Been to the range VIDEO

Well, today, and yesterday, I spent some time with my old SKS and it's new laser site. The site is pretty cool but has accuracy issues. I need to call the mfg and have a pow wow......

That issue aside, I ran over 200 rounds downrange and had some pretty consistent groups.

My daughter joined me on the range today. Nothing like hot sun, hot gun metal, the smell of power, and bugs while shooting images of Bin Laden full of holes to make the perfect bonding experience for a father and a daughter.

The coolest part was the exploding target I bought. If you've seen Top Shot, or are an avid shooter, you know what I;m talking about. For everyone else...... an exploding target is a powder that comes in two pouches.... you mix them together, but them into a soft container, (I used the mixing bags themselves), and fire a high speed bullet through them. they explode with a big bang and lots of smoke. I think it's like the powder they use in the roll caps we all played with as kids, just more of it.

When the bullet hit that box with the bag of powder.....all I can say is.." Oh....My....Gawd!" was that awesome!!!!

It totally devastated the oak pallet behind it, and the plastic bucket it was setting on is gone....only a few small pieces remained scattered around. And Bin Laden's picture/target...well, lets just say we would have done Seal Team 6 proud.  Needless to say, I gotta go to Lowes and buy a few things to fix the range target holder.

The neighbors were good with the rifle shots but they came running to see what that big bang was.....within a minute or two,  3 neighbors of the guy who's range I was using showed up curious about the explosion. None of them had heard of exploding targets.

Next time, I'm gonna try breaking it up into smaller amounts and use my 22 to see if that gun has enough power to set the charges off.

What a great day.... maybe tonight..steaks on the grill and Sam Adams now that the shooting is done....and it was also the last day of school.... my daughter finished with a high 4..... I assume that is good because she was jumping up and down while yelling it.....

Life is good.

Short video here

Sounds like a great time for both of you.  It's hard to go wrong with a "Bonding with Dad" experience if you include Stuff Blowing Up.  Not having Mom there to witness the carnage is probably helpful as well.

Shooting in the daylight might help, too.

I hear shooting fruits and vegetables can be fun as well, but I usually resist mentioning it because some people in California might think I'm threatening them personally...

Actually somebody called me out on facebook for that too..... but you're wrong.

We were both wearing earplugs. I use the soft foam plugs that you roll to compress and then insert into the ear canal. They expand and seal very effectively and shut down the sound extremely well.

Once they are in they are very hard to see but yeah, we both had them in. Eye protection too.

I have been using these ear plugs since the days of piloting Cessna planes and working in a loud factory.  They never rot, so an occasional run through the washer in a pocket and they are good as new and clean.


Fired about 100 rounds and called it a day. I shot close to 100 the day before as well.... so it was all good for me.

When I was taking my airman's 2nd class medical (many, many years ago) so I could pilot aircraft, my doctor who was also a pilot, told me that he used the soft compressible foam plugs for that very reason. He said the high volume high freq and low freq seemed to be attinuated very well, but normal voice tended to be heard fairly well when it was at a conversational level.

In the video, my daughter and I were both able to speak to each other in normal voices and be heard.

craigb


I hear shooting fruits and vegetables can be fun as well, but I usually resist mentioning it because some people in California might think I'm threatening them personally...

You talkin' to me? 

Talkin of shooting,  it was the Mercia comp last Sunday.  That's a comp for the five counties that make up the Mercia region here. Lincolnshire (me), Leicestershire, Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire and Northamptonshire.

Squad of 15 per team, best 10 to count for team score.
20 x 100 yards
20 x 50 meters
20 x 50 yards

Lincolnshire came second to Leicestershire (Boooo)
Lincolnshire Ladies came second to Leicestershire by ONE MEASLEY POINT!!

As consolation I got best score in our squad and 4th best overall   (from the 75 competitors)

It might help our team..



Here's a realy boring vid..















See,  I told you it's boring.

That looks like my kind of activity.  Are cookies provided?  Is loud snoring from one of the participants considered a faux pas?  Are pillows and air mattresses allowed? 

I'm guessing that none of these folks would last long in a paintball fight. 

I did like that one dude in the yellow "Don't Shoot Me Yet!" vest.  I thought he was going to take a header into some of the contestents at one point.  Shame.  That could have been a memorable moment.

This and a double barrel shotgun ala 1859( My Grandpappy used it in the Great War of 1861) are all the firearms I admit to

What caliber were you shooting at the match? It sounded like BB guns actually but I thought I saw one or two of them work a bolt and load something....


If I recall correctly..... trying to go back in my memory to the rifle range at Parris Island Marine Corps recruit depot.... we were using glorified .22's actually the .223 M-16 rifles were used then. We fired standing at  50 and 100 yards sitting and kneeling at 100 & 200 yards and prone at 300 yards.

ALL of our shots were with open, iron sights... no scopes.

A total of 250 rounds fired down range with one point per round.  I shot 241 to qualify as expert and was one point behind the high shooter in the platoon of 80.  Coming into the final 10 rounds at 300 yards I had it within my reach to break the range record by one round...if I hit all 10 in the black 1 foot target area at 300 yards.  The DI's were more excited over this possibility than I was. I was overconfident, and suffered a long session of extra PT that evening.... for blowing the opportunity for my DI to have bragging rights with his buddies.

You guys have it all... sun shade, nice clean place to lay, rifle supports for the guns...... we were out in the hot sun, laying in a field of briars and sand burrs, with DI's walking up and down the firing line yelling at us. And..  there was some idiot up in the range control tower on the PA with diarrhea of the mouth hurling insults at the shooters between declaring "RANGE IS HOT" and " SECURE ALL WEAPONS"

Two weeks on the range... week one was "snapping in" as they called it. Learning about breathing, sight picture, squeeze, all the things any country boy already knows from hunting. So for a week we layed around pointing the rifles at barrels. At least there was no marching and extreme PT.
Week 2 was live fire... 3 days of sighting the rifles and blasting the targets with .223 rounds.... then 2 days of qualifying.

of course that also meant we alternated with the pit crews pulling the butts or targets up and down and marking them for the spotters.  Hearing the bullets hit the paper 5 feet above us was pretty cool stuff, as they sometimes hit the frames and started tumbling (the poor shooters did this alot) they would make that classic ricochet sound as they headed out into the swamp behind the range.


ahhhhh... those were the days....

They're not BB guns   They're .22LR

One point per round for hitting the 'black'?  Wow, i wish we had it that easy. For us at 100 yards, the ten ring us a tad under 1"

We also use ironsights, though they are round to match the targets. The scope is for POI spotting. We're don't use any rest for the rifle, just a single point sling.

The hardest skill to learn is accurately reading the wind. The breaze we had on Sunday was pushing 100y shots left/right by over 1" and that's the difference between scoring 10 or 8.

Coming into the final 10 rounds at 300 yards I had it within my reach to break the range record by one round...if I hit all 10 in the black 1 foot target area at 300 yards.

The size I'm trying to hit, scaled for 300y, would be 3 inches...