunnin' With the Guys!

Jess has wanted me to post more regularly on the blog, since it's ours. I hope you don't mind a "guy" topic for a change :)

A few weeks ago, some buddies and I went shooting up the canyon, and we had a blast (literally). I wanted to tell somebody about it, so I decided I'd blog it, but because of school, I'm just getting around to it.

So if guns aren't your thing, I'd skip this blog post (or call your husband or boyfriend over and have them take a look).

This is a Mosin-Nagant. Russian mag-fed bolt-action rifle, shoots a 7.62 mm round. They're great guns for a good price - the old Soviet bloc has a huge surplus of them, so they're very cheap. Most never have seen action,  My friends purchased a few for about $130 each, and the rounds for about 19 cents each. They had a lot of ammo, so we decided to take the 6 of them out and break them in.

We brought along plenty of targets; everything from stuffed animals and videotapes to golf balls and tangerines.

Yeah, we're so bad!

Oh yeah. And a bowling ball.

Can you tell we mean business? (Check out Jonathon's shirt above)

We started out by setting up our range with targets strewn out across the 40-yard ravine. We then loaded up the guns and set up across the lip of the ravine in a line facing the far wall.   My friend David, who was acting as pseudo-rangemaster, said we'd start out taking turns down the line shooting at the same target til it was hit, after which the proceeding person could choose a new target. Since I was closest to him, I chose first, and after scanning the range decided on a small tangerine on a stake not 25 yards away.

Sorta like this. Can you see the tangerine?

Well, I missed. And the next guy missed. And the next, and the next, and the next.

 After going through the line of guns (a few non-MN's added up to about 7-8) a few times David finally succeeded in knocking the little tangerine off the stake, though he didn't hit it. We decided to halt and check it out.

This is the stake the tangerine was on.

This was the stretch of ground 20 feet behind the stake.

 Yeah, pretty nuts. After that, we decided to open it up and just shoot whatever we wanted.

Reloading

Jonathon, setting up drilled-out golf balls to hit with some handguns.

Handgun rounds, from closer up.

David got out his muzzle-loading black powder rifle.

Whoa!

The muzzle loader has two triggers: one to set the hairline trigger, and the other to actually fire. We had a funny moment as Nathan (David's younger brother) went to pull the trigger on the muzzle loader. Watch:

We all do that at some point (:


Finally, we brought out the grand finale: a fiberglass/ceramic bathroom sink and countertop. Shows off the MN's firepower nicely, although there are a few random shots in there... Just for fun!

Lots of fun, we'll probably do it again this summer!