Adventures of HG at NRTI

It rained today. A lot. And it was 45 degrees, if that. It's shotgun week and we are outside the whole day. We have two relays and relay one (my relay) always goes first. Each relay stays outside and shoots for about an hour, then we switch. It's nice to have a break in between shooting, but it's never enough time to get anything dried out. I had five layers of shirts on today including a sweatshirt and a 'rain jacket' but none of them worked. It POURED rain all day today and by the time I was done, I had soaked through all the layers. My rain pants held up perfectly, but the rain jacket sucks. Guess I know what I'll be saving up for next.

On the other hand, I did shoot pretty well today. I passed all of my SPO's (I think about eight) and hopefully I'll pass the rest tomorrow. Tomorrow is also supposed to be a lot nicer out-62 for the high and sunny. I'll take that over rain and cold any day.

Shooting a shotgun isn't nearly as bad as I thought it was going to be. There are a lot of steps involved when going through the SPO's, but it's really easy to rack and shoot. And it's not hard to hit the target either, especially with buckshot which send out nine pellets in one shot. I thought my shoulder was going to hurt a lot after shooting so much today, but I don't feel a thing. I guess that's what you get when you perform the mechanics correctly.

One more long day of shotgun (10 hours), then Thursday we will clean our guns in the classroom and take a test on the parts of the shotgun, etc. We had a quiz yesterday and I went in two hours early at 0600 (6:00 a.m.) so that I was sure to pass. However when we got the test, the shotgun diagram looked nothing like what we had in our notes and the quiz had questions that I couldn't answer. Well it turns out that we were supposed to have that information in our notes to study and it never got in there. Once again, I was really prepared for a test and didn't get what I expected. Luckily the Commander found out that the notes were missing and he didn't grade the quizzes.

I was too cold to take pictures today but I'm hoping to take lots of photos of people and their shotguns tomorrow. :)