So, Old Trooper invited us to his Hillbilly Hunt Club’s shootout this weekend. After driving way out in the boondocks in Minnesota, this was part of our selection to rain death and destruction on the targets;
This was the range:
We even let TSO try his hand at marksmanship;
Many thanks to the good old boys who invited us, paid for the ammo and then cleaned the weapons up when we left. And thanks to B5’s The Mr. Wolf for the photos.
Old Trooper sent some more pictures that I added below the jump;
Your host;
Spotting for TSO you really need a wide angle spotter;
Wow. The range literally includes the broad side of a barn. Nice.
OMG! The Horror! Stockpiling Weapons!
And not a single Airsoft gun to be seen anywhere. I guess Richter didn’t show up there either.
I would like to personally thank Jonn, TSO, and Mr. Wolf (B5) for joining us at the HHC secret undisclosed location, yesterday. I apologize that it is so far out of the Metro area, but as I said, the bedwetters inside the metro would have a fricken heart attack if we held any of our gatherings within the leftist confines of yuppiedom. It was a true pleasure to have you guys in attendance. I wish you could have stayed later and joined in the grilling and adult beverage consumption after the bang toys were put away, but free tickets to a football game override important stuff sometimes. The rest of us took one for the team and finished off all the coldies in the cooler and there was plenty of dead animal flesh that was consumed.
I am going to download some pictures off the camera and send them in (I think I got one of Jonn getting a proper mean on).
I hope you found your way back to Mpls with no trouble in time for the evening festivities, even though the Vikes lost to Dallas.
Scott: The way we were shooting, the broad side of the barn was safe if we were aiming at it. 🙂
Man, that looks like fun. Glad to see the pics.
Sometime this coming year I ought to see about inviting you all up to Maine too.
I see a Mosin-Nagant at the far end of that table sandwiched in between the shotgun and the AR…epic bang-bang. Love that rifle. Best $70 I ever spent.
You would be correct, Claymore, and it is the best sub-$100 rifles out there, bar none. It has the accuracy of rifles costing 8X as much with iron sites. I love mine (that’s mine in the pic, along with the shotgun and AR that are sammiching it).
I got lucky and picked up one that hadn’t been counterbored. While the bore is dark, the rifling is sharp. The stocks…eh…the shellac is flaking off in spots, but all the numbers match, right down to the bayonet. TSO can vouch for this…the first couple of days I had it, I couldn’t quit messing with the action and generally fiddling with it. Awesome rifle that everyone can afford to add to their personal collection.
@#8 Claymore”:
Being out of the loop of buying former military weaponry, where can I start to look for one?
Very cool you guys! Did TSO eventually hit the broad side of the barn, Old Trooper? My gawd Jonn, You’ve slimmed down. Do I see a touch of silver creeping in on your hair? lol. Thanks for posting this. Where’s Wolf hiding? Way behind TSO while he’s shooting?
Streetsweeper: That’s Mr. Wolf on the very left in the bottom picture (he was using the spotting scope cuz we didn’t know where the hell TSO was shooting, heh, heh, heh)
Frankly,
If you happen to know someone who has a Curio & Relic FFL, they can order them from all over the place, including my favorite spot, Classic Arms (http://classicarms.us/firearms.htm). If you don’t have a bud who’s a “cruffler”, most regular gun shops can order you one for sub-$100. There are literally dozens of different versions of this weapon, including laminate stocks, different armories (Tula versus Izzy), dragoon era vs WWII, hexagonal receiver vs round, not to mention sniper variants which are highly collectable…we’re talking about a rifle that’s been around since 1891, so there are millions of these things floating around. I want to pick up a M38 version (more or less a shorter carbine type) or a M44 (same thing, but with an attached folding bayonet), but the market for those are pretty dry right now. All of them will basically have dark bores due to the corrosive ammo they’ve used over there since the dark ages, but nearly all of the commercially available rifles have been armory reconditioned. My advice would be to call around your area and be picky! It’s a nice rifle, accurate as hell…and it can kick like a mule with that 7.62mm rimmed cartridge. Go grab one!
OT…Nice digs you got there…I love me some barns and green…even if it gets cold, too! Jonn’s looking a bit underfed…heh. Glad you could host and have some fun!
Somebody tell TSO if he pulls the trigger with that eyepiece up that close, he’s going to look like his wife smacked him in the haid with a frying pan.
Claymore #14: Well said. I suspect that Caro would opt for different way to get his attention though. [grin]
Defend; sorry to say, that’s not my farm, it belongs to a buddy of mine, that happens to love shooting, I live inside the metro area. We were down there shooting a couple of years ago and we had not quite as many bang toys as now, but someone commented that it makes us look like a bunch of hillbillies, so the name stuck and we decided to make his farm the official headquarters for the Hillbilly Hunt Club and that’s what it’s been ever since. We usually get there in the Spring and the Fall, because of all the greenery and the garden, but this year we added trap shooting to the mix, so we have been doing more shooting than normal (even though I can’t hit shit in the air, I give it the ‘ol college try and the other guys have fun giving me grief about it).
I will have to say this, though, Jonn commented that he hadn’t shot trap in decades, but you couldn’t tell it, because he was knocking ’em down like he knew how.
OT #16: You’d invited me before. What I wanna know… Do you regret having these two? Jonn even noted that he didn’t feel obligated to clean up. Cracked me up enough to ask.
What’s the word… dilettante?
Well, Zero, you’re always welcome at the HHC. Nah, I don’t regret having those guys here, I was just shocked that they made it back to Minneapolis in time for the game. I was sure I would get a call about an hour after they left saying “where the f*** are we!?!?”
#’s 8 & 14 Claymore,
I have one of those M44s – **** thing kicks like a **** mule. Accurate as hell, but hurts so good to shoot, none the less.
You have to really question the wisdom of a steel buttplate, but considering it was an infantry weapon, I suppose they didn’t think it would be used by old guys shooting tin cans and gallon milk jugs out in the woods. 🙂
If anyone cares to check it out, Mr. Wolf has a couple of pics and several videos up over at B5.
“and then cleaned the weapons up when we left” – good lord, it doesn’t get any better than that.
Woodman, I picked up a butt pad for $10 that fits perfect and slides right on, because last year, firing with a t-shirt on, I shot 4 rounds and had a bruise that covered my whole shoulder!
What’s with these guys? I fired them all, and nothing kicked ME too hard 🙂 Ok, so the trigger pull on the PPS wasn’t anything I’d like to repeat (pull, pull, pull some more…just a little more.. BOOM!) nothing was putting marks on me…
Then again, the shotguns were about 10 inches too long for my chimp arms…
It was a great place to shoot!
Well, you didn’t shoot the 20 ga. shotgun; did ya? That’s one of JB’s and is a “youth” model so it has the shorter stock for shorter arms. I love shooting that one, it is great for bird shooting and it takes care of business without the added weight/length of the 12s that were out there. I plan on picking one of them up for myself, because they are just fun to shoot.
Just a note: The HHC Fall Festival of Mayhem is in the works (planning stages) for sometime around the end of October, if you find yourself in this AO at that time, you are always welcome.
Dragenov…AKM….Mosi…RPD?!!WTF people! C’mon. Where were the 1911’s, M1a’s, Rem 700’s?.Hmmm. Lotsa Commie steel and some tactical Tupperware. Owwww.. and ONE poodle shooter.
Heh.
I kid. I kid because I love. Hope ya’ll had a blast!
“Tactical Tupperware”??? Never heard that one before!
Heeheeheeheehee!
Well, ichi, if we had all those weapons that you mention, they would be the only ones on that table! We’re just a bunch of poor dumb hillbillies and weapons and ammo are cheaper for the com-bloc stuff. It comes down to whether we want to shoot or admire our pristine M1A (which is pristine because we blew all our money buying the rifle and ammo is too expensive to shoot it more than once a year). I know that you know that; ya know? I, also, know that you know that I know you’re just kidding.
“Tactical tupperware”; I don’t care who ya are, that’s funny right there.
Jonn’s belly, (or lack thereof), sorta shoots Sphincter’s Fat boy argument down.