A Week At Home

Posted on by Jordan

This past week, like many weeks this summer, we didn’t go out of town. To be honest I have really enjoyed it. Once the baby comes we may feel like we don’t have a choice in the matter, and maybe I won’t feel the same way, but for now it is really relaxing.

This is not to say we were bored!

Heather and a neighbor who is also expecting around the same time attended some sort of baby themed open house at the hospital where both of them will be giving birth.

I shot in my second ever pistol match. Not particularly well, but I had fun.

Heather and I walked over to the mall to listen to the  Dueling Piano act that was playing in the little amphitheater area there.

It was a really nice way to spend Sunday evening!

The only other thing of note this week is that the construction across the street demonstrated what it looks like when you hit a water main:

We were only without water for a few hours, so I can’t complain too much 🙂

-Jordan

 

 

Three Gun Match

Posted on by Jordan

I think I mentioned a few weeks back that I was hoping to participate in a shooting competition.

This past Saturday the event finally took place!

I did not do well, but had a lot of fun all the same. The other guys there were all very helpful and prevented it from being too intimidating.

It was a “3-gun” event, meaning you shot a rifle, shotgun, and pistol. I think at the more formal events they actually combine multiple guns into a single stage, but here we just had one long rifle stage, one shotgun stage, and then several pistol stages.

Given that pistol is by far my weakest skill, there wasn’t much chance of my taking home any bragging rights.

on the other hand my so called “better” guns weren’t real hot. I managed to talk someone into running a camera for me during the shotgun, and you can see that I kind of fell apart on the back half of the stage.

(The guy following me holding a box is the range officer, keeping time and making sure that nobody does anything unsafe during their turn)

The event wasn’t super competitive, so even with my less than optimal performance, I was able to make the top third in shotgun. I think it mostly gauges long neglected muscle memory in a few dozen guys who said “oh, they have a shotgun event?” and dug a gun out of the back of the safe. Had a few more people been drilling for this and I don’t think my fumbling with shells the entire time could have looked anything but sad.

The pistol stages were a lot of fun, but really drove home the fact that I don’t have great accuracy, nor do I transition between targets with anything that resembles speed or grace.

At the very least though, I had a lot of fun, and have a reason to practice now!

-Jordan

Anticipation

Posted on by Jordan

What did we do this week?

Well… not everything we wanted to.

Heather has gotten back into Craigslist with a vengeance, and I would like to say she has gotten great deals on everything she liked, but it has been more negotiations that fall through than transactions so far. On the bright side, at least from my prospective, at least half the attempted transactions are us selling things instead of purchases.

I finally got around to signing up for a shooting competition that was scheduled to take place over the weekend. Unfortunately there was a major thunderstorm blowing in that morning and they called the event off on account of lightning risk. Maybe next month I guess.

So, the short version is we haven’t done a whole lot yet, but boy do we have plans. 🙂

-Jordan

 

 

Deer Season 2011

Posted on by Jordan

It is that time of year again.

As with every year, I started preparing by confirming that my rifle was still shooting accurately:

That was at 100 yards, and the squares are an inch across… so I don’t have any excuse to miss this year I suppose.

Although my last post contained pictures of snow, Nebraska wasn’t having that kind of weather over the weekend.

We arrived at the farm with opening morning forecast to be in the mid 60s!

I should go back just a little I suppose, ‘we’ constitutes myself, one f my cousins, and his two boys. The plan was to include another cousin or two, but that didn’t work out this year. As has become the tradition we hunt with a few friends from the area, meaning the total number of hunters is at least six if not ten.

Ok, so not only was the weather too warm, we got to the farm after dark on Friday night. Not ideal when we wanted to have a few portable stands up, and do a tiny amount of scouting before opening morning.  As is often the case, work got in the way of our initial plan. At least it wasn’t my work this time… still unfortunate that it cut into the hunt.

I will skip large portions of not seeing any deer to keep this narrative somewhat interesting. After finding that our initial plan was not great, and knowing that the weather meant the deer were not going to be particularly active until evening, we setup a tree stand and scouted a few good lookout places to position people for the twilight hours in the hopes we would cross paths with something heading out into the fields for a snack.

I should mention that the great spot I used last year wasn’t an option because our only foot bridge across the creek washed out. We talked about improvising a replacement, but were concerned that we would disrupt the deer too much if we were running equipment to erect a new bridge.

When the sun started to set Saturday night, I was positioned in a tree stand overlooking what appeared to be a crossroads of deer trails. About an hour later, that theory was proven correct when about five doe wandered past me and started grazing around the edges of the field to the north of me.

It was awesome to see deer after the disappointing morning, but having them not only walk around but stay around turned out to be kind of a pain because I felt like I couldn’t move at all. I wound up waiting until well after dark to leave, because the deer didn’t wander away until then. From what I could tell, there weren’t any bucks around, but at least I got to see something!

I setup in the same stand that morning and saw…. nothing, … again.

A few of us spent a couple of hours walking through pockets of cover we thought might be a good place to catch a deer sleeping but didn’t discover anything.

At this point nobody in the family group had gotten anything, and with one exception hadn’t even seen anything to be excited about. It was a little distressing, but we were all still hopeful that something would turn up.

I went back to my stand, hoping that it was a better dusk location than dawn. Shortly after I got setup, there was noise clearly indicating that something was slowly working it’s way towards me. The noise was coming from my only blind spot, but it was unmistakeable that something was moving around, and slowly getting closer. Twenty minutes of sitting motionless later and I finally got a look at a squirrel who apparently really liked jumping back and fourth on the ground.

At that point I got kind of frustrated, and got out my phone to send a few texts and see if anyone else was fairing better than I was. The news wasn’t any better from them so I wasn’t feeling like I needed to stay particularly stealthy and stood up to get a better look at the deerless area around me.

Except that just after I did that I heard rustling in the leaves again, and looked over to see a small buck standing directly across from me! I really don’t know how he was able to sneak in so close without my hearing something, but he did. On the other hand he didn’t see me, so I was able to get my rifle up and on him without spooking him. Then I was able to fire once without spooking him. The second shot came quickly after the first, but… there was a delay.

Remember that bridge that washed out? had it been in place I wouldn’t have need to remove my boots and roll up my pant-legs to get this picture:

As you can see, I am basically out of light, and I only had my phone with me. It turns out to be rather difficult to take a you+deer self portrait using my phone, so you will have to live with the picture I got 🙂

The next thing I discovered is that deer float! That was a nice thing to discover because everyone else was still hunting.

The other hunters didn’t find any bucks, and passed on does again. It was nice to have something, even if it wasn’t a real impressive buck.

-Jordan

The Big Hunt

Posted on by Jordan

As I mentioned, the weekend spent hunting was a lot of fun. The majority of the time I was sitting right here:

I kind of jammed the camera into some grass to try and give you prospective into the area I was hunting. It didn’t work all that well, and the pictures when I was actually looking at the camera came out blurry for some reason. Anyway, what you can kind of see is that I am setting above a canyon. What isn’t real clear is that I am sitting in a little niche under a tree and that just a few feet from where I am sitting the wall drops 40 feet straight down, and all the trees in the background are a lot bigger than maybe they appear.

Having set the scene, I will just skip to the part I got to retell over and over again…

I found the spot Saturday afternoon, after having decided my initial hide wasn’t giving me the visibility I needed, nor was the deer traffic as good as we had hoped. I was trying to be quiet, but alerted a deer to something being in the area when I slipped into the spot. I never got a good look at it, but I don’t think the deer really knew I was there ether… just casually moved away from that sound that didn’t seem quite right.

Then things were quiet for probably close to an hour. I thought I had a great idea of exactly where deer would enter and exit the canyon, and at what points I would be able to see them. Somehow a patch of deer colored fur was moving across the other rim of the canyon… and I was going to have a hard time getting turned to really look at it without making some noise. After I lost track of it, I got probably a little too free with craning my head around to try and find an angle to see down through the brush into this unexpected approach.

I must have shifted my entire body, although I don’t remember when, but I was squared up with the last known position of the soon to be discovered buck. He stepped into a spot where I had a clear line of sight, and I started bringing the rifle up without even thinking about it. All I remember is getting the scope view lined up and feeling like the horns took up the entire view! My reaction wasn’t what I expected, on the one hand I flipped the safety off and stabilized myself without having to think about it, but on the other hand my heart-rate went up by about 200 percent and I couldn’t control my breathing in that moment.

It didn’t end up mattering, because he didn’t stop walking and the window through the trees only gave a few seconds to soak all that in. Nothing indicated to me that he was spooked, but at the same time he didn’t come out on the trail farther up the canyon like it appeared he should have.

I was disappointed and relieved at that point. Obviously, I wanted to get a better look at the buck and a shot, but relieved that I wouldn’t have to try and take a shot with my heart pounding like that. I sat very still for the next 20 minutes doing little except trying to prepare myself to be relaxed if this happened again.

Three doe started working their way down the path towards the spot my elusive buck vanished. I took the opportunity to observe where the trail intersected good shooting lines. I felt pretty prepared, and just hoped maybe another buck would wander through.

The doe worked their way past the big blind spot the buck had vanished into and came out on the trail I had initially expected traffic to use. I decided it would be a good idea to practice holding the scope over a deer and doing the “deep breath, release slowly” thing to make sure I was being stable. The only problem was that doing that required me to drastically shift my body position.

The process of getting shifted around, made a little bit too much noise. Not enough to scare the doe off, but enough that they looked all around and started sniffing the air. I froze. They were cautious, but apparently figured things were ok, and stared to move again.

Then I saw movement back at the other end of the canyon, and it was moving out of the blind spot!

I managed to revert to my initial position real quickly, and without making much noise. Then the buck held up sniffing the ground perfectly centered in my last realistic shooting lane on the trail!

I heard the safety click off, and thought something like “GAAAAAAAH!!! this is too perfect, calm down….”

brought the cross-hairs into the center of his shoulder and back a little, let out a big breath in what was meant to be a slow fashion, but wound up being like trying to blow out candles 10 feet away and….

**boom**

I switched back to binoculars and scoured the area, finding…. nothing. It was kind of a long walk around to get to the spot he was standing… no blood, nothing.

In hindsight I am sure my trigger-pull was every bit as gentile as my breathing had been, but it was a really frustrating thing to have happen!

So, in conclusion, I learned that ‘Buck Fever’ is a very real thing.

/sigh

-Jordan

ps. The story of the buck in the picture I posted before isn’t interesting at all, but at least I was able to relax and put a round into the vitals of a buck.

Weekend Grilling

Posted on by Jordan

Heather has been out of town for a few days thanks to a work trip.

A few notes from the odds and ends I stayed busy with:

It is possible to cook bacon on a grill:

If you try it, be aware that your going to have to give the grilling process 100% of your attention, as there is going to be a lot of fire. Maybe have a bottle of water handy or something.

This is exciting because Heathers primary objection to bacon (well ignoring the packing-plant episode) is the fact that it makes our entire apartment smell like grease for days. I may have found a work-around. 🙂

I went to the local gun range for a little target practice. If your like me, and maybe don’t shoot as well as you would like with a pistol, you might feel self conscious with all the other shooters around you. I realized though, if you just keep shooting the same set of targets, eventually you look pretty competent. Also I think I was improving rather quickly as time went on… still nothing to brag about, but improvement.

I thought I had a third point for this list but it seems to have escaped me… Hope your having a good weekend! 🙂

-Jordan

NRA Basic Pistol

Posted on by Jordan

Our move to Des Moines had lead Heather and I to look for new things to do together. One of the ideas I put forward was target shooting. Heather was borderline skeptical of the idea, but thought maybe it could work. I was pushing for pistol shooting because we are basically constrained to shooting ranges, and in the distance you are limited to at most ranges rifles just aren’t that challenging. Somewhere along the line, I also realized that Heather did not have the safe firearm handling foundation that my childhood had provided. As a result of all those factors, I signed us up for an NRA basic pistol class.

The class was held this past weekend at the Charles Olofson Shooting Range, near Polk City Iowa. First Off I should point out that the drive out to the range was beautiful! It took us maybe 40 minutes from the apartment, but most of the time we were in open country and really got to soak up the spring weather we are finally seeing. The range has a nice indoor classroom, much larger than was needed considering we only ended up with four people in the class.

The small class size was nice, as there was a wide range in levels of experience, and I think everyone felt comfortable asking questions. The instructor, Larry Krug, did a really good job of covering the basics and keeping everyone interested. We spent a little over four hours in the classroom covering everything you would need to know if you had never seen a pistol before up to the point where you could hold and fire one properly. After a lunch-break we came back in to take a written test over the information we had been presented. I have to brag on Heather a little, and part of this goes to the instructor too I suppose, but with virtually no prior knowledge of firearms in any form, she managed to pass with flying colors!

After the test we headed out to the range for some hands-on instruction. I should mention that, as this was one of the first truly nice weekends so far this year, I think a large number of people were excited to get out and thought throwing a few rounds down range would be a good way to do that. During the test we really started to notice the increased noise outside, as gunfire has a way of getting your attention. Once outside it really got loud!

I think this is the point where we really started to loose Heather. I often forget that people don’t necessarily feel comfortable around guns, and less so around dozens of them being fired in close proximity. Heather is building a tolerance, but three separate range-areas, all running at full capacity was a little much. She stuck it out, and as you can see from the intro picture, she even tried out a few different pistols!

This was also the point where the whole “shooting pistols would be better because they are harder to be really accurate with” hit home. When it was my turn to shoot I quickly realized how much room I have for improvement. The instructor was able to help me with a few small things, but the final verdict was basically that I need to practice a lot more (oh darn).

We learned so much throughout the course of the day:

  • Heather learned a good foundation of gun safety and basic operation
  • I learned that a busy range isn’t the best place to help someone get comfortable with firearms
  • We learned that the local NRA instructor is really knowledgeable
  • I learned that thinking you should probably clean your pistol isn’t the same as actually doing it (kinda embarrassed by that one…)
  • The biggest thing we came away with was that shooting isn’t something we should pursue as a joint activity!

As much as it may be disappointing to find that shooting isn’t something we are going to do together, I am still glad we tried it. We still created some memories, and spent a day together doing something different!

-Jordan