Koko Head Shooting Complex – August 14, 2011

Unlike some of my peers who had experience shooting guns while growing up, I was not so fortunate. However, I did spend many summer days sniping invasive birds with high-powered pellet guns off power-lines in my neighborhood…. Needless to say, the experience I’m about to describe was not nearly the same.

The Koko Head Shooting Complex (KHSC) is located just off of Kalanianaole Highway, just past Hanauma Bay and the before the Submarine Point scenic spot. It is the only public shooting range on Oahu and is not difficult to locate because of all the guns firing, especially to those who have hiked Koko Crater Stairs. The range can get fairly crowded on weekends, and arriving early is a must if you want to shoot from one of the ~ 40 benches (as opposed to standing or proning – lying down). The range is closed on Monday and Tuesday for law enforcement use.

The Lost Trailblazers (Seth Eason, David Chatsuthiphan, Jennifer Liu, Reanne Solomon and myself) met bright and early on Sunday at KHSC where hosts and expert gunmen, John Rubio and Jeff Marquez, who mentored us about gun safety and shooting techniques.

We started with four stations, each with 0.22 rifles to get us comfortable with our firing and to improve our accuracy and precision with each shot.

The 0.22 rifles had no recoil and were easy to hit 50 yd and 100 yd targets set up by John and Jeff. The metal spinning reset targets were fun to shoot since it was easy to confirm when a target was hit (left). The one at the top resets the bottom four after you knock the bottom four down down (right).

Every ~ 30 minutes, shooters are allowed to check, move and/or replace their targets. The group went to verify their shots.

Damn… I messed up on that one “9.” Otherwise not too bad grouping for a newb.

Other people around us were shooting much more heavy artillery than us…

and feeling comfortable with our shooting intro, it was time to step up to some larger caliber rifles.

Jeff and John had four customized AR-rifles and scopes for us to use. The box of 100 was split between us, and damn, it went quick. Probably because we were having so much fun with the recoil.

So they brought out even larger guns. I don’t even know what these were… but they were pretty damn cool. The recoil on them were vicious.

Spotting for Jen, she nailed the bulls-eye on her first shot. Furicken bad-ass.

Thanks to John Rubio and Jeff Marquez for a memorable experience and excellent instruction. Thanks to Reanne for introducing us to such great ballistics experts. For more information about what’s required or suggested to bring to the range, check out the KHSC website.

To view this location on a Google Map also known as my “Adventure Map“, Click Here. For more adventures of the Lost Trailblazers, either look at my other blogposts and “Adventures with the Lost Trailblazers” photo gallery, or check out David’s website “UnrealHawaii.com“.