Day 457

We got up when the alarm went off at 7, did the pet stuff, had breakfast, and left for Hog Heaven.  We got there just as they were starting the festivities.  Of course that was praying.  The singer they've had for the last two days had to go home last night, so there was only one song, done to recorded music.

After a lesson on how a good Christian reacts to set problems we went out to shoot 5-stand.  We were supposed to be keeping score.  The trappers had been instructed to screw up, and they did in funny ways.  I missed the whole point.  I thought we were fooling around.   It wasn't until Gevin stopped us to explain that I realized they were giving us a chance to practice the lesson.

After that we shot a non-screw up round of 5-stand.  It was warmer, high 30's, but still cold.  The wind had shifted 180 degrees from the last two days.  It was blowing the targets out now.  It was a big boy 5-stand.  I didn't do really well, 14, but it was pretty good considering my lack of practice.

After that we went back in for a little more talking and then lunch.  Ellen's bag was leaking, so we drove home and fixed it.  She couldn't lay down afterwards because we didn't have time.  Of course Lucy was really happy to see us, and then really disappointed when we locked her back up.  Instead we just drove back.  We missed some stuff, but I'm not sure what.

Then we went out for the big shoot.  There were 12 stations.  Each station had three stands, set like golf T's.  You needed to run the station.  You started at the hardest stand.  If you missed you had to start over.  Three misses at the hard stand meant you went to the middle stand.  Two misses at the middle stand meant you went to the easy stand and just shot 8 targets.  The targets were all pro-course level targets.

You were supposed to walk the course and carry 200 shells.  There was no way Ellen was going to do that.  So they gave us a cart.  At least it had warmed up to a balmy 45.  It almost seemed comfortable.

We shot with a guy from Arizona.  He was a better shooter than us, but really easy going.  That was nice.

We went through a lot of shells, primarily because I had an attack of the 7's.  I would miss one bird on the last pair.  That meant that I would have to start over again.  All total we went through over 2 cases of shells.

It was great from my point of view.  I got a chance to shoot a lot of practice at hard targets.  The last year of not shooting has wrecked my ability to hit targets.  All of these targets allowed me to get part of that back.

By the time we were done, we were really tired.  My shoulder ached.  The sun had almost gone down by the time we were at the last two stations and the temperature had really dropped.  We had to wait for a squad at the last station because a machine was screwing up.  They finally left in disgust.  They guy we were shooting with got the machine to work, and we shot it.  It was pretty cold and getting dark by the time we were done.

We were the first ones in.  We sat by the fire while a lot of tired people trickled in.  In the talk after they told us how the whole thing was designed to make us tired and call on god for support in finishing.  Apparently this part of the program is designed after another program that makes people do grueling physical acts like carrying a cross up and down a 1/2 mile hill.

After that we had dinner and there some closing remarks and a prayer.  We left fairly soon after saying our thanks and good byes.  Ellen's bag was leaking again.

When we got home we did the pet stuff.  We changed Ellen's bag and I put everything away.  Then we both surfed for awhile.  We were asleep by 11.