BEMIDJI — For the last 13 years, men, women and children have partaken in a unique shooting contest. The target is Easter candy. The prizes are more Easter candy.
The annual Peep Shoot is held at the Northland Sports Park off Highway 89, which offers target practice ranges, firearms safety training and more for members and guests of the Bemidji Area Shooters Association.
The Peep Shoot, according to originator Blair Nelson, was an idea spawned when and where many great ideas happen: while cleaning up forgotten things of children, in this case, stale Easter bunny Peeps.
Bjorn Christian of Grand Forks was on Nelson’s porch when the idea took hold, and the inaugural event took place.
“I like shooting stuff, so I thought, ‘What the heck, give it a try,’” Christian said during Peep Shoot XIII on April 26. “So we set up some Peeps in the backyard and it was a lot tougher than I thought it would be.”
The event has now grown into a fundraiser for the shooting range and its member clubs. The park was first created in 2015, partly through Minnesota’s Clean Water, Land and Legacy amendment.
The Peep Shoot is absolutely nothing like any other shooting tournament and has developed its own rules and terminology over the years, with the ranges for rifles and pistols set accordingly.
“Twenty-five yards sounded fair, so we tried that, and it was hard enough that we keep doing it,” Nelson said. “The pistols well, 25 yards would be really, really hard, so we decided to make it closer to the range that people shoot their qualifications for the permit to carry.”
The only thing taken seriously during the event is safety, with eye and ear protection required at all times.
“It's always been the kids and the family shooting, so we have a special division of youth... actually make them shoot off of a bench so that they're not trying to handle full size guns with their strength differential,” Nelson explained.
“That gives them an incredible advantage and very often, you will have a youth competitor winning all the Jelly Bellies, which is hilarious.”
The jellybean prize is for best overall, and chocolate bunny prizes are awarded for first place in each division.
"There is no second place in a gunfight, especially against an unarmed rabbit,” Nelson said.
Old Peeps are preferable over fresh ones, so they undergo an aging process before they are placed on wooden skewers and placed in a row.
“It makes it a bigger bang... and if you hit them just right, they just shatter,” Christian said.
The bonus Peep, or “Money Bunny,” has an even bigger bang.
“We discovered rimfire Tannerite and figured that if we would go and find some dime bags and that would fit inside a Peep and have them blow up as sort of a bonus round,” Nelson shared.
Peeps are my least favorite Easter candy, and you simply can’t cover a story like this without also participating.
As a Northern Minnesota transplant, though, firearms weren’t really part of my upbringing. “I was raised by New Yorkers,” I explained to folks who were curious how someone who grew up in Bemidji had never handled a rifle before.
Former Bemidji City Council member Roger Hellquist, known to other Peep Shooters as “the Rogfather,” was a great source of reassurance and a wealth of knowledge for me, and I can see how he got the nickname.
After seeing others in the adult rifle round take their shots, it was my turn. There was a lot going on all at once: balancing the rifle on sticks as I sat cross-legged on the pavement, all while trying to get a handle of how to see through the scope.
Finally, Yellow Bunny 1 was in my crosshairs. Then I took the slightest breath, and he was gone. I remembered Roger telling me to “breathe after you pull the trigger,” which was solid advice.
I grazed three Peeps and shattered one of the skewers. The Peep Shooters said that was pretty good for a first-timer, with some eager to tell me all about what to look for if I find myself in the market for my own .22, just in case I ever wanted to take my marksmanship more seriously.
