Range Trip

Various life stuff got in the way of a range trip last week, and then Saturday's much anticipated match was cancelled due to weather. As such I was anxious to hit the range, so as soon as my last conference call was over on Monday I made a beeline for the door. I arrived at the range a little later than I usually do and seven or eight other shooters were there, all shooting rifles. There was also a very young girl shooting a pink .22 rifle with her dad. That was heartwarming to see.

My intent for this trip was to shoot slow fire at some longer distances. I stuck a couple of black target posters on my targets to act as aiming points. I started at 10 yards, an worked my way out to 20. I was pretty pleased my shooting, despite my inability to actually shoot all that slow, and found myself speeding up and running two, three or four shot strings. With my uncorrected distance vision, the pasters pretty much disappear beyond 12 yards.

15 yards

I'm no bullseye shooter but I found the results acceptable. One interesting observation,  the mere 10 inches or so between my aiming points made a difference in the hits, out to 15 yards. The groups, such as they are, were consistently tighter on the upper spot. It made me think of recent matches where I've shot well on shoulder high steel plates, while shooting less accurately on the ground level poppers. Too much practice with eye-level targets perhaps? I'll have to look at how low I can hang my targets on a future trip.

The session ended with a few magazines of SHO and WHO shooting at a closer distance. Despite using just a small portion of the targets, I refreshed them frequently for better analysis of the hits. As such I had a significant stack of paper stabled to the cardboard when I finished, and ended up covering my shirt with paper bits when I pulled them off. It was like "confetti" in celebration of a fruitful outing.