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In many of the great Westerns, a cowboy or Indian will at some stage be seen clinging underneath a galloping horse as he fires bullets/arrows at his adversary.
Rotating Hobby Horse Target Shooting, allows the thrill seeking fairground visitor to have the same experience.
Instead of one of those
high-tech cars on rails, this one features a more traditional type of hobby horse with a saddle, into which the rider is secured. They are also equipped with a tethered replica Winchester rifle. A train of riders on their mechanical horses then takes off on a circuitous journey.
The horses are of course suspended from an overhead rail, which leads them at varying speeds through thrilling landscapes; leaping rushing rapids; narrowly missing overhanging rocks, and dizzying gaps on the trail.
Every so often there are targets to be shot at, and to add to the thrill, the saddles, complete with rider, rotate under the horse.
At the end of the ride, each participant is given their score card, along with a souvenir photo taken automatically of them hanging under their mechanical steed, rifle firing.
[link]
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That sounds like fun, I'd buy a ticket. When will you be releasing the base jumping version? |
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This would be fun, and quite an adventure. (Except
for the rotating saddle, I could do without that
having been under a horse on a saddle for real). |
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Sounds great, except for the "horse" part. |
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Nasty, smelly, expensive, dangerous things <wanders off, mumbling> |
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You can have a broomstick instead. |
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I have never entirely understood the idea of hanging
under a horse whilst shooting. I presume the idea is
that the inverted rider is shielded from counterfire,
but shirley the enemy has only to shoot the horse? |
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It's a good ploy. You don't shoot a riderless enemy horse, that's booty. |
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//enemy horse, that's booty// |
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I hope you mean 'booty' in the old sense of the word [2 Fries] |
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You mistake centaurian for centurion just once and they never let you hear the end of it... |
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I suspect a real horse would take a dim view of a real rifle going off underneath him or her. |
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Horses can be trained to become accustomed to loud,
sudden noises, even gunfire. There are very well-
established methods of doing so, which have been
practiced by military and civilian horse people since the
widespread proliferation of firearms. Today, it's commonly
called 'bombproofing' (at least that's what they call it
around here). It starts with thrashing newspapers
and banging trashcan lids, progressing to louder and more
startling things, like tractors and pickup trucks driving
around in circles. |
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As a gun person who knows a
number of horse people, I've occasionally (a 1/2-dozen
times in my life) assisted in the final stage of advanced
bombproofing: standing a few yards from a mostly-
bombproof horse and firing blanks from a 30.06 or similarly
loud gun (some of these people own guns as well, but they
ask me to do it because I'm trained and certified in range
safety; I guess there are legal issues when training
somebody else's horse). The horse doesn't particularly like
it, but it
doesn't go completely berzerk and kick somebody in half
before bolting for the horizon. |
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I have it on good authority, however, that not all horses
can be bombproofed. |
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I was on once when it heard what it thought was a
snake in the grass, when the grass moved ever so
slightly. Bucked up and ran like a bat out of hell. I
don't think it would like bombs going off, just sayin... |
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My limited experience with horses would tend to confirm
that those which have not undergone the bombproof
training can be explosively unpredictable. One of my
father's vet school profs prefaced every horsey curriculum
with the reminder that "a horse is a thousand pounds of
shit mounted on four deadly weapons." |
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