Wheee....

Oh geez... it was an interesting day today.

I live in a rural area just south of town and as most people who live out in the country, I shoot on my property.

As you know, I've been working on my techinique and just practicing for qualifications next week. (which are Wednesday, btw). I shoot a .40 handgun, no rifles, no shotguns, just handguns. We've shot out at this place since I've lived there and never had a problem with riccochets or had the neighbors to the east complain.
Let me explain the setup. It's roughly 5 acres and our fence butts up against another lot with an empty barn. On across the road and back south there is a house, in this house lives a state trooper who I've known for a couple of years now.

All in all from the point where I'm shooting to his house is close to 1500 meters. We don't have a berm set up because the field slopes up at a steady incline from where we are to the end of the fence and there's an empty barn directly in the line of sight.

Well, this morning I get off work, go to the house, and get my range gear out. I've shot roughly 35 rounds before he shows up at my house. Apparently, somehow, some of our shots have been riccocheting all the way down to his house.

I felt pretty stupid, but I would never have known that a .40 handgun with a 3.5 inch barrel could travel that far...apparently it can. So, I rode over with him to a deputy's house to check out his shooting area. It's really no safer, its just a creek bed... So, I'm not really sure what I'm going to do, I guess once Wednesday gets here and it's over, we'll see how I did.

In other news, the dispatcher who I was filling in for is now home from the hospital. However, they believe he had a stroke...so no one is really sure if he'll even be back. This is going to suck, because I'm the only other fulltime dispatcher we have. I'll definitely be getting the overtime at this point, hopefully they'll get someone hired pretty quickly...