Elders Quorum Activity - Shootin' Guns

The Arco contingent of Mitzi's family was in Boise this weekend because her little brother qualified for state finals in track held here at BSU. Friday night after the track meet we had a BBQ at Gabe and Christy's house with 8/11ths of the Beal clan plus spouses and children. It was a lot of fun spending time together with family. As things were winding down, Mitzi's brother Lance mentioned to me that his Elders quorum was having a shooting activity out in the desert the next morning and invited me to come along. I accepted and could hardly sleep I was so excited to get out there to try out my recently purchased shotgun.

I drove out to Nampa and Lance drove us to his ward building where we met up with five other Elders and headed out to the desert. We crossed the Snake River and drove to the foothills of the Owyhee Mountains. We parked the cars to form a firing line which everyone was required to stay behind at all times. One of the Elders was a real gun pro and he laid down the law to make sure everyone had a fun and safe time. Everyone was really nice and let me take turns shooting all of their different guns. Before joining the police I had probably shot real guns (i.e. not BB guns or paintball guns) a total of about three times in my life. After I joined the police I only shot our standard police sidearm and the standard police shotgun. However, for those of you who don't know, there are about as many kinds of guns as there are kinds of fish. I met a couple more kinds of fish on this trip, and some of them were awesome!

The field of pigeons (click to enlarge)

Once we found our spot we went out and placed a whole bunch of clay pigeons on the ground at varying distances and then everyone tried to blast as many as they could before the other guys got to them. This one guy had a .22 rifle with a scope and a bi-pod that we placed on the hood of his car. It was so fun to be able to just line up those cross hairs and blast those clay pigeons to bits at 100+ yards. That may not sound too impressive but at the last Elders quorum activity in our ward I tried to shoot the branch off a tree at 15 yards and failed miserably time and again.

After all of our clay pigeons were demolished we took a couple of milk jugs full of water and hiked them up to the top of the ridge. Then our gun pro brought out his sniper-type rifle and set it up on the hood. I tried to take some fast-sequence pictures to capture the moment of impact but was too early on the first and too late on the second. To add insult to injury, on top of missing the photo I also didn't even get to see the explosion which, based on the hoots and hollers of the other men, were pretty impressive. Doh!


But I have to say that the best part of the day was taking my new shotgun for a spin. It was just so much fun to blow the tops off of sagebrush bushes and obliterate crusty cowpies with one mighty blast. Speaking of cowpies, I kicked one over and found the biggest, creepiest looking scorpion I've ever seen in the wild. Don't worry, I didn't blast it because I had a conversion moment on my mission in which I decided it was un-Christian to needlessly kill animals, even bugs. (The one exception for me is spiders when they're in my house or personal space - then it' a kill or be killed scenario in my mind.)

This thing was probably about 3"-4" long as pictured - pretty huge, especially when it's inside my personal bubble.

It was a great activity though it was not without its downside. The weather around here has been a little schizophrenic; we had a frost warning on Tuesday night, then we had rain, wind and clouds on Wednesday and Thursday. Come Saturday, it was 90 degrees but I was still in cold, windy, stormy mode. Translation: I didn't bring any sunscreen. 10:00am to 2:00pm in the desert sun = Scottie roast.

Ouch!

I haven't been burned that in probably five years. I HATE sun burns, but again, this dang weather that hasn't been able to make up its mind threw me quite a curve-ball. Other than that, it was a great time.