Appalachian Outlaws

We got bored. We searched for something to watch on the History Channel. We discovered a new show entitled Appalachian Outlaws. This show is about people in Appalachia who dig ginseng roots and sell them. It is big business, and people can get $1000 per pound! This may sound like an extremely boring and uneventful show, but there are things in it that make it pretty interesting. For instance, since ginseng roots are so valuable, people who have ginseng on their property have problems with poachers who think nothing of stealing another’s property. There is this one guy in West Virginia who sets lots of booby traps in his woods for them. This kind of makes it interesting. All in all, the show is pretty good.

We have noticed that most of the shows we have watched and enjoyed have Southerners in them. Mudcats, Appalachian Outlaws, Duck Dynasty (the first season is pretty good), Top Shot (a lot of the people who go onto that show are Southern), and Swamp People. The fact is, if they made a show about northerners, particularly northeasterners, nobody would watch it. Who wants to watch someone getting up, eating some healthy breakfast, getting into some fancy gear, getting on public transportation which takes them to an office, and then coming home at night after stopping off at a gym or a bar? In general, northerners do not do anything worth filming. It’s Southerners who lead the colorful and interesting lives and that’s why people can make TV shows about them. They sound great, they do great and fun things, and they know a lot of useful things too. They can also shoot really well.

Anyway, if you want to watch Appalachian Outlaws, you can find the show on History where new shows come on every Thursday at 10/9 central.

Top Shot Season 5 – Peter Leaves on Episode 10

Well, we are enjoying Top Shot Season 5 so far. On one of the recent episodes, Joe was eliminated in the crossbow challenge, and we were sorry to see that. Joe reminds us of one of our old friends in the neighborhood and he just seems to be a very live-and-let-live kind of person. Plus, he’s a good shot.

On the latest episode (called Zip or Ship), two people were eliminated in the same show because Top Shot changed things up a little bit. As always, a competitor went home after elimination challenge, but this time, the loser of the individual challenge also went home. It turned out that Adam lost the individual challenge, so he was sent home immediately and Peter faced off against Brian Zins (aka Gunny) in the elimination challenge. The challenge was pretty cool. The shooters traveled down a zip-line chair and had to shoot ten colored glass panes before they reached the end of the line. Peter went first and he was able to hit 9 glass panes, which was a very good run. Unfortunately, Gunny hit all ten so he sent Peter home.

If Gunny had lost to Peter, we would have loved it because it would have been Gary, Peter, Chris, William, and Phil left – and they all seem to be decent people. None of them are bully-types, and we like them all. We don’t like Gunny too much because he seems like a very arrogant kind of person. For instance, he stuck out his tongue at the expert’s advice on the long shot challenge and he didn’t even do well on the challenge. Anyway, since Gunny won, the only people left on the show are Gary, Chris, Phil, William, and Gunny. It is too bad that Peter lost because now we are going to have to continue to look at Gunny’s smug face.

by John and Dink

Gabby & Chee on Top Shot’s Season 5

Before saying anything about this episode, we wanted to say that one funny thing about the way most of the shows begin, is Colby saying, “Good morning, Shooters”. Then, the shooters say, “Good morning, Colby”. We just think it sounds like a school room teacher saying good morning to her class and the students responding likewise. Anyway…..

Season 5 Episode 3 was called “Pick Your Poison” because contestants had to pick the person they wanted to go up against. Colby would select a random name and then that person called out their competitor. Then Colby would select another name and that person selected their competitor and so on, until there were only two people left – and then those two people would compete against one another. There were 14 shooters and the top 7 shooters were safe from elimination, leaving the bottom 7 to compete on the proving ground. Two of those shooters were Gabby and Chee.

Anyway…. in this episode, we got to witness Chee sitting next to Gabby on the bench and we were also treated to Gabby & Chee making brownies together. They were still good friends which was kind of nice to see. Last season, Chee sent Gabby home and they were both teary-eyed. This time, unbelievably, Gabby and Chee had to go up against each other in elimination because they shot the worst in the proving ground.

For elimination, they had to shoot the same plate setup that they shot in season 4. There were 4 or 5 rows of 6 plates, each row having successively smaller plates. Starting at the top row, the row with the biggest plates, they shot from left to right. They had to shoot 6 for 6 because if they missed one plate, all 6 plates would pop back up forcing the shooter to start all over (on that row). Well, Chee did really poorly not even getting past the 2nd row. Gabby was awesome, maintaining great focus all the way down to the very last plate.

It was good to see one of the female shooters actually be able to shoot. All the rest of the women in past seasons of Top Shot would be bragging about themselves but they all got eliminated almost immediately. It seemed like they were just the token women competitors taking up a valuable spot. We knew from Season 4 that Gabby was different and that she could shoot unlike the other ones. Not only that, but we don’t think she’s ever bragged about herself. She is really nice and pretty quiet, making her even more likable. Chee was nice too, albeit a little goofy.

It would be really cool if Gabby could win the competition and I think at least some of us will be rooting for her.

by John and Dink

Thoughts on Top Shot Season Five Episode #1 Best of the Best

We watched the first episode of Top Shot season five yesterday but since it wasn’t the most exciting episode ever, we won’t write too much. There were, however, some notable things on this show. First of all, since it is an all-stars season, there aren’t any teams and there is no nomination range. Each of the 16 contestants competed and the top 8 shooters were safe from the possibility of being eliminated. Since there is no nomination range, the method in which a shooter gets eliminated is slightly different. The 8 weakest shooters from the 1st round had to shoot at a target and the two people whose shot was farthest from the bulls-eye went against each other in elimination. This was called the proving ground instead of the nomination range.

It turned out that Gary and Greg went to the elimination challenge. Last year, we really didn’t like Greg and we wrote several articles about that like Greg Little John Fails! and Greg Little John’s Friendship Bracelet. In this episode, though, Greg did pretty poorly in the challenge and was in danger of being sent to the elimination challenge if he didn’t shoot well at the proving ground. Well, his shot went way off on the proving ground so he was sent to elimination. Then, he did really badly in the elimination challenge and was eliminated. He didn’t look too happy and we felt sorry for him because he did so poorly. Last year, we couldn’t wait for Greg Little John to lose, but this year, his weak performance made us feel bad for him.

By the way, people are having a lot of trouble watching Top Shot on the History Channel. We weren’t able to get it on the History Channel either, so we went to the iTunes store and got it there for free. You might want to try this if you are having trouble finding it elsewhere.

by Dink

Slow Motion Impact With BB Guns

Hello everybody! We thought it fitting to do a different kind of article today since we have been doing so many articles about healthy foods lately. Today John and I wanted to get footage of us shooting BB Guns. Top Shot on the History Channel is one of our favorite shows and we have to confess that we got some of our inspiration from it. We have written about shooting in the past, but that was before I had a camera, so we couldn’t get a video then. Today is one day before recycling day, so we had a lot of targets to shoot from the recycling bin. We wrote a couple of articles a long time ago regarding BB guns. Here are the links if you are interested: Shooting BB Guns and BB Guns.

By the way, my gun is not sighted in currently. I tried to shoot for about ten minutes, but when it became apparent that the sights were off, I had to switch to John’s gun. My gun is a pretty powerful BB gun. It is made by Ruger and is a break barrel version called the Air Hawk. It fires with a velocity of 1000 FPS.  Maybe the next time we make a video of our shooting, I’ll be using my gun. Well, anyway, we were usually shooting from a distance of roughly 30 feet.

If you are wondering about the eggs, we got them from a friend who has some hens. It is no offense to him, but two of those eggs didn’t look good, so we made them targets. If you are wondering why there are faces on the eggs, I drew them on with a marker, but I wasn’t trying to be ugly. I was waiting for something before we made the video, and I had a sharpie in my pocket, so I drew faces on the eggs without thinking. We hope no one is offended by that. We will probably get more videos of us shooting over the summer. We think it is pretty fun. Hope you enjoy the video!

by Dink