A Hoot at Hooten

Sorry it has taken me so long to update, but alas I have been very busy. Last week at the Kentucky State shoot was a ton of fun. Yes the vendors were better in the past. Yes “something” seemed to be missing. But the shooting was great, our posse was awesome, and I enjoyed the camping even if the weather didn’t cooperate.

Friday was gorgeous and it didn’t take us long to check in a set up a great little campsite. We hooked up with the Thunder Valley boys and girls and drank a few beers. Redneck Rebel, Marshal Spencer Owen, Abu, Graver, Lizzy of the Valley, and Randy Atcher were all staying at a really nice bed and breakfast about 15 minutes from the range and they invited us to have a steak dinner with them Friday night. We didn’t take long to make up our minds. We had a great dinner, drank everything we could get our hands on then crawled into the sleeping bags. That night it must have gotten down to about 40 degrees and man that can be cold when you aren’t expecting it.

Saturday was beautiful, and the stages were a lot of fun. The shotgun targets were giving me fits and weren’t going down very easy. I had to make up 5 targets in the first 4 stages, but everything else was clean so even though I was adding about 4 or 5 seconds a stage I was happy overall. By the time the day was done I was still clean even though the clean match jitters hit me hard on stage 10. We finished the day smoking cigars, drinking beer, eating BBQ, and buying blankets in preparation for the evening.

Things took a slight turn for the worse at about 4 am when the rain started. It didn’t stop the rest of the day. So we had a wet and miserable Sunday, but I managed to keep the clean shoot going and finished with my first clean match ever, and at a State level match to boot!

Copper took some fantastic pictures and everyone had a good time. Our posse was fantastic with all the Thunder Valley boys, a nice Manatee, a couple of fun black powder shooters from Tennessee, No Purse Neuce, and the world record holder Widowmaker. Everybody worked hard and made the 2 days fly by. I picked up a short stroke kit from Manatee and Jose should be getting it put in my ’66 real soon. I generally hate the award ceremonies but these seemed to be better the usual and I made it home to see my daughter Sabrina before she went to bed. Great weekend!