Team Building Event

Here at work we have a quarterly team building budget that is measured. In other words, they require some sort of team oriented, out of the office event. The first one we did was a pool tournament. It was pretty cool and even the director dropped by to play. Next the boss took us all to the movies. I don’t recall what the movie was but it was still nice to be able to take the afternoon off and get some popcorn, drinks, and watch a movie.

Friday though. Friday we went skeet shooting!

Now just so folks know, I’m not much of a gun nut. I have a .22 rifle in the house and that’s about it. I’ve never shot a shotgun before although I was in the military so I shot .50’s, M16’s, M23’s, and M60’s but this was new to me.

We went out to Colorado Clay’s and rented a bunker for the afternoon. A couple of the guys are gun nuts and brought enough guns for everyone to have their choice. One of the guys has several and shoots at many of the local events (target shooting for charity and such). They also bought and brought a lot of ammo. It was calculated to bring three boxes of 25 rounds per box for each person so we’d all have three rounds to shoot. Because it took so long we didn’t all get to shoot three rounds so there was some left over ammo.

The group getting ready with the ammo on the bench.

The range instructor came out with some common advise. Don’t point anywhere but down range, don’t put a round in the chamber until you’re on the line, treat the gun as loaded no matter what, and instruction on how to use the bunker. It was either voice activated “pull” or someone can stand behind to press the button.

There are five positions. We’ll stand at our position and on our turn, shoot a round. At five rounds we’ll shift one position to the right with the right most moving over to the far left.

We had quite a selection of firearms to choose from. One guy brought five for the group and another guy brought two. There are a couple of regular shooters in the group, some that are pretty familiar but don’t do it regularly and the rest of us who are rank amateurs 🙂

The range instructor showing how to use the remote to pull or voice with four of the first group. While I was taking pics, I was snagged as the fifth so I handed my camera off to a coworker and took my position.

Since some of us were new to this, we received personalized instruction in how to load, take the safety off, and generally shoot.

Like I said, several of these guys are regular shooters. 🙂

Off to the right is a more sporting skeet shooting area where there are multiple pigeons and target shooting.

That’s me in green. The first gun I was using had the choke pretty narrow so I wasn’t hitting anything. Plus I wasn’t holding it right. He swapped guns for me and the instructor came over to help me with where to put the butt of the gun and that I can sight it vs just aiming and shooting.

Yea, rank amateur 🙂 I was standing wrong (I learned later) and not sighting it in. I took a couple of good hits to the shoulder and was going to give up after 20 rounds because it was hurting quite a bit. I picked up some instruction while the next group went through their round.

The first guy, second guy and the guy in red just beyond me (in green) were more experienced and tried different guns to see how they liked them. Me and the guy in white weren’t 🙂

See, getting better. It just takes practice.

The guy in the red cap is our manager. The guy with his back to us is our supervisor. Both are pretty good at shooting. The guy in black is the other senior unix admin (my partner).

Oh yea, Shift Change! 🙂

A man with a purpose!

The second group taking their shots (or the third, I forget).

Hanging out watching the action. I was starting to snooze a little so when the shift changed I jumped up for my second attempt. This time I was told about stance and stood properly. I think the gun had a wider choke too. I got 11 in a row initially and out of the 25 shots, hit the pigeon 21 times so I was doing pretty well with practice and some instruction.

Once everyone was done shooting we all policed up the brass and boxes.

End of the day. We’re getting ready to bail as the place closes at 5pm. We didn’t all get to go three rounds but I was satisfied.

All in all it was pretty interesting. I’m not all hot and bothered to get a shotgun or go out shooting again but I did enjoy learning not just about the different chokes but the different types of guns as well.

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One Response to Team Building Event

  1. Jeff Sherard says:

    The movie was “The A-Team” 🙂

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