Thanksgiving - A Time to Shoot Things

I had three goals when we went to Salt Lake this November to celebrate Thanksgiving with my family: 1) Eat as much Thanksgiving Dinner as possible, 2) play some Left 4 Dead 2 with my new brother-in-law and anyone else who dared, and 3) go to the desert and shoot some guns. As Meatloaf once said, "Two out of three ain't bad." (My brother-in-law's buddy decided to leave town with his copy of Left 4 Dead 2 which we had hoped to borrow, thereby foiling my #2 goal for the week.)

Saturday morning my mom made a fabulous breakfast of apple pancakes and sausages which I devoured while waiting for the shooting party to arrive. My brother came with two of his friends and we all piled into the married one's minivan and headed out to the west shores of Utah Lake. I had made some sweet targets I'd put together using construction paper and "We Buy Houses" signs left over from my summer of short sales. In addition we had several water jugs, a couple 12-packs of soda cans, and several crates of expired soda in 1-liter plastic bottles.

We arrived at what turned out to be something of a poor-man's gun range--the remnants of thousands of spent shotgun shells, bullet casings, and miscellaneous debris used for target practice littered the landscape as far as the eye could see. We found old computer monitors, water heaters, big-screen TVs, and even a pathetic, Charlie Brown-looking Christmas tree that had been on the receiving end of more than a few shotgun blasts.

I set up a "Run'n'gun" course to do some tactical shooting drills. I didn't get much of any tactical shoot training in my time with BPD, and only once did we do any kind of training that involved shooting on the move (each of us literally got to do it one time, firing a total of I think four shots). Anyway, I've been wanting to do something like this ever since I was in the academy (since we certainly didn't do it there) and I was determined to make it happen. Here's how the first run went:



I also got to try out some new guns brought along by others in the party, including two Springfield XDs in 9mm and .40 S&W variety. I've only ever shot two kinds of pistols: Glocks and my little Kel-Tec PF-9, but I really enjoyed those Springfields as well I must admit. But the real treat was shooting the .30-06. This is one of the highest power rifle rounds and is used today to hunt deer and elk, though it was also used to hunt Nazis and North Koreans back in the day. My brother's friend let me use it on one of my milk jugs full of water and boy was it satisfying. Behold:



Sadly, I don't have any video of what it looked like to shoot a water jug with my 9mm pistol, but I can tell you that it sure didn't turn the jug inside out or spray the contents 15' in every direction the way this puppy did. No wonder my mission companions laughed at me for being such and ignoramus about guns when I said I wanted to hunt an elk with a 9mm; they said that if I managed to hit it I would probably only succeed in making it angry and getting trampled or gored to death. Now I know what they were talking about. Hunting rifle FTW!

The .30-06 taking out an unsuspecting bottle of Mountain Dew Code Red, and taking a large chunk of the hillside with it.

My brother taking the head off a bottle of Mountain Dew with his buddy's .40 S&W. He was quite a crack shot at taking out those soda bottles. I couldn't hit those things to save my life for some reason, but I succeeded in other areas so I don't feel too bad.

We also had a good time with my wonderful $200 WalMart 20 gauge shotgun. If you look closely you can see the spray of cheap cola against the backdrop of my black jacket as it rained down in sticky drops upon us thanks to our shortsighted plan to shoot into the wind. A small price to pay for the satisfaction of blasting that sucker to bits in mid air. I'd take shooting a can of soda over a clay pigeon any day.

Don't worry, we brought garbage bags and cleaned up our mess before we left.