MAN Day!

Yesterday after the church service at Lahoma Baptist Church, the men and boys of the church gathered to enjoy fun and fellowship for "MAN Day"! The best I can figure out is that MAN stands for Meat, Arms and Noise! We grilled and enjoyed such meat as steak (one lucky fellow had elk steak!), pork chops, hot links, burgers and ribs plus some kind soul provided a big crock pot of barbecued beans. We ate and enjoyed some fellowship and then proceeded out to the pastor's family farm for the real fun; the shooting of firearms!  While most brought their modern sporting rifles, modern handguns and modern shotguns (which is fine and expected), your's truly, being the dedicated traditional muzzleloading enthusiast and diehard mountaineer that I am, brought my trusty .54 flint, fullstock Hawken and my .62 long barreled Northwest Trade Gun with the hopes of introducing traditional muzzleloading to some new folks. I also brought my 15" gong and placed it out at around 50 yards so that anyone hitting the target with these guns would be appropriately rewarded with that lovely sound of lead impacting steel.  After loading up the .54 and ringing the gong a couple of times, I was rewarded by the interest of Pastor Brent Campbell and by Ben Koehn, both of whom were quite taken with the smoke, muzzle blast and mystique of the old guns! Ben chose to shoot the .62 NWTG and Pastor Brent elected to give them both a try, ringing the steel at 50 yards with the smoothbore NWTG!
Here are a few SHORT video clips of these two good men as captured on Ben's cell phone.

Ben Koehn shooting the .62 NWTG

Pastor Brent shooting the .62 NWTG

Pastor Brent shooting the .54 Hawken

We all had a great time and I had a chance to fellowship with the men of the church including my own son Ben and my son-in-law Wade.  I'm thankful to the Lord for this opportunity to get to know the men of the church better and I'm also glad for the chance to introduce some new shooters to our hobby/lifestyle and I encourage all of you to do the same whenever the opportunity presents itself.
Until next time, keep your eyes along the skyline and watch your backtrail.

Me clearing the flash hole on the NWTG.

(Photo courtesy of Ben Koehn)