It Was A 'Shoot-cation'

My annual staycation between Christmas and New Year's Day was made extra long this year thanks to a surprise Christmas Eve day off and the bookend weekends. I also added January 4th to my break to burn some "use or lose" time, giving me a nice twelve day break. Making the time off extra nice was being able to get in some extra range time too. Our "holiday range time" got started even before my vacation with an early morning range trip with my son who was home from college. That outing set the tone for a fun "shoot-cation." Next up was the annual Gabriel Posssenti Range Day with family and friends.

Later in the week I made a solo trip to the range. During that outing, I spent time working exclusively with a new M&P Shield. The Shield was a fun purchase that I'll use for some IDPA BUG matches. Eventually it'll be added as another conceal carry option. After putting another couple hundred rounds through it, as well as some snappy +P self defense ammo, I was getting decent accuracy with the small gun out to 15 yards, as well as achy hand. I'll work on shooting even longer distances with it as time allows.

On the second day of the new year, we had another impromptu gathering of friends at the range. Another couple hundred rounds downrange was the order of the morning. During this outing one of the guys brought along his young sons. It's always great to see young boys getting an early start in learning the responsibility, and enjoyment, of firearms. After the rest of the group left, I stuck around to do some shooting-on-the-move drills, which weren't possible with the group.

On this, the last day off before heading back to work, my son and I took another trip out to the range to shoot the AR-15. It was too windy for the cardboard targets, so we set out shotgun clays on the 50 yard berm. We enjoyed good success hitting the 4 inch targets and even got extra return on our money since a lot of times the .223 round goes right through clay, allowing requiring them to be shot again. After that we decided to set more clays on the 100 yard berm. And we hit them too! I was quite pleased especially since the rifle has only iron sights, no scope or magnification, and my distance vision isn't all that sharp. To finish off we went back to the 50 yard berm and shot more clays, this time off-hand. I have to admit the youngin' was much better than me when shooting unsupported at the small targets at that distance.

Tomorrow it's time to get back to the grind. The longer the break the harder it is go back, but at least I'll be starting back with a four day week. I am glad I was able to enjoy so much trigger time, and the range time spent with family was especially rewarding.

Now I better start replenishing our ammo stores!