What a great shoot!

[Bladepeek]

I got over to the Elm Hall shoot at the Pine River Club in Riverdale, MI yesterday.

My hat's definitely off to the organizers of that shoot. The campgrounds are nicely laid out, plenty of trash containers and none of them overflowing, and I REALLY liked the courses; both the long and short courses. I thought the stations were realistic hunting shots and they were usually sited to use some terrain feature as a backstop so that if some unfortunate soul actually managed to miss the target, the arrow was not automatically lost forever. I don't know what strings they were able to pull, but there were no insects other than butterflies; no black flies, deer flies, horse flies, nor even mosquitoes in the woods. What a beautiful weekend.

I haven't been in this Trad game long (and have never shot a compound) but I feel as though I know quite a few guys just from our conversations on this forum. It was a full day (I could only stay through Saturday) of "Hey, are you by any chance -------?" "Yeah, I am, are you bladepeek?" Met some folks I met before, and some that I knew only by their Trad Gang handles. Shot with River Rat, met my family dentist's husband, after dinner we shot the short course a second time just before dark and was in a group of 7 or 8 that were all fun to shoot with.

One of the highlights for me, aside from the excellent wild game dinner that was just out of this world, was turning around while waiting in the chow line and seeing Ron Le Clair standing in line behind me.  I'd never met Ron before, but recognized him immediately. A mutual friend (Annointed Archer on here) introduced us and Ron, on learning I was an amateur knifemaker, whipped at least three out of his pockets. Not a dull one in the batch, either! Had a very interesting talk with a living legend.

[JEFF B]

sounds like y'all had a good time but where are the pics  

[Bladepeek]

Jeff, I explained that in a response to the back quiver post.

Over the years, my ability to even see the box, let alone think outside of it, has deteriorated greatly.

Short answer: I left my nice digital SLR camera home and forgot I had one in my cell phone    

Sure hope someone there took some pics and posts them here. It really was a great shoot with a mob of great people attending.