Atomic Nerds

“Gawd, I love rednecks!”
-LawDog

SUNDAY
Astute readers may have noticed that I just skipped entirely over Saturday. Saturday was awesome, and featured less interruption from that damn train, more appearance of LawDog and Phlegmmy, yet more utterly amazing food from the FarmFam, and more shooty goodness than you can shake a stick at. Seriously, someone shook a stick, then someone else yelled “Throw it down range!” and then the stick had a very bad day. Most folks probably turned more money into smoke and noise in one day than in the last several months to years combined. And it was awesome. But everybody else has covered that, and I figure if I keep dragging this out it’ll be worse than those interminable slide-shows your Aunt Gertrude shows of the time she and Uncle Trappedinalovelessmarriage took a cruise.

So we’re skipping that.

Well, almost. It’d be a shame not to include a quick aside about everybody’s favorite doing it wrong shooter, Breda. See, LawDog and Jim (hey, we’re going shooting in 20 minutes!) opted to add a little to some of the targets. You know, just to keep things interesting.

Breda stepped up to the plate.

And promptly sent all six shots of full-house .44 mag right where they needed to go.

What’s that? That’s only five and one is missing? Well, I suppose you could say one is missing…

Right, moving on.

Sunday was more of the same. Salamander sadly had to depart early to tend a sick newt, but not before we got pictures of his epic kneebeards:

And if that doesn’t sound like an excerpt from a Glen Baxter cartoon to you too, then I’m gonna have to wonder. Matt and his dad Johnny rolled in early in the morning and joined us out at the range for yet more time making Sarah Brady cry and Paul Helmke crap himself with terror. I’m reasonably sure there have been actual war zones that saw less fire than the range we were on. As it tends to, however, the sun sank low and we were forced to gather up, pack in, and call it a day. A little thousand(ish) yard plinking had everyone in fine spirits (even if he did neglect to mention my score in there). The FarmFam had more food ready, and there was still plenty of beer left waiting in town. Being rather hungry at this point, after we finished cleaning up the range and getting everybody’s gear sorted out, I was following hard on the heels of FarmGirl while everybody else took a more sedate pace.

Thus it happened that as we were rolling up to the main highway back to town, we were a mite perplexed when FarmGirl pulled her full-to-overflowing pickup over and rolled down a window. The road being otherwise empty, we pulled up even and likewise lowered the glass.
“Anything wrong?” I called over.
“Kelly hit a deer. Can y’all fit his gear in your truck and give him a tow back to town? Everybody else is full up.”
I was a little dubious about the “back to town” part since we were still more than a few miles away from what could be called “town,” but the gas tank was mostly full and I wasn’t about to leave one of our own up shit creek just because the paddling might be a touch inconvenient. We reversed course and headed back.

Fewer miles back than I was fearing, we saw a collection of flashing hazard lights. Pulling up, we found a whole pack of shooters gathered around one wounded Dodge Dakota and one very nice buck (blood warning) that was having a worse day than the stick someone waved at the range. Matt covers the parts we were driving for here. Since the unnecessary bureaucracy proper authorities informed us that Kelly wouldn’t be able to keep the head (of, by his own admission, the biggest buck he had ever taken) for mounting, we did the next best thing and started acting like a bunch of punchy, cold, hungry jackasses looking for fun instead of just sitting around being glum about the delay. A Sawz-All was produced from the FarmFam truck, the head removed in remarkably short order, and the abundantly horned Ram emblem on the hood of the now crippled Dakota received one hell of an upgrade (decapitated head and ruined Dakota grill warning).

With the now headless deer pointed downhill to drain while we waited, an observation was made. When in the midst of a good number of people walking around openly armed, having a great time at the site of an accident it does not leave the greatest first impression with the responding officer when the first sight is a very nice buck head wearing a blaze orange hat and smoking a cigarette. The impression is further not served by finding one of said armed and happy folk standing over the ass-end of a headless deer, thrusting his hips in the air, and proclaiming loudly “THIS *thrust* IS WHAT *thrust* YOU GET *thrust* FOR NOT *thrust* HAVING *thrust* OPPOSABLE *thrust* THUMBS!”

Kinda makes the officer look askance at things. Honestly, I’m amazed we weren’t all breathalyzed.

As the red tape spooled along, we were finally given permission to quarter out and skin the deer. Since luck was (uh, kinda?) on the gunbloggers’ side, the intestines hadn’t burst, and there was nowhere near as much damaged meat as there could have been. More bad advice, questionable practices, general ribbing, and flat out heartfelt laughter has to my knowledge never before been present at the side of the road dealing with an accident. LabRat suggested that Kelly, ah, “mark” his kill, performing an act of questionable hygiene with the creature’s esophagus. Kelly noted a preference for the trachea, as it would be ribbed for his pleasure, at which point, while pulling one of the hind legs into a better butchering position, LawDog offered the opinion gracing the very top of this post. Then there was the part where we had a recreation of the scene from 2001: A Space Odyssey where the chimp figured out how to use a bone for a club, improvised with the lower chunk of the deer’s leg, but that was just silly.

The meat was all bagged (this being the most perfectly, if accidentally, equipped game harvest ever), and we started moving things from small Dodge to big Dodge, and located a tow strap. MattG approached as LabRat and I arranged cargo under the illumination of the rearward facing light on the cab.
“Do you finally feel validated for having this big a truck?” my ever so loving and never mocking bride inquired.
“Yes. Yes I do.”
“Every truck owner lives for this,” Matt commented. “I did when I had one, I know that much. The day comes when someone has a lot to haul, or needs a tow, and the truck owner can stand proudly and say ‘Yes, I can help.’ It’s a bit like being superman. You’re thrilled about this, aren’t you, towing and hauling in one event?”
“…yeah.”

Cargo transferred, we hooked up the radiator-less Dakota and set off for a FarmFamily storage outpost, thankfully much closer than the main town. Over the course of the weekend, much fun was had by all commenting on the peculiar rail accessory hanging off my AR-15, here wielded by Alan.

Well, walking into the FarmFam garage, Kelly turned out to trump me, and offered to our recalcitrant gourmand a superior set of fuzzy dize to mount to a rail.

And just as one final note, I’ll probably get a rather large boot applied to my posterior the next time we meet up with him, but in the process of all this Kelly threw down and served notice to every plumber in the world. A true challenge has been issued, and the master of roadside charcuterie himself laid down the law about just how some things are done. I’d offer a link, or a jump cut or something to move this out of direct sight, but all of us at the side of the road had it etched into our minds, and it’s scientifically proven that the best thing to do in this sort of situation is to sear the image on as many minds as possible, sort of a shared pain is less pain thing. Enjoy.

Posted Ballistic Mood Improvers, Food, Friends, japery, Wildlife Interface |