Halloween approaches. It was my favorite holiday, next to Christmas, when I was a kid.\u00a0 There\u2019s still a special place for it in my heart.\u00a0\u00a0 When I was a (relatively) young dad, it pleased me greatly to take my kids out trick or treating and stand in the dark autumn night behind them and watch the fun.<\/p>\n
Over the last several years, I\u2019ve noticed the emergence of Halloween shoots at local gun clubs. They turn out to be big fun, too.<\/p>\n
Some clubs have pumpkin shoots.\u00a0 Blow hell outa those pulpy orange things. Its lotsa fun when you\u2019re doing it\u2026 though it will never be any fun to clean up after.<\/p>\n
Back in the \u201890s, a gun club I belonged to in New Hampshire had a Halloween pistol match every year. The targets were bowling pins on tables\u2026and you had to shoot in costume.\u00a0 Folks had fun with it. There were coneheads.\u00a0 There were vampires.\u00a0 There were witches.\u00a0 One of my daughters went as a cowgirl, complete with Buscadero gun belt and a really-for-real .45 in her holster, which she used to decimate the pins.<\/p>\n
One year I dressed up with a vampire cape and a sharkskin gun belt and holster\u2026yes, I went as an attorney.<\/p>\n
Early this month, I was in California teaching a class when the host club\u2019s IDPA chapter (International Defensive Pistol Association) had a Halloween-themed match.\u00a0 I was stuck lecturing in a classroom (AAUUGGHH!!) while everyone else had fun with stuff like:<\/p>\n
There\u2019s a witch target flying across the range on her broomstick, courtesy of the moving target apparatus.<\/p>\n
And\u2026 you have to nail the first few targets, then reload with \u201cyour special silver bullets\u201d to engage a werewolf, all while the clock is running.<\/p>\n
And of course, it would take a whole separate blog entry to discuss the currently trendy zombie element\u2026<\/p>\n
In our country, Halloween has evolved into a time for fun.\u00a0 It pleases me to see that this has come to encompass the shooting sports.<\/p>\n
What\u2019s you folks\u2019 take on it?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Halloween approaches. It was my favorite holiday, next to Christmas, when I was a kid.\u00a0 There\u2019s still a special place for it in my heart.\u00a0\u00a0 When I was a (relatively) young dad, it pleased me greatly to take my kids out trick or treating and stand in the dark autumn night behind them and watch […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":6428,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1515","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-uncategorized"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1515","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1515"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1515\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6428"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1515"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1515"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1515"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}