Justin Buist

Folks, I herald from a small town in western Michigan. I live but 30 miles from there now. For the most part folks are pretty polite. When I venture to Chicago I’m appalled that the things people do in traffic.

When I’ve been in New York City I’m so out of place it’s unreal. Rude doesn’t begin to describe their behavior compared to my world.

I think folks in the UP are generally friendly too. You can pull into their driveway and they’ll offer you a beer before they ask you your name. Then again, that might be a symptom of the rampant drinking up there.

Montana folk? Cripes. I know friendly — these folks are more than friendly.

Josh and I were in a grocery store today to buy some stuff to kill the sunburn I got. While in line to checkout with our one item Josh said we should get some bottled water for the return trip, I concurred, so we stepped out of line to get some. The guy behind us said, “I’ll save your place.”

Uhm, OK.

We grabbed the water and by the time we got back there was another person in line. They said, “Oh, you can go ahead. You were here first.” The guy that “saved our place” was just starting to check out, and started moving items back on the belt to let us check out!

I’m friendly and all, but that’s just damned nice. Unwarranted nice.

Driving around town today I was making a left hand turn onto a boulevard. I didn’t make the turn right away because there was a guy pulling out of a gas station across the road to my right. He saw me, my turn signal, and STOPPED! He tossed his hand out the window and waved me in! He went out of his way to save me about 5 seconds. I’m quite used to sitting at an intersection for 1-3 minutes for an opening, so waiting for ONE car to pass isn’t a big deal at all, especially when I have nowhere special to go.

This blows my mind!

A truck driver can pull onto the expressway around here doing about 35mph and everybody moves over to make room for them to get up to speed. Any car that is on the shoulder of the expressway is given extra space. As it should be.

Gary, Don, and Richard advised Josh and I to pick up a detailed map of Montana if we want to see some of the nice scenery around here on our way back. Don whipped out his own map and started pointing stuff out at lunch. We concurred; we need such a map. They told us where to get one.

So, we stopped at the shop they said to (near our hotel) and went looking for it.

Gary must have seen my Jeep there and he stopped in to make sure we found it! Whoa! Dude! How nice can you get!?

West Michigan is not a bad place to live. We’re pretty friendly folks, and generally try to help people out. Montana? They make us look like NYC residents.

I have never seen people this friendly. I’m stunned.

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Josh and I arrived on time at 9am Mountain this morning to do some shooting. We had no idea what to expect, and I was hoping that more people would be showing up.

Alas, nobody new showed up.

Oh well. It was still a blast, no pun intended.

I got a little more back-story on why Gary Marbut was there. The original guy that was to run the rifle class backed out after the ATF raid so Gary stepped in and still held the class when only one student signed up.

He’s an interesting guy, and I don’t mean that in the kinda crazy way. On his webpage you’ll find his story and the things that he’s done. He’s been around and done some things, that’s for sure.

Anyway.

We arrive and Gary is getting things set for some rifle shooting. He put 6″x6″ painted steel plates on stands at 125 yards, 150 yards, 175 yards, and one out at 200 yards. The final one was the “option target.” I’ll get to that in a bit.

This was part of the class that Josh and I didn’t sign up for. We knew we wouldn’t make it out there in time and honestly I was more interested in meeting people than doing any serious shooting.

Gary let us run the course too. Didn’t have to. I was surprised — rifle shots at steel targets puts some wear on them. If anything broke he’d be spending time making new ones.

So, here’s how the course works. You take your unloaded rifle and magazine(s) to the starting point. The Range Officer (Gary in this case) verifies that you’re unloaded, commands you to load and make safe the rifle, and asks if you’re ready. When you say yes, he hits a button on a timer a few seconds later and you’re off.

You head to the shooting position and take your spot. Kneeling, sitting, bipod, walking sticks, off-hand, whatever. You pick whatever works best for you and your equipment. You then engage one set of targets. I forget how to score it exactly, but your time and number of plates you knock own goes into an equation that determines your score.

We kept track, but didn’t work it all out. It was a learning exercise, not a competition.

After you engage 3 targets you record your stats, reload, and then take on another set of targets.

The “option target” may be engaged on any one of the three sets. If you hit it you take 30 seconds off your time.

I shot the course twice, to some degree. I don’t have many scoped rifles, in fact I only have two right now and the last one was bought just last week. Hence, I don’t mesh well with scopes yet. They’re foreign. I shot the course with iron sights. One with my AR-15 Bushmaster Dissipator and one with Josh’s AK-47 done up like a Russian RPK. It’s a bit better suited to the task than my AK-47 clone.

Neither are precision rifles and neither has any glass on top of it.

With the AR -15 I had no problem with the first 3 125 yard targets once I got into the groove. I then went to the 150 yard targets which were colored pink. I’m wondering if I’m color-blind to some degree now. With all the light brown and light green out there I really had trouble finding the pink targets. The white targets out at 175 yards were far easier to pick out. I nailed two. It took 27 shots. Not cool.

When I ran the course again with the AK-47 clone I pegged the 3 125 yard targets pretty quick. This isn’t my gun, and it shoots a bit high, but once I got my position I cleared them fairly quick. For me.

I reloaded and went after the pink targets at 150 yards and by damn I couldn’t see them. The sun had really come up and it changed things. I would pick my head up off the gun and could guess where they were. I’d lob a round downrange and not have a clue if I was shooting at the right thing. A few dust clouds later I had a trick: If I shot behind the target the target would make a shadow in the dust cloud. Aim at the shadow and then I could hit it. I smacked two this way but I couldn’t get a good read on the final target. By then the barrel was heated up quite a bit and was walking all over. I couldn’t hit the last one. Again.

I definitely need some better equipment for this stuff.

And training.

Gary was running the course using a high-end DPMS AR-10 in .308 and a Weatherby variable power 24x scope. I managed to miss a 8.5″x11″ piece of paper at 100 yards with his equipment on Day 1. Good equipment is necessary for this kind of shooting, but without the skill it won’t work.

On one run Gary engaged the 3 targets at 175 yards and went for the optional target which he nailed in one shot and took 30 seconds off his time for that run.

His final time (including time to setup his bipod) was -0.35 seconds after the 30 second reduction.

Damn!

He then proceeded to working on the same 6″x6″ steel plates at 400 yards. Yes, he can hit that kind of stuff, in field conditions. This guy knows his stuff. I’m glad I’ve met him. Reminds me how much I need to work on my rifle skills.

We all packed up, cleared out the shooting field, and went to lunch in Dillon, MT.

Good times. We’re done with the KT event now and Josh and I will be heading back, taking our time and doing the return trip in 3 days instead of the 1.5 we used to get out here.

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Josh and I made the short (300-ish mile) drive into Dillon, MT today and found Richard Celata’s house and with it the KT Ordnance event.

I knocked on the door to KT Ordnance and was greeted by a short guy, grey hair, and going bald. I shook his hand, we introduced ourselves, and sure enough, it was Richard Celata.

If I had to pick one word to describe Richard it would be: friendly. I admit that I was a little worried that I’d show up to find a paranoid whacko with a gruff attitude. Nope! He’s a lot more like an older version of me, I think. Perhaps even more low-key than myself.

I like this guy. As I said he’s friendly, and seems to be plenty smart. When he saw the New England Firearms .223 I was using he took a quick look at the receiver and the first thing he said was, “Wow, I could make an 80% kit for these things easy!” We chatted for a bit about ideas on how to make more products and it left me with a good feeling.

It’s hard to explain the lay of the land out there, but Richard’s “back yard” is also used by some cattle farmers. They don’t have any problem with him shooting out there and gave a friendly wave when they returned home that day. Just don’t shoot the cattle — you’ll owe them $2000 and no, you do not get to keep the beef.

Fair enough.

Didn’t seem like his neighbors are worried about this guy. Still, the ATF saw fit to raid the guy’s place in full gear and throw snipers up on a ridge that I’ll talk about later.

Gary Marbut was also there, president of the Montana Shooting Sports Association. He was off running a rifle shooting class with the one person that signed up for it.

Before Gary and his student got back a new guy showed up that had already been there yesterday, I’m told. He was a nice guy and introdued himself as Mike Murphy. Within a few moments I learned that he was really bummed that the Feds had shut down the gun building day because he really wanted a gun that didn’t have any paperwork behind it. He then told Josh and I about the two times he brandished a gun in the Chicago and how he sold all of his guns when a cop in Illinois told him that when his Firearms Owner ID card expired he had to get rid of them, which was wrong. He said that you don’t need the FID unless you’re going hunting or actually shooting it.

He then asked everybody he saw about buying a used .357 Magnum without any paperwork. No pawn shop would sell him one because he’s not a resident of Montana. According to Richard yesterday the guy was asking about buying a .22 Magnum with a silencer on it.

Now, this guy didn’t have the “crazy” vibe. I know what the crazy vibe is like.

This guy was just stupid. I’m also sure this guy is ATF. Everybody there does. It’s bleeding obvious! All the guy talks about are illegal things, and how he doesn’t want the government to know about his guns. He even pulled some shit out about how the Neo-Nazi groups and the KKK are the only ones that publish numbers on men being killed, their children sold into the sex-slave trade, and their women turned into whores within 3 days. He then said he didn’t agree with those groups, but there’s some useful stuff that they publish.

For some reason ATF agents seem to think that every gun owner is a white supremecist. I don’t get it. They also think that we’re stupid it seems.

If you want to buy a gun anonymously you don’t introduce yourself with your full name. Seriously, WTF? It’s just a technique to try and gain credibility with complete strangers.

Anyway, onto the shooting!

Josh and I pulled out some scoped .223 rifles and made sure we were on paper. I adjusted my scope and set it’s zero and Richard showed us a neat game.

There’s a really big hill, actually more of a ridge I suppose, that runs in the back of his property. The base of the ridge is about 400 meters out. The top of it is about 800 meters. It’s dotted with little shrub bushes. If you land a shot into a shrub you don’t see a dust cloud — meaning you hit it. If you do see a dust cloud then you missed, and you know where the shot landed because of the dust cloud. We picked some bushes around 600 meters out and started lobbing shots at them.

Damn that’s fun! Sure can’t do that kinda stuff in Michigan!

When Gary arrived back with his student (who I found out I know online to some degree) they set up a 100 yard range to zero the student’s rifle in and get to their business. Gary pulled out a reallly nice DPMS AR-10 all decked out wih a nice Weatherby 24x variable power scope on it. He let Josh and I take a go on it. Very nice weapon, though I couldn’t hit anything with it. Scopes are hard for me to deal with, and given the compexity of his setup I had even more trouble.

Gary dropped a quick 3 shot group that was 1″ apart at 100 yards after that. Two of them were touching.

They packed up for dinner but Gary left a few targets with Josh to sight in his AR-30. It’s a bolt-action .300 Win Mag rifle. The targets were nice because they were setup to let you set a 300 yard zero at only 100 yards. There was a special cross to aim at (low) on the target and if you’re aiming there and hit the bullseye then you’ve got a 300 yard zero, or really close to it. We’ve got an extra copy that we’ll photocopy for future sight-ins.

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