Just got off the phone with BP.
The fuse blew out of the fuse hole on the soup can mortar, and struck the kid in the neck, he instinctively tucked his chin and held the burning fuse section under his neck.
BP knows the kid, as he's the kid of some close friends, who were set up next to him.
The kid is a tough kid and didnt say anything else about it while BP kept going over and apologizing.
But, such things happen. BP did what he could and turned the base of the mortar around. This was the first time the fuse had blown out during a launch and if it happens again the fuse section will go downrange.
BP, has personally put on many shoots in the last few years out at Jackrabbit Trail. His were the safest ones around. I dont remember anyone getting hurt (except for me) when I was drunk and pulled a thermite flare from the wrong end and burned the shit outta myself.
I guess some other folks on the line where whining that he was throwing brass on their position.
Whaaaa! Get used to it. It's a shoot.
Here's a short list of not so funny stuff that has happened at shoots.
1. At one of my Flagstaff "Pipeline" shoots. I almost put out my own eye shooting a steel plate with exploding .45 rounds and the jacket came back and knocked the lens out of my glasses and split open my nose. OW.
(this moment of genius captured on video)
2. Late at night before one of BPs Jackrabbit Trl shoots, I grabbed the wrong end of a Thermite flare and popped it, scorching the heel of my hand and the underside. Ahh, the smell of one's own roasted flesh.
3. Yes, I nearly dropped a Bowling Ball onto the firing line at CG. I missed. Let it go.
4. At the first Pipeline Shoot, someone was shooting AKs at the pistol plates and a jacket came back and hit another shooter in the shin. Gunplumber dug out the frag with his first aid kit, dressed the wound, and all was well.
5. At another Pipeline Shoot, those damn pistol plates again, claimed Donny, a friend of ours, who had to go to the hospital and get the frag removed from between the radial and ulnar nerves in his forearm. BP was enraged over that one, as we knew who had fired at the pistol plates with a rifle, and then the person who had done it claimed that he did not.
6. Some dorks shooting 50s at one of the SP Crater shoots, had a penetrator come back off of a rockpile near the line and take out the back window on a pickup truck parked near the line.
7. A 30 year C3 dealer and MG collector had an AD which ended his shoot, at SP crater, he was carrying "hammer down on a loaded chamber" in a 1911 and a tarp tie down rope snagged the hammer just enough to let it set the round off.
All who know this guy are universally in agreement that if we had told him "you're gonna get hurt carrying like that someday" he would've told us to get bent. (as he knew what he was doing)
Accidents happen at shoots. Brass flies. You want to be pampered and coddled, go home to Mommy. Keep your wits about you.
Keep in mind that some folks who've been putting on, paying for, and attending these shoots for years get tired of being told that they are not "courteous" enough by N00bS.
So, mylhouse, in summation I would respectfully suggest that before you start a little dogpile, that you 1. Get a few more posts under your belt and attend more than a few shoots and 2. Go talk to the people you have decided to discuss online.
You might actually learn something.
Like you never put lighter fluid in a black powder mortar, where the hell did that come from? Sheesh.
D.
AZEX
(Wow, that was suprisingly calm sounding)