Shooting the shit...and people

I went to the range on Saturday morning; it's been several weeks and I've missed it but other more pressing commitments kept me away and despite the value I find there, the me time, I've had to prioritise. Yesterday I rectified that major malfunction and spent Saturday morning running and gunning shooting some three hundred and forty rounds...I make my own ammunition so it's half the cost of buying it but at $0.30/round it's not what I'd called cheap fun...but it's worth every cent and I had a good time...which I needed.

Shooting the shit...and people

I wasn't just there just shooting shit with my handgun, I was shooting the shit, (talking shit) with people (nope, not shooting people).

Some of the folks who I would usually see almost every week (because I usually shoot every week) I've not seen in three or four months and catching up with them again made me realise how much I missed doing so. Yeah, we shoot stuff but catching up with my bro's and brogirl's is so great.

I initially got a lot of comments like, "so you're not fucken dead after all," and, "about time you showed your face around here fucker," and deserved every bit of it - it was all good-natured of course - and once they'd gotten that out of their systems we got down to the serious business of catching up falling into the comfortable feeling the bond of friendship and shared experiences brings.

People

I've been shooting guns for a long time, almost thirty five years, and over that time have come to know a lot of people, some I like and some not; we've shared amazing experiences I'll not go into here as well, some not so nice, but one of the most enjoyable aspects of being a shooter has been the camaraderie and bonds of friendship shooting and being a firearms guy has brought me. Interestingly, some of those relationships revolve solely around firearms and activities around firearms, but so many run deeper and apart from guns with the firearm-aspect simply being what brought us together in the first place.

I'm very fortunate to have the relationships I do, guys and gals both, and value each of them individually as they're all individual people.

They're not "gun people", they're just people, and as I left the range on Saturday it was those people, shooting the shit with them, chatting, reminiscing, telling lies everyone knows are lies and laughing about it...the camaraderie...that's what brought me value, not so much the actual shooting...the shooting was fucken awesome too though.

Have you formed bonds of friendship with people, who would otherwise remain strangers, through a hobby or activity you've engaged in over the years, a shared experience? If so, feel free to tell me about it in the comments if you'd like to, or just comment generally if that's what you want to do...or don't comment at all I guess.