3rd Annual A Girl and A Gun Annual Conference

Well, they did it again. Another year is in the books for the A Girl and A Gun Annual Conference. Women from all over the US gathered in the Texas Hill Country to enjoy a long weekend of shooting, training, and sisterhood. This year's conference took place in Marble Falls at The Retreat at Balcones Springs and Copperhead Creek Shooting Club. The Retreat was a beautiful and peaceful setting for classroom training sessions, vendor shopping, and bonding while Copperhead Creek was full of things that go boom.

The second day was Demo day at the range. Several firearm manufacturers came out to show the ladies what they have to offer and to put their products straight into their hands. There were representatives from Glock, Remington, and Viking Armament to name a few. Gene spent that day at the range. Part of his day consisted of helping run the mock IDPA (International Defensive Pistol Association) stage for the conference participants. I, on the other hand, spent the day at the retreat center checking in all the vendors and helping them get set up.

Friday was the first "official" day of conference. On Friday and Saturday, the ladies took turns taking classes at the retreat center and at the range. The instructors came from various shooting backgrounds ranging from Firearms Instructors to Professional Shooters. There was an even wider variety of trainers and speakers this year, some of which are personal friends of ours. The list of instructors is too long to name but a few of them were Anette Wachter, Gabby Franco, Kathy Jackson, and Janna Reeves. Some of the classes offered were Precision Rifle, Adaptive Sight Alignment, Shooting Under Stress, and Extreme Malfunction Drills to name a few.

Gene and I spent Friday, Saturday, and Sunday as range support staff which involved anything from setting up bays, providing participants and instructors with things they needed to any other miscellaneous chores that needed to be done. When were weren't working as range staff we were Safety Officers for Gabby Franco, BJ Norris, and Mark Passamaneck.

I just barely got to meet Gabby Franco last year, so it was a thrill to be able to spend a day with her this year. Gabby's husband, JD, was there working a Safety Officer alongside us and he is a pretty cool guy. The two of them just moved to Texas, so maybe we will be able to see more of them in the future. BJ Norris is a professional shooter who has racked up an amazing amount of competitive shooting awards.

Mark Passamaneck, the President of Carbon Arms, was there to teach Competitive Shotgun Loading classes. Since Gene and I are in the process of getting into 3 gun, it was very fortunate that I was able to pick his brain about what the different types of shell carriers. What was even better is that he brought some shell carriers with him so we were able to directly purchase some from him. The shell carriers were the last piece of the 3 Gun puzzle that we needed to solve. Ok, maybe the last piece is practice and we are working on that.

On Sunday, all participants had one last day of classes at the range. Once the final class was over, we stayed behind for several more hours breaking down the bays, packing up, and picking up loads and loads of shotgun shells. There is one thing I can tell you, these women like to shoot. Then again so do we. There were shells and brass everywhere. I can't even conceive how many rounds of ammunition were fired over the weekend. I can definitely say that everyone had a good time.

Even though it was a working conference for us again, we had a really good time and we were very happy to be able to spend some time with some of our local and long distance friends and of course each other.

Here is a link to our Dropbox account with our pictures from this year's conference.
Dropbox link for 2015 Conference pictures