Hitting the Range While It's "Warm"

It's been a few weeks since we were able to get out to the range for a little ballistic therapy. I think the last time I did any shooting was at the Steve Anderson class. I am ashamed to admit that I even skipped an opportunity to shoot a couple weeks ago when the temperature climbed to a mere 21°. Cold has never stopped us before but that time I cried "Uncle" and stayed indoors.

This week we were joined by friend "Checkered Flag" for a short range session. We've had a spell of extremely cold weather recently, so when the temperature rose to a balmy 48°, I expected the outdoor range would be very crowded. I was pleasantly surprised that the entire park was empty when we arrived. Perhaps the ammo shortage is affecting folks' plans to shoot. In our case it did indeed affect how long we stayed and how we practiced.

We set up these colorful paper targets to give lots of options. We started out doing a bit of shooting on the move. Instead of the typical movement forward or backwards, and left or right, we concentrated on oblique movement. Aiming for the center zone, we moved forward and back, at an angle, repeating in all directions. With all the stationary dry fire I've been doing recently, it was good to refresh a bit with some movement typical of what I'll encounter in USPSA matches.

Next we moved onto one of our favorite drills, color shot calling. Colleen was the "caller" and she would call out a series of 2-4 colors; "red blue" or "yellow blue yellow" for example. We would draw and put one shot on each as directed. There was no time limit but we would shoot as fast as we could get an acceptable sight picture.

After one of our breaks to reload magazines, I suggested we try some long distance shooting. This time to used the lower black squares and shot from the 25 yard line. This was the first time I've done any long-distance shooting since I put new sights on my gun and I was pleased with the results.

We ended the day with everyone doing some free shooting on their own. I decided to work on strong hand and weak hand-only shooting for a bit.

Soon we were all looking at empty ammo boxes. I had purposely brought only a limited number of rounds. Despite firing less than 200 shots, I was very happy to get in a good, if short, practice. It was more of a refresher session than learning anything new. We made good use of the time and limited ammo, but fun the fun certainly wasn't limited!