The Big Sandy Shootout  -  Oct 18th, 2009 8:59pm

A few months back I randomly stumbled upon this website for a machine gun and large caliber weapons shootout called The Big Sandy: http://www.mgshooters.com.

This last weekend a small group of us spent a day and a night at the bi-annual shindig and all I can say is wow.  The daytime shoot alone was worth the drive out there, and the opportunity to see and shoot the kind of firearms they had was simply awesome.  The night-time shootout was truly epic though and I was unprepared for the scale of it all.

To get to The Big Sandy you have to drive about 3 hours northwest of Phoenix.  A dirt road just outside of Wickenburg takes you to a parking lot at the bottom of a hill where you can camp and pay either the $200 shooter or the $25 dollar spectator fee.  On top of the hill is another parking lot bordered on 1 side by RV's and on the other by the actual shooting line.  The line itself is about 1500ft long and sectioned off into 25ft areas where folks setup their guns and shade tents.  They fire off the top of this hill down into a small valley where targets are setup.

Most of the people there were shooters as opposed to spectators.  There were only a few vendors and food and water while purchaseable were pretty sparse.  This was an affair for people who really loved to shoot and you could see the pride in peoples faces as they would talk about their guns to any interested party.  Everyone I met there was very friendly with the 1 exception of the RC plane guy who cussed constantly as he worked on the planes with a set of badly bandaged fingers.

I would have expected a more militant group, but these people had as much in common with hippies as weekend warriors.  They lit off fireworks all night, played disco music at lunch (not a joke) and generally had a great time out there in the desert.  There were a ton of vets who really cherished the weapons they maintained from wars they themselves fought in and the folks at the rental booth were only too happy to show me to load an M-16 and aim a 50cal.  Everyone was celebrating being free in an age where they confiscate your water at the airport and it was something we all noticed.

As expensive as these guns are to fire, people only shoot them for a few minutes each day and I was amazed how much time people spent unjamming their guns and working on them.  During the day, the line really only lit up when the target plane flew by.  I have some video below that shows just how nuts that was.  The night shoot on the other hand was a little more intense.  Between the fireworks, the flares and all the tracers, it was only a few minutes after dark before the whole hillside was on fire.  We were amazed that the whole desert didn't go up in flames.  I wish my camera could have captured the color and the intensity of the lightshow that night but its not even close.

There is not much else I can write which isn't in the pictures and videos below except to say thanks again to Kellie, Denny and McCoy who joined me on yet another crazy adventure.  Good friends make even a simple evening hanging out in a parking lot a great time :)

Oh and if your having any problem getting the videos to work just download VLC.