I never thought I would loathe the range. But, after 25 hours in two days, the range really takes a toll on you. The reason for the long hours was for our night shoots. The days were long, tiring, stressful and both mentally and physically demanding. The first day (monday) we spent practicing our pistols and shotguns, the night shoot was pistols only. For those of you that have been keeping up with my blog know I have a winking disability. This week at the range my winking was not an issue thanks to my experienced Grandpa Eltrich. My Grandpa told me that he shoots left handed with the shotgun and right handed with his pistol. He recommended I try the same. Well Grandpa, it worked! I was shooting the shotgun and rifle a whole lot better.
The difficult part about switching sides was to relearn the skills left handed. It was complicated and a bit frustrating switching everything around but turned out to work out for the best.
Tuesday was the hardest day of the week. I had many moments of discouragement and patiently tried to work through the rough moments. All the cadets were exhausted and sore from monday. The day started off with handguns and then we spent a few hours on the shotgun and a few more with the rifles. We had a 30 minute lunch and dinner and only 2 five minute breaks the whole day. There were points during the day when my eyes filled up with tears. I was so mentally trained and tired from holding up the guns for hours at a time. Just the smallest mistake would set me off. All I wanted to do was throw the gun down to the ground fall into a small little ball and cry. I mostly found myself tearing up when we had to shoot the rifle. The rifle (AR-15) sits in a spot on the shoulder that is brutally painful. I wish I had a mark on my shoulder to prove the pain I went through.
As awful as the first two days were, the instructors had some fun days planned for us for the remainder of the week. We had a fun ballistics demonstration with clay and played a lot of fun games to help improve our shooting.
This was just a small part of the week. It was a busy week and it would be difficult to write and probably boring for you to read every detail.
My total hours of shooting this week: About 50 hours
1 comment:
Hi Elisabeth, We know tomorrow is your Birthday and we didn't send you a card because we didn't know where to send it. Hope you have a nice Birthday. We had a lot of rain yesterday and really enjoyed it. Hope all is well. Love You, Grandma E.
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