Happy Halloween!

My husband carved this pumpkin for me for Halloween.
Isn't it great?!

The designs on the other sides of the pumpkins are reflecting off the wall.

The Bass

Deer Tracks

The Duck

The Antlers

Happy Halloween Everybody!

New Targets & A New Shooter

     This weekend we took my brother, sister-in-law and niece shooting and to try out a couple new targets. The first target to try out was the battleship target. We picked these up at our last trip to Bass Pro and they are a lot of fun. I shot against my brother first. I beat him and also had the high score for the day. The amazing part is, my sights were REALLY off. I was aiming one square down and one-and-a-half squares to the right to hit the edge of circle.

 

Battleship Game Target

 

      My sister-in-law tried out my husband's 1911 .45 ACP pistol for the first time. I hate shooting the bigger pistols, but she was having fun with it.

Go Kelly!

      We always clean up our brass and shells after shooting and have a couple of those grabbers for picking up a lot. Cleaning up brass and shells because my niece's favorite part of shooting (at the beginning).

Clean Up Time

      My niece also liked helping change out targets. She helped her dad hang up new fly paper and another battleship game and she also helped arrange cans, the softball and went on the hunt for clay pigeons that survived.

Target Changing

      This is one of my favorite pictures from the day. My sister-in-law is on my .22 rifle and my brother is on my husband's .22 rifle playing the battleship game. My brother beat his wife, but not by very much.

Go Kelly!!

      My niece was going through our range bag and found my red shooting glasses that I forgot I had. She pointed out that they matched my red ear muffs, my red shirt I was wearing, my red gun, my red, my red ATV, my red sunglasses I used to wear and a few other red things I own that she remembered. One of these days I need to explain to her that just because it's red, doesn't mean it belongs to Aunt Hilary.

Red Shooting Glasses

      My niece asked when it was going to be her turn to shoot. She is 3 so at first we were thinking she better wait another year and then she used that cute face of us and Uncle Kris pulled out some Calibri .22 ammo. If you don't know about that ammo, there's no kick at all and hardly any noise. It worked great for her first time shooting.

Uncle Kris Helping Her Shoot For The First Time

     After her first 5 shots, we had to check out if she hit any flies. She didn't want to pose for pictures with her first target, she wanted to shoot some more!

 

Checking Out How She Did

      The next 5 shots Uncle Kris tried to aim and she worked on pulling the trigger by herself. She was having a lot of fun.

Pulling The Trigger By Herself

      She was trying to see if she hit any flies and it looked like she didn't. Later that night my brother sent me a text saying they found a fly with a hole in it! She was a very happy little girl after they found that hole.

Checking For Holes In Flies

 After her second turn at shooting she decided it was OK to pose for some pictures.



Girls In The Outdoors

Pointing At Some Of Her Shots

      It's hard to see in this next picture (which is why it's so big), but she is throwing pigeons. Those hand throwers for pigeons drive me crazy because I can't get them to work right. Kelly was also having trouble with them so we got the sling shot thrower out. If you don't have a sling shot thrower for pigeons, you need to get one! They work a lot better, you have more control and it's a lot of fun!

     My niece decided that since she was such a good shooter, she was going to try "reloading" shotgun shells.

"Reloading"

      My niece decided 4 hours of shooting was enough and since we were getting hungry and tired, we decided it was finale time. When we bought the battleship targets, we also found Star Targets. We bought the smallest one just to try it out and it was AWESOME! Star Targets are reactive targets like the ones they shoot on Top Shot (shooting competition show on History Channel) only without the big flames. There was a BOOM and a bunch of smoke and then a bunch of laughing.

Imagine a big boom mixed in with that smoke.

     The can is what the target was sitting on and to the right of the hand you can kind of see a piece of plastic which was what was left of the bottom of the container/target.

     It was a great day! New targets and seeing my niece shoot for the first time made the day even better.

What To Do When It's Too Cold To Go Outdoors

      This weekend we wanted to go do some pike fishing and do some work on outside projects but Saturday's weather didn't cooperate for either. Since we couldn't be in the outdoors, we did the next best thing!

     First we headed north and we drove through some fog (FYI: when I say "we drove," I actually mean my husband drove and I took pictures):

 

 

Then we drove through some snow:

 

 

 We saw some fall colors:

 And then we went here:

 

 And then we made it to Outdoor World!:

 

 Then it was time to head back south:

Of course we found rain at Monument Hill:

 

 The rain went away after Monument Hill:

 

 And then we went here:

 

 And then we drove home in the dark:

     We weren't the only ones that decided to visit sporting goods stores on Saturday since the weather was cold, rainy, snowy and foggy because all of the stores were went to were busy. I am pretty sure we were the only people that went to Gander Mountain, Bass Pro Shop and Sportsman's Warehouse all in the same day. We also went to Bed Bath & Beyond (forgot to take a picture of that one and on this day it counted as a sporting goods store because we bought some stuff for the motorhome. It was a fun day, but I wish we had been fishing like we had originally wanted to do.



Fly Paper & A Cool Range

     One of the ways my husband got me interested in target shooting (besides giving me red guns) was to make the targets fun. If the target is fun, I'll have more fun shooting and will keep shooting until I'm out of ammo! For Christmas last year, he gave me Fly Paper. When we went to check out a new shooting range this summer, I tried out my fly paper. The fly paper has a point system printed on the top right: Head=50, Wing=30 and Body =20. I was having a blast. When my husband said it was time to go shoot shotguns, I was going to argue with him until I realized we had been shooting pistols for an hour and a half! We were planning 45 minutes each so we would have time for lunch and some sightseeing before we had to head home.

 

 

      Of course I had more points on my target than my husband did. He said it was because I used more ammo than he did. That is true, but it is also because I'm better at shooting flies than he is.......right?

 

      There were a couple guys that were sharing our pistol range with us and I know they were jealous of my fly paper. When we would stop to go look at targets, I caught them catching a look at my targets, too.
     We enjoyed some mountain views while we were shooting. I love Colorado!

 

      One thing I learned during this trip is, you should have someone take pictures of you while you are shooting. I am embarrassed at how far I lean back!! I learned a lot about my stance and what I need to do to fix it. It was really bad (which is why I'm not sharing those pictures)! Here is a picture of me reloading my pistol.

 

     My husband insisted we go try out the shotgun range even though I really didn't want to. There were a lot of people at the range that day and even though there was nobody at the shotgun range at first, I knew everybody in the entire place would be watching how horrible I am at shooting the shotgun. It was a great shotgun range and it was fun, but I did horrible again and got frustrated. One of the pigeon throwers was messed up and it attacked me which made me even more frustrated. A little later a man and his girlfriend joined us. This was the first time the girl had been shooting and her boyfriend's shotgun was a little big for her. I let her shoot a little with my shotgun (it gave me a good excuse to "rest") and she did pretty good, then she picked up her boyfriend's gun again and shot 2 clay pigeons with 1 shot. It was an awesome shot and I was mad at her for a few secongs.I had a Girls In The Outdoors sticker for her. The views from the shotgun range were even better than the views from the pistol range which helped with my frustration level.

     It was a really fun range to shoot at and it was a really fun day and I can't wait to go shooting again so I can shoot some more flies and so I can fix my shooting stance!