I took the family up to the hills to shoot yesterday. It’s a bit of drive from here to get to a good, safe, “free”, forest location to shoot. It’s about an hour and half drive from home, but it’s a good spot to shoot. And if we wanted, we could camp there, too.

We got all the way up there, got the kids situated and the truck unloaded. Assembled the new target stands and positioned for the first practice. I organized my shooting and reloading stations, and loaded up assorted magazines. I went to put up my targets… wait… where in the world are my targets?

They were stored safely in the garage at home.

Took five seconds to do the **face**palm** and consider my options.

Fortunately, it’s a national forest, and a pretty good location to shoot, so I still found plenty of atypical targets because so many other people never learned how to pick up after themselves. Full and partial clay pigeons, old shotgun shells, somebody’s old Christmas ornaments, a few planks of wood that somebody had brought up and abandoned as firewood.

So, in the end, I still found a way to run through some assorted calibers and even applied some of the things that I’d been considering since the amazingly rusty, terrible ClusterF__k shooting job I did last Sunday with Double-Tap.

Still, I think I did a better job in general.

A couple takeaways from this trip:

• watch that front sight
• assemble a ‘target kit’: a box, tote, or other suitable transportation solution for them and get some steel plates in a few different sizes, a few cans of marking paint (black, orange), and build some 18″ wide target stands for use with cardboard IDPA targets
• focus on the front sight
• I need a larger “range bag” — or, rather, maybe a rolling toolbox to keep ear protection for the kids, cleaning equipment, adjustment tools, stapler and staples, and a larger first aid kit, etc.
• do some more dry-fire, watching the front sight
• clean-up tools: garbage bags (because so many people don’t clean up after themselves), a garden rake or two, and a bucket for brass.
• maybe I should focus more on the front sight on the handguns.

Unfortunately, with as busy as I’ll be in the foreseeable future, I won’t get out to shoot until the snow starts flying in October or November. In the interim, I can at least spend a few minutes here and there preparing for the next trip.