Snowflakes in Hell

Today was absolutely beautiful.  Not too hot, not a cloud in the sky; the kind of day you hate to be in the office.  But after work today I decided to head to the club to shoot some trap.  Scored 22, 17 and 21.  One thing I find about trap is that I tend to hit more birds when I’m in a squad that has a good rhythm.  When every person chambers the round, mounts, shouts for the bird, shoots, and it repeats at a regular pace.

I’ve noticed that nearly every person has a trademark method of calling for the bird.  Some guys shout a pretty conventional “pull”, others shout “hayup”, and I even think I’ve heard a “ooowop”.  Tonight the guy next to me tonight sounded off a “pull” like a drill sergeant.  Then you have the guys that barely mumble something that often fail to set off the sound activated clay bird thrower.  Those guys break the rhythm.

The difficulty for today is, every time I mounted my gun, I kept thinking about our friend the mall ninja.  I kept thinking about his mounting lesson “out back — out back”, and “Folks, don’t be within 10 feet of me with this, just don’t do it.”  Then I notice the guy next to me has a Remington, “this is a Remington, love it.”  Needless to say, I had to try very hard not to fall down giggling in on the trap range.  I definitely couldn’t wipe the smile off my face, and I hope people thought I was just having a good time.  I couldn’t get mall ninja out of my head, especially when the guy next to me has a Remington.  “Ready? Boom! Boom!’

God Bless.

I am not a fan of most things Disney, but I don’t hate Disney this much:

Done by RedneckInNY with a bow at 20 yards.  Much better than I could ever do with a bow!  I’d be lucky to hit the wall.

Tonight my silhouette shooting was pretty good.  Shot a 37 in the first round, open sights, and got my remaining two pins, Pig and Turkey.  I shot 29 animals in a row before I dropped one.  Now I’m getting used to the Kimber Model 82 Government that I got from the CMP, I’m shooting pretty well with it.  Dropped to 34 on the second round, but it’s a heavy rifle, and I got tired.  Got some good advice from some of the guys who were watching me shoot, so I’ll have to work on some technique, and maybe I can start hitting high 30s consistently.

Silhouette tonight was so so.  I still can’t shoot pistol silhouette for crap.  But my number came up in shot of the week.  That’s where we write our name or membership number on a dollar bill, put it in the pot, and take chances that our dollar bill will be drawn.  If you hit shot of the week, you win.  If you miss, the money goes to the next week.  Last week someone missed. Mine had yet to come up, except for tonight.  The pot was 19 dollars.  The challenge is to shoot a 1/10th scale animal at 25 yards.  It’s about this size, depending on your screen resolution:

Roughly the size of a quarter, cut out into a chicken shape.  I hit it in the ass with open sights, much to my surprise, so I decided the 19 dollars would go toward beer money for the week.  That made up for shooting horribly in pistol.

Tonight I took my Mk.III Hunter to the range to shoot the e-postal match for this month, after screwing up the rules the other night, and shooting 20 rounds at the flies.  Tonight I was shooting better anyway, so it all worked out.

For the bullseye targets, I loaded two at a time.  First two shots were so spot on, I thought I had missed the target clean somehow, wondering if my sights had gotten knocked way off center.  I didn’t manage to reproduce that feat again, but I managed the 9 ring on the initial shot 3 other times.  My follow up shots tend to be not as good, which I attribute to not taking enough time between shots.  Bullseye target score 84.

For the flies, I did 7 out of 10.  Trick was being slow and deliberate.  I loaded no more than one round at a time into the my Ruger Mk.III to force myself to not rush.  Hung on the target good and long until movements dropped down, then broke the trigger.  Jerked at the last minute on three of them, but such is life.  Grand total score of 91 out of 110 possible.

I’m using a factory gun.  I think the Mk.III could stand to have a lighter trigger.  I’m also using a cheap chinese no-name holosight on top, which gets the job done, but has issues with distorting the zero if you don’t have the dot right in the middle of the glass.  It also enjoys drifting from zero, which is obnoxious.

Silhouette tonight went well.  Shot 10 rams in a row with Bitter’s CZ 452 Lux, which means another pin!  I’m getting my average into the low 30s now on scoped sights with my 10/22.  I’ve been shooting Bitter’s CZ in the open sights category, and have actually been doing better with that gun than I do with the Ruger.  My average with her CZ isn’t as high yet because I have to shoot one more match to get rid of the first one where I hadn’t zeroed the sights.  My scores have been consistently in the low 30s with Bitter’s CZ.  I love that rifle.  The open sights are very nice, and it just shoots beautifully.  I only hope that one day she will get a chance to enjoy it too!

The Ram pin will certainly get a place of honor on my shooting hat.  Pictures will be forthcoming.

The best ones are the ones you know are from ordinary shooters.  I’m particularly interested to hear reviews from Kel-Tec owners too.

Today marks the beginning of International Handgun Metallic Silhouette Association season at my club.  I think this is quite likely one of the most challenging shooting sports out there.  I shot in three classes.  First was field pistol, with my Smith & Wesson 629 Classic loaded up with .44 Special, open sights, standing unsupported off handed, two hands.  Field pistol is half size animals, with chickens at 25 yards, pigs at 50, turkeys at 75, and rams at 100.  I was disappointed to only score 11, but the guys who have been doing this for a while said 11 isn’t too bad for starting out.   Went on to smallbore pistol with the Mk.III, with 3/8th scale animals, and did 12 on that.  Finished up on big bore, which are full sized animals at 40 meters (chickens), 100 meters (pigs), 150 meters (turkey), and 200 meters (rams).  My whopping score of 6 is to be feared!  Needless to say, I need more practice.

Neat thing about hitting the full sized rams at 200 meters (I only hit one) is you have enough time to be disappointed you didn’t hit the thing before you realize you did.  It takes even more time for the *ping* and the sound of the ram falling over to get back to the shooter.

It’s an interesting sport, and hitting things at 100 yards with a pistol is quite a challenge.  Even harder at 200 yards.  I think my one ram was merely luck.  I think I will keep doing this though, and hopefully it’ll make me a better pistol shooter.

Shot a 21 with Bitter’s new CZ-452 Lux rifle, open sights.  Not good, but I meant to take it to the range last night to make sure the sights were zeroed, but didn’t get the chance because I felt like dog pooh. It was shooting a bit high at to the left, but it’s hard to tell exactly how much just looking at the splatter on the animal.  I ended up missing the first couple of animals until I figured out where to aim for that particular animal.  After that it was down to my general skill, which only gets me about 30 or so with my scoped 10/22.

I think it’ll be a great shooter once I get the sighs zeroed and get a scope on it.

TD of the Unforgiving Minute takes his new CZ-85 to the range.  I have a CZ-82, and it’s the best gun I’ve ever paid under 300 dollars for.

Finally,  I managed to wrangle myself a pin for shooting ten chickens in a row.  I shot a 35 out of 40 overall for that set.  I came very close to getting a pin for rams, but by the time I was on the tenth ram, my pulse rate was so high I could see my heart beat moving the rifle, and I missed.  Damn!  But hey, I’ll take my chicken pin.  Turns out I don’t do well when I don’t eat before going to the match.  I do better when I eat first.  I’ll have to remember that.

A score of 28 was off from my score of 33 last week.  I did get all ten pigs, but that was all the mojo I could muster this week.  I just wasn’t feeling it.   I probably won’t get to see Bitter this weekend because of weather.  We’re expecting snow and “wintry mix” this weekend, which could make going home hazardous, or very difficult.   Winter can go to hell.

It’s much better doing Silhouette when your trigger pivot pin is properly in place.  Last week was 22 and 25, which put me dead last in my class.   This time I got 31 and 33, which puts me in the middle of the pack.  This is with a stock 10/22, crappy “Golden Bullet” ammo, and a 30 dollar scope.  I figure some better equipment might be worth a few more animals.  I like shooting the ram silhouette the best.

Despite temperatures in the mid 30s, and winds of 25 mph with gusts up to 50 mph, my club was still shooting trap tonight.  We’ve been rained out the past few weeks, so I was eager to shoot a few sets, despite the conditions.

Winds that high either send the clays into the upper atmosphere, when you’re expecting it to crest, or send it out so quickly that by the time you get a bead on it, it’s so far out your chance of hitting is narrow.  Clays thrown more sideways really go that way if the wind is helping it.  Let me also say, it’s also amusing to see the wadding shoot a few feet out, and then go sideways.

All in all, a fun time, despite my score of 18 and 13.  I think it’s good to shoot under adverse conditions.   If you can keep your game together when it sucks out, you’ll be better for it when it doesn’t.  I’m not sure I’d consider 13 keeping my game together, but I’ll take 18 given the conditions.  I was considering a third set, but on my second, the snow flurries started, and I figured that was my cue to call it a day.

So tonight I took the 10/22 to Indoor Silhouette night.  We’re shooting at chickens, pigs, turkeys and rams at 25 yards.  I scored 22 and 25.  Standing position has never something I’ve been particularly good at, so I am hoping continuing to do this will improve my skills in this area.   Maybe next time I will do better.  The 10/22 was having issues because I haven’t cleaned it in a while.  I’m thinking maybe a nice bolt action 22 is in order for this type of shooting.

My reloads worked just fine. In fact, pretty well! But it was only 25 yards. I didn’t want to waste most of my reloads on that distance, but to make up for it, I punched out the 10 ring with my Glock at 10 yards firing about one shot a second. It’s been a while since Mr. Glock got the throw hot lead down range, and I was happy to land most of my hits in the center.

I also tried out those 20 and 30 round AR-15 magazines from Brownell’s that I got a few weeks ago, and they worked just fine. Not a single problem with them, so they get a passing grade from me. Even the 20 rounder did fine, and I have two others of a different brand that don’t feed so well.

I decided to head over to the club tonight for the weekly trap tournament. My first time shooing trap formally. I did 21 the first round, and then gutter balled the second round with a 14. I’m not sure what I did on the second round. Clay shooting is one of those things where if I get out of my zone, I just start sucking. Second round started off bad when I was in front of a mic that wouldn’t throw the clay unless I practically screamed into it. Two, even three shouts of “pull!”, and I was off. When I start thinking too much about the shot, I start getting behind the bird and missing. When I relax, and just do it, without worrying “you gotta hit this one,” I do much better.

Hopefully next time I can score in the 20s both times.

I decided to head over to the club this morning and try my hand at International Handgun Metallic Silhouette Association (IHMSA) shooting.  I’m a long ways off a respectable score, but I don’t think I totally embarrassed myself.  I got at least one on every position.  There is a few things I’ve discovered, though.   One is that my Ruger Mk.III Hunter’s factory sights are entirely inadequate for this kind of shooting.  At 75 and 100 yards, the front nylon dot was larger than the targets.  At 100 yards, my bullets were impacting dirt, because I wasn’t compensating enough for the drop at that distance.  Two is I need to practice more.  I haven’t shot handgun in several months, and it showed.  I also need to learn to slow down and not rush my shots.  I’ve had that problem with our e-postal matches too.  Three, air gun silhouette shooting is a lot more fun than I would have imagined, and it’s pretty cheap to get into.

I think I can definitely up my score next time with a little practice, and a better sight for my Ruger.  I also think I will need to get myself a decent air pistol.  The organizer of our Silhoutte shoot let be borrow his, but I’m told a pretty decent one can be had for under 200 dollars.   I would definitely like to try that again when they resume shooting in March.

Coolest…. day at the range… ever!

A few things stand out. Firing USCitizen’s 50 caliber AR upper. It breech loads a screw in bolt. Once you screw your round into the breech, you bolt the lower on and go to town. I didn’t hit the target with it, but it was fun. Recoil not as bad as I anticipated.

Second thing was repeatingly hitting the steel plate out at 935 yards. Did this with Joe Huffman’s rifle while Joe was spotting for me. It’s a Remington 700 in 300 WinMag with a pretty bitching scope on it.

Third was winning the Kalashnikov challenge. Uncle bet me a beer that I couldn’t hit the 400 yard steel plate with the AK-74 using iron sights and a full magazine at a bench rest. I hit it 5 times, and came pretty close a few others. Joe Huffman was spotting for me. So much for Kalashnikovs not being accurate :)

Oldest rifle I ever shot was DirtCrasher’s Krag. Got to shoot a 1911 for the first time thanks to Melody Byrne letting me try Chris’ 1911.

I see USCitizen has pictures up already, and there’s some commentary by Uncle.

Been a while since I was at the range, but I had to go today to make sure the scope on my AR-15 was zeroed in with the ammo I’m using.  I think I have it as zeroed as it’s going to get.  I also just wanted to check out the AK-74, to make sure it’s all happy, which it is.

Other than the fact that once I found my zero, I was shooting like crap, I think I’m ready for GBR.   Joining me will be my scoped AR-15, and the AK-74.  Mr. Glock will be staying home, since I can’t carry it in Nevada, and weight for guns and ammo is now at 40lbs, and I don’t want to go any heavier.

SayUncle tells me this range goes out to 400 yards, and there will be steel plates.  Sounds good to me, but based on how I was shooting today I hope those plates are big.

I finally got the Citori out to the trap field.  I am very happy with how it feels and how it shoots.  Single trap I managed 24 out of 25.  Double trap I managed 19 out of 24.

I bet Bitter on the last shot of the box that I’d buy her dinner if I missed.  I actually missed!  I think deep inside I feel sorry that she has had to come up here so much that I must have subsonsciously gotten behind the clay too much and missed.  Yeah… that’s the ticket.

I need more work on double, but I’m happy enough with the single score.  It’s a lot more work on the arms operating the brake action than it is operating the pump on my Mossberg.  But overall, I like the break action O/U better in terms of being able to hit.  I still want to improve my double score, but it’s better than I was doing with my pump.

I’ve never had the opportunity to shoot at a military base before, so I wasn’t about the pass up the opportunity when Bitter’s work invited me along for their range trip.  I didn’t know much about what was going on other than to bring lots of guns and ammo, so I did.  They had some instructors there for us which brought along a lot of their own guns, so it didn’t turn out we needed mine a whole lot.  They even brought an AK-74, which was good, because for some reason mine was jamming (bad magazine I think).

Bitter was grateful I was willing to come out.  I mean, it’s just so difficult to go out to a range on a beautiful summer day to teach a bunch of abundantly cute young chicks, many of whom have never shot a gun before, how to shoot.  Sacrifices we must all make in order to grow the shooting sports, I know.  I had a few people, even a few of the women, shoot the PSL.   I think they were a bit beyond 100 meters though, because the round was dropping a bit with the scope dialed into 100 meters, but the little reactive steel silhouette targets got hit just fine if you put the caret on the scope on top of the target’s “head” as a little hat.  Bent it right over when it hit.

It was mostly plinking, but I was enjoying shooting the steel targets with rifle and pistol.  I might have to get into silhouette shooting on a more regular basis!

Anyway, the Marines have some really nice facilities that are open to civilians.  You have to be invited by the Quantico Shooting Club, however.  But if you ever have a chance to go, I would highly recommend it.  Sadly, they don’t turn on the pop up targets for civilians so you can see how you would qualify as a military rifleman, but it’s a nice place to shoot, nonetheless.

After some recommendations from my readers, I ordered some CCI Standard Velocity .22LR to try out in my Ruger 10/22.  I took it to the range today, and after zeroing the scope in for this round (it drops a bit lower than high velocity), I managed to do some better shooting than I did with the cheaper stuff.

NRA standard 100 yard large bore target, at 100 yards, bench position.  Two targets, string of ten in each.  First target 97/100.  Landed three in the 9.  Second target, 94/100, landed four in the 9, and 1 in the 8.   The difference between this and last time isn’t really that much, but when I missed, I knew I missed before I even saw where the shot went in the scope.  Last time, I was missing shots that my gut told me should have gone into the ten rings.  With the better ammo, when I missed, I felt the miss.  So I’m happy about that at least.   To me that says I’m working within the limitations of me rather than my ammo.  Now I just need to work on getting that perfect 100.

We had some really beautiful weather this weekend in the Philadelphia area. Rightwingprof picked a great time to come. Bitter and I went canoing in New Jersey on Saturday. She had to go back to Virginia after we met up with Wyatt and Rightwingprof, so I decided to spend the rest of the daylight today at the range with the Ruger 10/22. I was shooting an NRA large bore 100yd target at that distance w/optics in bench rest position. Ammo was Remington “Golden Bullet”, those cheap brass plated .22LR rounds they make. I scored 189 out of 200 and 178 out of 200. I noticed most of my hits into the 8 and 9 ring were vertically oriented, rather than horizontally oriented, so I’m wondering if maybe powder charge consistency in the cheap ammo is an issue? I think I should be able to hit 200 out of 200 with optics at that distance. At least that’s my goal!

The 10/22 needs a cleaning now though. It was jamming up on me toward the end, and starting to make weak strikes on the rim.

I think I’ve done about as well as I’m going to do in this match. I went to shoot at my club tonight, with a mind to do some outdoor shooting at 100 yards with the 10/22. I arrived kind of late though, and only got about 15 rounds off before I decided it was getting a little too dark.

Switch to the indoor range. Tried out the E-Postal with the Glock a bit to see if could do any better. Had a really hard time hitting anything over the 8 with it. I probably could have worked my way up to hitting the 9, 10, and maybe 11, but I told myself I wouldn’t blow more than 50 rounds with the Glock. 9mm is just too expensive right now.

Switch to the Mk.III, and I seem to be doing better than I was last time. I managed to shoot a 65 two handed.

Hitting the 11 was a lucky shot! I figured if I can hit the 11, I can surely hit the 12. But no, I pulled that one way down, and to the right. I would have been better off going for the 1 circle, and getting an extra point. But these are the gambles you take with this target. Next I had to try one handed. Now, I’ve been practicing one handed, and I’m getting to the point where I don’t totally suck. I shot 55 one handed.

I discovered Ahab’s advice about taking your time to be quite useful. I instituted a rule of loading no more than one round at a time, which improved my shooting dramatically. I tend to practice more rapid shooting.  If I put 5 rounds in a magazine (club maximum), I rush my shooting, which was killing me in bullseye stance.

I think this is about as well as I’m going to shoot on this match. To be honest, I can’t see anything beyond the 10 circle well, and I can’t see the 12 and 13 circle at all. This was the hardest match so far, I think. Golf at least had color to aim at. This circles target was as much a test for eyesight and dealing with poor sight picture as it was for holding the gun steady and trigger technique. My advise for other shooters is to do the middle row first. Errant shots have a good chance of hitting the other circles! I had that happen at least twice.  Even hit the 13 by chance first time I tried the target, unfortunately the rest of the target sucked, and my single handed shooting was atrocious in that first session.

Good luck to everyone.  You have until Monday the 30st to get your entry in, if you want to participate.  But you should!  Go download the target from Conservative UAW Guy.