NorthCoast Blogger Shoot AAR, Part 1

Part one is going to be somewhat light on pics for now. I'll be making my way home today from OH, so I set everything up last night in the hotel room on my Eee. The hotel wifi was a bit spotty, and the Eee is less-than-ideal for picture manipulation (okay, it's downright lethargic...), so I'll put up another AAR with pictures tomorrow after I get home tonight and can upload everything on the big 'puter.

Saturday morning I awoke to a phone call from Newbius, who told me that he was en route to the blogshoot. I met New Jovian Thunderbolt (NJT) and My Buddy the Gun Enthusiast (MBtGE) for breakfast, then went back to my hotel room to prepare for the shoot. Newbius arrived about a half-hour before we were scheduled to leave for Heath's. I loaded my gear into Newbius's car, we met up with Breda & Mike and NJT and MBtGE, and we all carpooled over to Heath's place.

Here's the list of attendees as far as my feeble brain can recall. If I've missed anyone, I humbly apologize and blame CueBall's "Apple Pie":

• Heath & Amanda - I'd like to extend my most sincere thanks to Heath and Amanda for hosting us. Heath put a lot of work into getting the range ready, and Amanda just about knocked herself out making us feel at home after the shoot. They were gracious enough to entertain us afterwards, offering adult libations and incredibly nommy foodstuffs (including some marinated pulled beef from a cow that "had been walking around mooing only a couple weeks ago".
• Breda & Mike - Many thanks to Breda for doing the heavy lifting on the organizing of the Northcoast shoot. I know what a herculean effort pulling together a successful blogshoot can be, and Breda handled this with ease.
• Bubblehead Les & Carol
• Mad Saint Jack
• CueBall
• Newbius
• Clint
• Van + Destiny
• Bill
• THOTpd
• New Jovian Thunderbolt & MBtGE
• Josh
  

We set up two pistol ranges at first, figuring that we would set up a rifle range later. One range was 25 feet, the other 25 yards. We had a wide variety of reactive targets and static targets, and let loose with a staggering array of weaponry. Bubblehead Les brought several historical pieces, and Van and Bill from The GunWorks in Sandusky, OH brought some hardware as well. We had some suppressed weaponry to go with a mind-boggling array of pistols, carbines, and shotguns; and let loose on the two ranges for quite some time.

Ah, the weaponry... From the tiniest (North American Arms .22LR single-action revolver) to the largest (a Contender in .45-70 that your humble host shot to open the festivities*), there were firearms representative of pretty much every possible aspect of handgunning. Custom 1911s? Check. Hunting single action revolvers? Semi-automatic .308s? Check. Glock long slides? Check. Sturdy Smith & Wesson rimfires seemingly incapable of missing the gong at 25 yards? Check. AK-based .410 shotgons? Check Browning Hi-Power with shoulder stock? Check. Taurus Judge? Check. Browning over-under shotgun? Check. I lost count of all the cool guns at the shoot, and believe me, there was so many incredible handguns, rifles, and shotguns that it would fill pages just to list everything that was there.

*I must have heard "Jay, you need to shoot this!" several dozen times at the NorthCoast shoot. It seemed like everytime I turned around, someone had a ridiculously overpowered handgun, a piece of history in blued steel, a cool shotgun, or some other magnificent piece of weaponry. Gunnies are, without a doubt, the most generous, sharing, giving folks I have ever had the privilege of sharing a range with.

One of the perennial favorites was the Snubbie from Hell™ - it seems like no one can resist a turn with the 12 ounce .357 Magnum, not even the World's Most Dangerous Librarian. With all but the Remington 125 grain JSP hunting ammo, the SfH is actually pretty manageable, but everyone was in agreement that a steady diet of .357 Magnum would not be on anyone's list of things to do very much. Even the .45-70 Contender didn't have the same punishing recoil as the SfH with the 125 grain screamers.

After we'd had our fun with handguns and shotguns we moved the firing line back to 100 yards for working with the rifles (and a handful of us crazy fools hardy souls with pistols). Most were shooting prone; some opted to shoot offhand; others opted for one of the two small benches for benchrest shooting. Once again, 5 gallon jugs were offered as reactive targets, and believe me when I saw that watching a 5 gallon jug exploding from a hit from a .308 that you just fired is an amazingly addicting feeling.

I learned a few things at the NorthCoast blogshoot. For starters, I've been shooting large bore single action revolvers wrong - rather than fight the recoil, I learned that they are designed to kick up in your hand. Heath let me shoot his Vaquero with hot .44 Magnum rounds, and by letting the gun rotate upwards - rather than fighting to keep it in my hand - I was able to fire it with little problem. I also learned that handguns can be effective at surprising distances - I rang an 18" gong 10 out of 12 times with my Smith & Wesson model 27 from a rest, and even off-hand was able to hit 2 or 3 times out of every cylinder.

I learned that I have a lot to learn about shooting rifles (yes, Ross, I know, I need to take part in an Appleseed weekend - let me know what the spring schedule looks like and I'll see what I can attend). I also learned that rifle rounds will zip right through ¼" plate steel like a hot knife through butter - but even the hottest .357 Magnum rounds will not. I also learned that while I do really like the M1 Garand, it's harder to work than I thought (I was having a bit of trouble getting the clips into the gun). Mosin Nagants hurt like a sonofabitch when shooting without a recoil pad (that I already knew).

And, lastly, here's a quick picture to give you an idea of the mindset of the shoot:

Hippie Inferno

Yes, those are 5 gallon water jugs roasting on an open fire. As part of the range clean-up, we tossed all the shot-up pallets, targets, boxes, hay bales etc. into a big pile and set it on fire. Since we'd all see the 10.10 videos of people being blown up for not "volunteering" to reduce their carbon footprint, we tossed on the plastic bottles as our own little way of increaseing our carbon footprint.

And believe me when I say that the enviro-nazis would have had a *very* hard time blowing us up, considering that we had enough hardware to take over most of Europe...

That is all, for now; more tomorrow.