Welcome Back Wayne.

Wayne's back. The quartet is back together, except today. Maddi had to go play nice with his boss. But that wasn't the case on Monday.

One of the really great things about Sporting Clays is that you meet lots of really nice and genuine people at the clubs. Oak Ridge Gun Club, just outside of Peoria, IL, is one such place. Oak Ridge is a private club that exists almost solely for it's cooperate memberships. Namely Caterpillar, the heavy equipment manufacturer who's based in Peoria.

I took a chance and emailed the contact name, Matt Roth, for the club. I explained our situation, that we were in town for one day with Blue Man Group and that we'd like to shoot their Sporting Clays course if we could. I didn't hear back from them for quite a while, but when I did, Matt was more than welcoming. He was out on a fishing trip when he emailed, but he told me that he would use his personal membership to sponsor us into the club. He going to let us his personal shotguns, because the "rentals" they had were of sub par quality (pump action). How nice is that?

Monday was not looking like a good day, it was raining and the forecast called for thundershowers and high winds in the afternoon. I called Matt and he said he'd keep an eye on the forecast and call if he saw an opening. So we waited until noon and then I called him back and said we were coming any way, to at least see the course. it was wet when we arrived, but not raining, so we got out on the course. It rained a bit on the first few stations but it stopped and all we had to contend with was the wind. Matt and his buddies came out with us, not to shoot but to be social. We talked and laughed and had a great time. The course was really challenging. And it was made harder by the wind. Here's some picture I took between gusts of wind.

Welcome back Wayne!

Here's Mel standing in one of the fun stations. They called it "The Pit". Two targets would come straight at you, as you can see in the video below:

Here's another unique presentation. They called this "The Possum". The trapper sat at the top of the hill and dropped the clay into the wooden ramp and... Pop! There it was!

Despite the rain, it was a great day. And great people always make it a great time. We shot again today in Oklahoma City. I forgot to bring my camera, but it was probably a good thing because it rained the entire time. We shot at Silverleaf Shooting Sports. They have three courses and we shot the "silver" course. They had just changed the traps for a tournament they had coming up, so a lot of it was a real challenge. Not to mention that it was raining and the only gun they had to rent was a pump action. Wayne was most unhappy with the gun, but he still shot fine. We brought Lyle with us again in place of Maddi.

Silverleaf is a really nice course. We had a golf cart and the entire path was laid out with gravel so it was easy to drive around and we weren't standing in mud.

And that's all I have to say about that.

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