As mentioned before in my Life in the Central Valley: Plinking blog, my buddies and I try to get out and go shoot at least once a month. That is if finances permit, of course- ammunition isn’t cheap. This would count as our range day for September. So to make the experience a little bit more subsistent this time around, we decided to combine our range day with an overnight ruck. This would have been my third time to the forest, second time shooting there, and first time backpacking through it. The spot we used to shoot at was much more arid, and has actually been closed for a while due to fire warning. This is why we’ve been hucking it up to the forest (where there is little to no fire risk and zero closure), in our recent shooting trips.
For this trip, my buddy and I (it was just the two of us) had planned to get to the forest early on a Saturday morning, warm up and get a little bit of shooting in, and then start our ruck into the forest. Yes, we were planning to camp there overnight too, but I’ll get into why that ended up being a debacle, later. We packed pretty heavy this time around- 40 pound packs filled with our sleeping bags, a tent, cookware, extra clothes, fuel, canned food, lots of water, snacks, miscellaneous survival gear, extra tactical gear, first aid, and ammunition. All of this on top of our rifles, 2 hand guns (each), and a walking stick. Yeah… we didn’t have to bring all of this- *note to self for later.
We left Lodi around 8AM and arrived at our destination close to 10AM (there were some estate sales that we stopped by along the way- so that added to our travel time). Once we got there, we settled in a little, got the lay of the land, and set up some targets to complete a brief shooting session. After that, we packed the truck with everything we weren’t bringing with us on our hike, and descended into the forest. The hike was more treacherous than we anticipated, given our payloads and the terrain. We didn’t quite have a destination in mind either. We were really just looking for a level area to set up camp. Most of the land that we were hiking on was on a fairly steep incline so we spent a lot of time just traversing. About an hour or two into the hike we started to hear running water from a nearby creek on level ground and both agreed that it would be ideal to set up camp there. So in fact we did. We set up the tent and unpacked our gear.
The spot we chose to set up at was between two streams of running water. There was a shit ton of foliage and gigantic trees around us too, so we didn’t feel any of the heat that we did earlier (in the more exposed areas). As a matter of fact, it seemed as if the different parts of the forest had their own separate micro climates. It was definitely more gloomy where we set up camp. Once we decompressed a little, we decided to walk a little further downstream (without our packs) and do some exploring. As we walked further downstream, we started to see the possible remains of a bridge, with lots of loose cable and wood alongside the water. We didn’t see much wildlife in the area, although we did find some unidentifiable tracks in the mud (possibly a big cat of some sort). The trees were probably my favorite thing to see on the whole trip. It sounds cliche as fuck, but when you see the size of them in person, it’s one of the most humbling experiences (at least for me). They make you feel so small, and that’s when you remember how powerful mother nature can be.
Fast forward a couple of hours and we made it back to camp, a little fatigued but still alert. So, we pretty much executed our plan decently up until this point. Long story short, we made a last minute decision to pack everything up and set up camp closer to the designated shooting area (where we were earlier), so that we could practice some night shooting. So we fucking did. We packed everything up and started our trek back. That incline was unforgiving. With the extra weight of our gear, it was mandatory to stop a couple of times along the way to catch our breath. This is where I fumbled the bag (literally). We were about a half hour into our hike back, when my buddy noticed that the tent pouch I was carrying, was unzipped. We stopped and reassessed our gear, only to find out that the tent rods had fallen out of the pouch. At this point, we were way too fatigued to even care. We were not going to back track just to find the rods, not a chance. No tent meant no overnight camping for us, and we weren’t going to thug it out with our gear out in the open. We eventually made it back to the shooting area and had decided that we were just going to send it back home (after doing a little more plinking of course). Yeah, I gotta be better there next time. We’ll most definitely travel lighter for future trips and be more conscientious of any gear we drop. The forest kicked our ass this time around, but we’re coming back to conquer it for sure next time.
Happy Shooting and Rucking,
Producer Reese
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As TI would say… no process ! No framework! Credit to you all for getting out there though 🫡