Mike Root and I met today at his cabin, Root's Roost to walk around the property and lay out some potential shooting lanes and distances. I was using my eyeballs to estimate distances and thought I had it all figured out about right.

Then Mike cheated and brought out a long reel-up 100 foot tape measure and we walked it again. Gah! I have to confess I am really absolutely rotten at estimating range distances. I was off by a factor of huge on some of my range estimates of the distances from here to the edge of that and the end of that long fire lane. I consistently thought everything was a longer distance than it really was.

Mike has a honest, tape measured 200 yard slightly down hill range lane available.

He has an honest 100 yard long, nice and wide range area going off to the side. He has lots of places to shoot at distances up to 50 yards. All of this is pointable from a central position where we would put the shooting bench.

Shooting the 8mm I brought with me (with milder rounds) we discussed if it was smart to make a sit down shooting bench or a stand up shooting bench. Recoil generating guns like a stand up shooting position better than a kick your butt in a sit down position.

After all, you shoot a whole lot when you go to a shoot.

His property is still being cleared and disc plowed to clean up the ground, which is why he said it would be at least next year before we could schedule a shoot at his place. This puts him in a good place planning-wise, because he can literally build the shoot design into his property as he clears it.

My wife wants her computer, let me log out and switch over to my machine.

Oldfeller

Oldfeller,

I hope you weren't put of by the Rusticity of my place. As hot as it gets here in SC we don't move very fast in the summer. Of course we do slow down when it gets cold.

Mike

Mike, it didn't put me off in the least. It is exactly what you described it to be. A cabin on freshly developed land accessed by a private road (total privacy).

Folks attending a shoot at your place will be camping out on the flat area right up from the shooting bench itself. They will be sleeping on a mat of thick freshly sown first year grass on a spot that was leveled out and raked especially just for them to sleep on. (smells nice already)

I bet most of us grew up going camping and have a full set of camping stuff. I do. I like camping, but I do like it more in the spring and the fall when it isn't hot and sticky or freezingly cold. Of that spring/fall pair, spring time is nicer because the bugs haven't gotten out yet.

Something that we have to find out from the larger combined group we have now is just how many people on the east coast states would be willing to drive 3-5 hours to get to a two-day weekend shoot?

I'd hate to be planning a shoot for 5-10 guys and suddenly find out we had 30+ people interested in a Spring 2004 East Coast Shoot. Vice versa, if the number of people were to be greater than say 20, we would probably need to try to talk to the guy with the defunct covered roof range above Spring Lake NC about renting the place.

For planning purposes, how many people would plan to take a Friday off one week in early spring and drive to a common location to have a 2-day shoot?

Notice I have no restrictions or pre-concieved notions on the weekend or the location, I am fully open to all possible options. I also know about half the people really can't get off on any given Friday and for them it would be a one-night stayover and a split-day shoot with them hitting the road to come up early on Saturday morning and going home Sunday afternoon.

Following right along with that "find out what you are really dealing with" thought, if you are in the East Coast States and you have access to a good 200 yard range (maybe you are a member of a club or whatever) please speak up now. You would open up some new possibilities.

Mike and I have been working within the resources that we know about. I have always been hoping that somebody would speak up that they had access to a 200 yard shooting club range for free (may as well hope big) that would be more ideally centrally located.

Next, with the new expanded combined group we have now I really don't even know what "centrally located" is anymore. Mike and Puncher live in Columbia SC. Mike's property is at Patrick, SC (just south of NC boarder). I live in Fayetteville NC just off I-95. We have folks right up at the Virginia/NC boarder and folks that live in Tennessee.

We likely have a bunch more Accurate east coast guys that need to ring in and at least tell us where they would be coming from so we can correctly plan for a central location.

When you ring in with your home location, also say "camp" if you can camp or "hotel" if you lack the equipment and are going to stay in a room. Both are fairly easily done, you will just have to drive back to your hotel room at night when you get tired of swapping stories around an evening campfire.

Me, I'll camp. I will be so sick of being cooped up inside all winter I will be glad to camp outside on a nice spring weekend.

Y'all come back with your home 20's and your "camp" or "hotel" needs. Tell us these facts even if you aren't sure you want to go right now (planning for you is cheap and easy at this stage, its all just talk right now).

We will have a better shoot the better we can suit the people who actually live on the east coast.

Oldfeller

Mike, I think I scared them all off when I said the nasty word "camp".

Allow me to rephrase that totally errant and erronious comment.

WE WILL HAVE dual queen-size bed equipped, dual hepa-filtered zone-controlled air conditioning, with a 200 channel 80 inch surround-sound wide-screen TV sitting on top of a fully stocked mini-bar (complete with tins of Beluga Caviar), with two high-speed T-6 internet connections in every single room including the two bathrooms in a private suite-based set of rooms with common access to a heated swimming pool, a full length basketball court, a weight room, a cedar-lined Swedish sauna, a stainless steel raised whirlpool bath, a marble lined bubble jet jacuzzi complete with a pair of young blond muscular oiled skin full-figured towel carrying bikini-clad massuses and a single 24-hour suite-based long legged mini-skirted dark haired boustiere-equipped french maid concierge (for that special personal touch) all in a 4-star gormet restaurant equipped luxury hotel room available for EVERYBODY ....

....who can afford it....

... and only those retrograde ugly hairy smelly mil-surp shooting barbarians who actually like to rough it can camp out by the firing line (and only the very bravest souls in that select group of neanderthals who volunteer to keep guard over the equipment all night long will get a free beer for their trouble).

Next, we will schedule the shoot on the same weekend and close to the same city as a 3 day long major Dixie Gun and Knife gun show event that you would just HAVE to drive the 3-5 hours to get to anyway.

(now this trick will limit us on dates and locations offered quite a bit I would think).

We will pick a locality with several high end wholesale gun jobberies and lots of mid-range pawn shops (complete with several inside pistol ranges) and even a couple of cheap low-end used gun type pawn shops for the mil-surp barbarians to go look through.

And since it is spring gun-show weekend everybody will be running their once-a-year super specials on whole crates of $99 Romanian SKS rifles and rack after rack of $49 Turks and dozens of $89 Yugos all still packed in the original arsenal grease and waxed paper.

(you see, they all really hate it that everyone goes to the gun & knife show to spend all their money so they try to entice the few that actually come into their store on gun show weekend into spending their money with them instead)

Now does anyone want to go to the Spring 2004 East Coast Cast Bullet Shoot?

Oldfeller

[ 08-25-2003, 09:07: Message edited by: Oldfeller ]

Oldfeller,
Sounds like a lot of fun to me! I'm around 850 miles from Charleston, so it will take probably 12 hours to drive. Are there any airports that are near enough for a small plane?-JDL

Now, on a more serious note:

The Charlie Rose Expo-Center in Fayetteville NC has the Spring Gun and Knife show �pencilled in� (not 100% confirmed yet) for the weekend around April 3 & 4th. Our public shooting range, Range One, which is located just north of Fayetteville in a small town called Bunnlevel NC is open that weekend. Jim�s Gun Jobbery, Dave�s Shooting World and all the other gun stores and pawn shops scattered all over town are definitely open that weekend. The focal day would be that Saturday, April 3rd. The time for the shoot would be 1:00-5:00 PM (reserve the morning time for the long-distance drive up guys to get there and the more local guys to hit the gun show).

We could plan a very simple one-day drive up event as the first East Coast Cast Bullet Shoot.

With this �fail-safe� plan you pay a $13-$15 per day fee to shoot at a commercial 100 yard range, you stay in a nice hotel if you choose to stay over, you eat at nice restaurants, you get to go to a gun show and you get to chase the bargains at all the customer hungry local gun stores all in the same one-day trip.

Now, who wants to go?

Oldfeller

[ 08-25-2003, 18:21: Message edited by: Oldfeller ]

JDL,

If we go with the original plan there is a nice airport at Cheraw, SC that is about fifteen miles from the cabin. I'm sure we could arrange trabnsport to and from for a reasonable fee.

Mike

Patrick,SC sounds great! Count me in as a happy camper. Coming from PA Dutch Country, I'll book for the full 3 day event please, ink it in.
R*2

You guys sure are going to disappoint Helga, Ingrid and Lesette if you don't go and stay at the Embassy Suites Excelsior.

Not to mention all those hungry gun store owners and the little guy who takes your $8 so you can get into the not-very-much there gun show.

It sounds like all you are going to do up at Root's Roost is shoot a lot and spend all your time talking about cast bullets and guns.

Sounds like fun, doesn't it?

Oldfeller

OK, Mike has the Spring East Coast Cast Bullet Shoot that he is going to put on at Root's Roost early next spring. That is a big 10-4 and anyone in driving distance should plan to go to it. It will be a good one. I wouldn't miss it for the world.

Format for the event will be a full 2-day camping rendezvous with much good discussion and much good shooting. Fair warning, you need to plan to BYOB and food and beer and tent and beer and ammo, etc. etc.

If you don't think to bring it, you best not need it.

Did I mention that you need to bring lots of something to drink to keep your body fluids up? We hairy Neanderthal types can dehydrate so easily at night in the southern latitudes.

Remember some sunscreen, a hat and some OFF DEETCON III skeeter attractant (got to call them big suckers in close so you can shoot them for your dinner)

Do bring your cleaning kit and lots and lots of ammo, you will powder fouling buildup your bore to inaccuracy multiple times as so much constant shooting as will be going on.

Now, for the civilized amoung us (alias nancy boys) who really don't want to go rough it in woods in the spring time, I will host a Fall Shop & Shoot, a quick 3 hour shoot to go along with the Fall Gun and Knife show and I will lead a quick running tour of all the various Fayetteville gun shops.

I will start a different thread on the Fall Shop & Shoot so it won't get confused with the main 2 day Root's Roost Rendezvous.

(see, that way I get to do both things)

Mike and I are both down low on bulk mil-surp rifle powder and need to order some, so anyone planning to attend either one of the shoots can order what they want by the jug and we can take your money and have the partial case or one jug or whatever you needed waiting for you when you get to the shoot of your choice. Pull pricing of what you want off of Hi-Tech, not Bartlett.

Oldfeller