Shooting Videos on YouTube

The videos on this page are from YouTube and were filmed by either Mark, or Courtney using Mark's digital video camera. The video entitled Sunday Afternoons was shot in early October on one of our routine Sunday excursions up to Jackass Gulch while the video entitled Shooting Shenanigans was more recent. We spend every Sunday on the mountainside pushing lead downrange. When darkness falls, we pull out a hickory-smoker and grill steaks to the ambient sounds of coyotes, crickets, and random stories told between friends. The trips have become longer and longer as the weather cools and the trips become more fun and relaxing. We bring a Marlin M-25N, a Browning .22WMR BPR, a Roebuck 12 gauge, and our newest addition, the custom Savage M-12, to the hill. Mark enjoys destroying anything in sight with his 12 gauge and often does destroy everything he sees. Mark's probably the most easy going guy I've ever met and he's never in a bad mood, so his wild shotgun antics are a bit of a surprise. James is our tag along buddy who is more than content with getting off campus for a day every week. While we offer to let him shoot every time, he simply declines and goes back to cracking jokes and making video suggestions. Courtney (my girlfriend) recently asked me to teach her to shoot. Her first taste of the sport was Christmas break of our Freshman year, when she came to Illinois for a week. We got her the Marlin M-25N and slapped a Redfield Scout scope on it. While I had doubts of her actual reasons for picking up shooting, she's proven to me that she's in it for herself and that she's really beginning to love shooting every bit as much as I do. With every trip, she moves her targets further up the hill and becomes more and more consistent. Mark is enjoying exploiting my shooting for videos. He buys random things to shoot and brings them along. His real passion on these trips (other than blowing things up) is his video camera. He sets up the shots and video tapes them, thus, the videos you see on this page. If you visit YouTube and type in my full name, you will find any shooting videos that I haven't posted on this site. The next time we go up (26th October) we plan to coordinate and tape a shot that I will take with the 5.56mm Savage from approximately 600+ yards. As I will have cell phone reception from where I am shooting and they will not (accross from where the target is) we will have to use hand signals or walkie talkies to make the video work. A 600+ yard shot is nothing new to me, but coordinating it with Mark's camera work will make it interesting!