Monday, October 12, 2009

Beaten zone.


Here's the "Before" picture looking downrange at Knob Creek sometime around 8AM Saturday. (You can click it to embiggenate.)

They had Bobcats and front-end loaders setting up the neat-o targets. I think that pickup truck on a pedestal must have been a nearly irresistible target for the guys with the small cannons on the line.

Speaking of cannon, check out that adorable little mountain gun.

It was total candy-coated armageddon in surround-sound and full technicolor.

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

I was there! What a great weekend!! Most people I've ever seen in my 3 trips to the Creek.
-mpthole

Rabbit said...

They've got a neat little Hotchkiss just like that at the Arty museum at Ft. Sill.

Close by it is a *revolving* Hotchkiss. Even neater, like a Gatling on goat glands.

It makes the experience of having to go to Oklahoma redeemable.

DaddyBear said...

Knob Creek is great no matter when you go, but it's especially fun when ALL the big boys show up to send rounds down range.

I'd like to thank all of you for contributing to the ranges efforts to put my target stands for the next month out on the range.

Much appreciated.

Glad you had a good time. Wish I'd been able to make it out.

fast richard said...

That "adorable little mountain gun" looks like the Hotchkiss that I saw featured on a cable TV show about a Las Vegas Pawn Shop. Knob Creek sounds like the perfect place to show off something like that.

10th Mountain said...

Ya'all need to come out to Big Sandy, Az and see the real show.
Tanks, Artillery, Mortars, Flamethrowers, & Belt guns galore.

www.mgshooters.com

RevGreg said...

Grrrr...don't mention the Big Sandy shoot! Spent two weeks in AZ in March and belatedly realized that our schedule had us flying back east the day BEFORE the shoot started. We wouldn't have had any guns with us but we don't get to watch tracers lace the night sky 'round these parts and I haven't watched any since the SP Crater shoots back in the day.

Ed Foster said...

We have one of those giant Gatlings too, 40 mm I believe, in the State House in Hartford, the ground floor of which is one of the more fun military museums around.

Connecticut boys captured it in Cuba, and I gather the Spaniards put up one hell of a fight, as all of them died in the bayonet work that ensued.

Does anybody know where I might find a drive shaft (torque tube) for a late 40's/early 50's Ford?

We had this rather colorful fellow (I won't say nutjob) down in Durham CT when I was an innocent and impressionable teenager (O.K., impressionable) who took one of said driveshafts, welded in a plug, shrink fitted and through bolted a cap over the plug, then made up a very professional looking gun carriage for the thing out of an old Mercury front end and some 3/16ths inch sheet metal.

It seems Ford made the driveshafts on the same line they'd used to forge cannon barrels during the war, said shafts were seamless and very strong, and the bore was a perfect smooth sliding fit for cement filled beer cans propelled by a half pound of black powder.

Old man Fisher out on the Killingworth Road let us take a shed down for him with it. We never told him how close the first ranging shot came to his stud bull. Anyway, if I've given anyone any ideas, well....

HTRN said...

Rabbit, SARCO has a Hotchkiss revolving cannon for sale in their showroom - I do believe they got it from Navy Arms, when they cleaned out alot of stuff some years ago. It ain't cheap though - they're asking 135K.

Mark K. Sprengel said...

I really need to get down there one of these days!