More than just shotguns – rifles and pistols too?

Our High Plains Shooting and Dining Society has good participation in two bird events each year, doves and pheasants (see previous entries below) however we also have our summer tune up at Bluff Creek outside of Crawford where we have been given the opportunity to use Keith’s range and shoot various pistols and rifles, including some fine examples of old ‘warhorse weapons’ from WWI, WWII, Korea and Nam.  We make it a show and tell weekend and some of our non-bird shooter fellows are long time active participants in this mid-summer event.

We also try to do some fine cooking and eating, both camp fire and grill and if we are lucky and someone’s freezer does not go out, from time to time we have wild game, venison, pheasant and ducks.  When that does not work there is the fast trip to Waco, Gatesville or McGregor for fine dining. We have informal area set up to shoot skeet and and let newcomers get the hang of pulling a trigger on a shotgun while keeping it moving through the air so that the little bird shot can arrive at the same place and time as the clay pigeon.  By the way, skeet are best cooked over slow moist heat.

And then we do what we oft times do best, post dinner we sit around and talk about stuff with the option of a cigar and a bit Scotland’s finest or a taste of a local Texas Whisky.  It is fun to throw out a history question and listen to several of the guys who have studied and visited a particular battlefield discuss which general made the right decision and which one was wrong.  We share funny stories or our younger and perhaps not as smart days with the requirement that the story must have a punch line and a laugh.  We avoid arguments about politics since we have different views and it is much more fun to have a difference of opinion about a Colt 1911 being a better pistol than a Browning Hi-Power.  We really do like to try out and share the experience of using our new acquisitions that go bang and punch holes in stuff.

It has been fun over the years to see youngsters who once tagged along learning how to shoot now grown up sharing news of their lives and adventures.   Sometimes we have three generations enjoying the outdoors and the smell of gunpowder, and later in the day bore cleaner, and oil as they clean up, pack the guns away and say goodbye until we meet again.