Miss Fatale and I headed towards Blogarado on Friday from Bugscuffle, but due to work-related delays, had to overnight in Amarillo, arriving at the shooting pit noon-ish on Saturday.

OldNFO, AEPilotJim and Farmdad had set up a pistol range with poppers, falling steel, and paper; a rifle range with a half-size steel silhouette at 240 yards, and paper at shorter distances; and the piece de resistance: fifty-five-gallon drums at 500 and 950 yards.

And the guns. OhMyGawd, the guns.

I was admiring the falling plates when someone stuck a revolver in my paw and gestured downrange. When the damage was done, I looked down at the pistol I had been shooting with wild abandon to discover that I held a Smith and Wesson Five Screw Hand Ejector.

No wonder the trigger was so nice.

You name it, it was probably fired — including the Internet’s Most Famous Bersa.

Towards the end of the day, AEPilotJim pulled me to one side and revealed a small plastic jar of black and white granular substance. Much chortling ensued as we stealthily secreted the jar in an inoffensive red picnic cup and placed it on top of a blue barrel located at the hundred-yard rifle line, then we went to the three newest female shooters and innocently invited them to participate in the “time-honoured” ritual of “just shooting a cup of red Jello-O. Makes a nice red mist to mark the end of the day’s festivities, don’t you know”.

I may have to work on my innocent expression, because all three of them regarded me with great suspicion … but they came to the rifle range; where we put them on various scoped pretties and let them fire at will at the red cup.

Breda was the one to nail the cup full of Tannerite, producing an absolutely wonderful, tooth-rattling “BOOM!” and knocking the barrel arse-over-tincups to the equally-thunderous cheers and applause of the spectators.

Followed by Breda asking — confusedly — “Did I hit it?”

Heh.

Shooting was followed by some of the best gravy on the face of God’s little green dirtball — and some chicken fried steak, mashed potatoes and so forth, all washed down with home-brewed beer and story-telling.

Sunday to follow.

LawDog