Last Sunday KeeWee and I loaded up our gear and headed South to Puyallup, WA. to the Paul Bunyan Gun Club for their monthly fun steel match. The weather forecast was for chilly temperatures, but a few sun breaks, and no wind, rain, or snow. Although it doesn't always work out that way here in the Pacific Northwest, the weather-dudes got it right this time, and that's exactly what we got.

Caleb, Phil, Tim, and James, early in the match, and already having fun!

The match was five stages, and we had a pretty good turnout, with 68 entries. More and more folks are finding out just how much fun it is to shoot a fun steel match. Will, the match director, set up the stages and determined the layout for the targets, or plates, and the idea for this match was for it to be blazing fast all day. Boy, was it! It was the kind of a match that can really give you a lot of bad habits, as the targets were big and close, and in some cases were double taps, or more! Every stage required a minimum of five shots per shot string, yet a number of the shooters averaged less that two seconds per shot string!

We had a great squad, with blogger Phil, Caleb, Shelley, Dan, James, Tim, KeeWee, John, Jeanette,and myself. (Who am I forgetting?). Jeanette, John's better half, was shooting her very first steel match and was a bit nervous, but she did just fine, shooting accurately without rushing. That's not easy to do at your first match! This was my first chance to shoot with Caleb, my GUNUP.COM Pro Staff team mate, so that just added to the fun!

It seemed like the match went by quickly, but my fingers and toes were glad that it was over, as there were definitely starting to get cold. After the match was over and all of the targets and target stands were put away, we headed to a restaurant at the nearby airport for food,refreshments,  conversation, airplane watching (particularly James and I) and warmth!

After a good meal, we headed home, except for a couple of shopping stops along the way. We were able to catch the 6:30pm ferry bach to Whidbey Island, and then home to a warm bed and a good night's sleep.

It was a fun day!