We had a great time camping and shooting in the Hill Country!

We arrived late Friday night (March 21, 2003), set up tents and went to sleep about midnight.  We got up at 6:00am Saturday, set up the kitchen shelters as the rains began, had breakfast, and walked up to the rifle range under a light rain shower for a refresher course on gun safety.  The weather cleared up and warmed up by 10:00am or so, making it much more pleasant the rest of the day.

Everyone spent the rest of the day having fun shooting rifles and shotguns and bows and arrows. The scouts and adults followed strict gun-safety and archery-safety rules throughout the day. 

In the late afternoon, we formed four 11-person teams and had shooting contests on all three ranges.

Dinner Saturday night was a long-awaited but delicious rice-chicken-vegetable dish, with peach cobbler for dessert, all cooked in Dutch ovens over charcoal.  We got up early Sunday morning, broke camp, and were back in Sugar Land just after noon, a bit tired and muddy, but happy to have had a safe and fun campout!

Pictures (Click on the links below, and then click on the thumbnail images to see the full-size images.)  If you have any pictures from the Shooting Weekend that you'd like to display here, you can either email them to Dave Tolle or lend them to him at one of the Troop meetings.  (He'll scan them and return them to you.)

• Setting up shelters on Saturday morning
• Rifle shooting
• Shotgun shooting
• Archery
• Water jug demonstrations
• Dinner Saturday night
• Packing up on Sunday morning
• Miscellaneous

ARCHIVAL INFORMATION:

Shooting Weekend Camping Trip: March 21-23.  At Horseshoe Bend Camp about 180 miles west of Houston.  Gather at the church at 5:30pm, leave at 6:00pm sharp!

Cost: $24 per person.  Payment (by check---no cash!) and a signed Informed Consent Form must be handed in to Kim Spera at the troop meeting on Monday night, March 10.

Bring eye protection (safety goggles or safety prescription eyeglasses).  Rifles and shotguns and ammunition and archery equipment will be provided.  Parents can bring their own, too.  No pistols are allowed. Everyone is welcome on the trip, but only those boys who have attended the safety lessons at the Troop meetings will be allowed to shoot.