Rootin' Tootin' Shootin' Range...

On Saturday I (slightly nervously) went to a shooting range with Ben and Tet.

After a hearty breakfast at the Court Square Diner in Queens (which was rather tasty) I met up with Ben and Tet and we set off towards to Poconose, a beautiful area just outside of New York state, full of hilly countryside and forests.

We stopped off on the way for a quick hotdog at a little dive place called Libby's Lunch, it was famed for being on of the best hotdogs outside of New York, but to be perfectly honest, it wasn't anything special really. I prefer the Central Park Hotdogs...

After a couple of hours, we finally arrived at the Sunset Hill Shooting Range.

As we stepped out of the car, we were instantly being deafened by the sounds of gun shots firing just over the fence, and as we walked across the gravel we looked down and noticed that the gravel was an even mix of stone and old shells...

After donning our safety glasses and ear protectors, we made our way over to the range, which was a bit like a gun buffet, you were assigned and instructor who asked you which guns you'd like to fire, they were all on display, so it was a bit of an eeny-meany-miney-mo moment.

I can't really remember to order of the guns we fired, or all their names - but I know that we fired a Desert Eagle (the big silver one!) which had quite a kick to it. But more exciting than that was shooting a Smith and Wesson cowboy gun, the barrell was soooooo long. I felt like Dirty Harry!

The bullets for the Dirty Harry gun were HUGE, it cost $5 per bullet if you wanted to fire one, so we just shot one bullet each...

After shooting 3 or 4 hand guns we moved onto some rifles. I wasn't really that bothered about the rifles, they scared me a bit because you have to rest you face on the gun to aim... they weren't easy to fire either - it made me really appreciate how good Tom must be at shooting to have gone to compete at Bisley!

I can't really remember the names of the rifles we fired either, apart from an AK-47 - that's a famous one that I'd heard of before (probably for all the wrong reasons though!).

Finally, we ended the day on a pump-action-shot gun, which was GREAT fun and felt just like being in a film (which is probably the completely wrong attitude to have, but I couldn't help it!)

We shot clay pigeons with the shotgun, which I was convinced I'd miss every one, but I managed to hit 3 out of 5... not tooooo bad for a beginner.

The orange in the mound is made up of lots of old broken and unbroken (including the 5 that I missed) pigeons...

At the end of it all we were allowed to keep a few old shells and our target, I was quite pleased with mine, I think I killed the rather camply posed character, all 5x or 5 points!

It was an interesting experience, and something that I can only really imagine doing in America.It certainly made me appreciate how amazingly brave soldiers have to be to train and be prepared to go to war, surrounded by the horrific sounds of gunfire, and actually using the guns for their purpose rather than for recreation.

I ended up enjoying it a lot more than I thought I would. I didn't really enjoy the rifles that much (I think at one point was closed both eyes when I was aiming!), but firing the Dirty Harry gun was great fun.