Ka-Boom

One of our activities today was shooting at exploding targets. Fun, right? I've only shot a gun one time before and that was years ago so this was sort of a new thing for me.
To get us started my brother in law set up a target for us and ear plugs were passed around. Ryan was one of the first to go and he was a pretty good shot. His hit on the target produced a lot of smoke which is always a crowd pleaser and after the little explosion you could clearly see the damage to our make shift target.

It was fun to watch everyone get up and take a turn shooting at the target. The kids all took turns watching through the binoculars to see where the bullet went in relation to the target. Brayden seemed really interested for a while but I'm not even sure if he stuck around long enough to his mama shoot. I have to admit it took me a half dozen shots to hit the target. The most disappointing part of it all was that on my 5th shot I hit the corner of the target and the exploding insides just dripped out. I tried again but when I hit the target the next shot it did nothing. It did feel good to say that I hit something but it sucked that I didn't get to hear my explosion or see any smoke. I think it made up for it when Jess hit her target and pretty much our whole board exploded because of the leaked goodness!

After we were done with the target they brought out a few guns that were bigger and louder for clay pigeon shooting. I could feel the shots from those guns and even with the ear plugs in, it was loud. Ryan shot while I was busy with Madison and so I didn't get any pictures of him shooting but he did shoot every clay pigeon they threw out for him. It's always good to know that he'll be able to protect us in the zombie apocalypse. Ryan and I were able to take a few shots together. My brother in law did a great job teaching me how to stand and position the gun for my shot! He also told me that even though there was going to be more of a kickback from these guns then the previous, my gun had less of a kickback then the one Ryan would be using. Somehow I interpreted this as no kickback and thankfully I had that gun snug up against my shoulder because as you can see by the picture, it was more a kickback then I was expecting!
FYI I totally missed the clay pigeon.