Flying Bullets!

I am quite disturbed to report that we were shot at today!!!

Went for a nice relaxing "Black Friday" ride in Morgan City Wash out by Lake Pleasant - what better alternative to the shopping hordes? No way was I getting into that mess...

We figured being a holiday that we'd have to share the parking area with shooters and ATVers and it was true. Once we got down into the wash and away, we had a lovely ride...

Until we were almost back. Just a hundred yards or so from the place where we exit the wash to return to the parking area, suddenly there are gunshots AND THE WHINE OF A BULLET as it passed through the middle of our group!!! We all scattered, a couple folks dismounted, and we started yelling... more shots were fired, then it was quiet. The one man in our group quickly rode on to the road and up, to tell the shooters that there were riders in the wash... one gal was on the phone with 9-1-1 and the Peoria Police were sent out. As we finally exited the wash and headed up the road for the parking area, we saw there were FIVE groups of shooters... 3 of them were shooting properly, into a hillside so they knew their backdrop. One pair of men off to the left was shooting off the top of a hill {shudder} and of course there could have been any number of people in the area to the other side - in fact if we had been able to park where we first intended, we'd have been riding right through there! The group that actually DID shoot at us was a family with young children, they were shooting into the trees and bushes, which means they couldn't see and didn't know their backdrop - which was the wash in which we were riding!

We are so lucky none of us or the horses were hit!!! Parking and riding near shooters is always annoying, they leave a horrible mess between the empty shell casings and the trash they use as targets. And gee whiz do you think they would pick up after themselves? HA! And of course the noise affects the horses, luckily mine aren't too bothered, they just flinch, but some horses get really upset, and it could easily cause a rider to be dumped and hurt! Most of the time, once they see us, they will pause and let us go on by, but sometimes we run into some real jerks... just like the ATVers, most of them are polite but not all. But I've never really worried too much, especially since my horses handle it so well, since I watched Randy teach our kids to shoot and I know that the number one rule is KNOW YOUR BACKDROP!!! Foolish I know, but knowing that bullets can kill I assumed that anyone out shooting would be following, at the very least, that number one rule...

Anyway we've never untacked and vamoosed quite so quickly after a ride, but we sure wanted out of there today! And as we left the area, Peoria Police were inbound - I sure hope they gave those idiots a wake-up call!!!!