Category: Shooting

I have the winter Kalashnikov/SKS match results up over at our little informal gun blog rifle league.  I shot the smallbore match, but I’ll be damned if I can find my target.  What a shame too, because I got a perfect 100, and beat you all.  If you believe that, I have a Senate seat in Illinois to sell you.

I’ll try to get the spring match up before the weekend starts.  It’ll be a 500 point open sight match.  I’ll make the closing date the end of June, just so it doesn’t end on an oddball date.  That gives everyone two months to shoot it.   Thanks to everyone who took the time, and braved the weather, to shoot the winter match.

Shot the CMP match at the club this morning.  I’m disappointed to have scored lower than my last score of 395/500.  I dropped to 368/500.  Part of the problem was, I was confused by range instructions, and ended up shooting the wrong target.  I thought we had 15 minutes of shooting to get sighted in, but I was supposed to put on a few sighters and put 10 in the actual target.  I put ten into the actual sighter target.  But hey, at least I didn’t shoot someone else’s target.  Fortunately, Burt, who runs these matches, let me score the sighter target, because he would have been correct for me to take a big fat zero for that part.  Score was still pretty awful, because I wasn’t on at first.  I’ve been wondering about whether the sling pulls my shots off. I don’t have an AR-15 with a free float barrel. When I sling up, my shots pull left and high, it seems.  I suppose I need to work on consistency with the sling in that case.  Can any of my readers who are experienced high power shooters comment on sling use on an AR without a free floating barrel?  The next problem have is constructing the sitting position.  Doing the rapid fire string sitting, I shot a fan pattern from the 10 ring down and right toward the 5 ring.  I have to get to the range and find a sitting position that works for me.

The only problem with that is how tight supplies are on ammo right now. I might have to switch to shooting the FAL soon, because I’m running out of small rifle primers, and with primers in such short supply, I don’t know how long it will take to get more.I have plenty of large rifle primers to last me a while.  I don’t know how much more of this hope and change I can handle.  I’m pretty good on Varget for now, but loading up heavier .308 loads could change that real fast.  I doubt Obama pushing that CIFTA treaty, which would ban reloading, is going to help things any either.  People are going to stockpile.  This is one nice thing about shooting air guns — it’s hard to regulate the components.  No problem finding pellets and CO2.

Courtesy of Snarkybytes, who is there.  Main event is tomorrow I think.  Should be a blast.

Looks like Joe and a few other bloggers are busily mixing up explosives for the Boomershoot extravaganza that is to start on Sunday.   I really need to make it out there one year.

The Army’s new green training rounds carry with it a cancer risk because of the tungsten.  They’ve stopped production.  Maybe they should go talk to Dan Smith of ICC, who’s ammo we shot last summer at Blackwater with Todd Jarrett.  That stuff is non-toxic sintered copper and tin, and it worked well.

Blue Trail Range has been out of the news lately, but it looks like it’s still operating with its safety improvements.  We’ve blogged about their trials and tribulations often here.  Reader TacDriver ran some ballistic calculations on the range, based on topographical data.  As results indicated, the house that complained about being hit is in the ballistic shadow of the mountain.

This is good work, I think, and I’m glad TacDriver took the time to do it, and share it with us.

Brillianter describes the difference between the three.

This morning and afternoon were the outdoor NRA Air Silhouette matches at our club.  One match in the morning, and one in the afternoon.  Last Saturday, I was at the club looking at some resettable silhouette animals we were considering buying, and adjusted my sights higher.  Rowland, one of our best shooters, advised me, “Better not set those sights in this cold.  When we get out shooting in warmer weather they’ll be off.”   I knew he was right, but readjusted anyway.  I wanted to see if I could land hits on chickens at the ram distance.  With a CO2 gun like mine, the pressure is a function of temperature, so below a certain degree (about 60 F), your point of impact starts dropping, and becomes a bit erratic.  Last Saturday it was 45 degrees, this Saturday it was 65 degrees, with a bit of a head wind.

Come this morning, I went through my first bank of chickens without a hit.  I can have off days, but missing 5 chickens in a row?   Crank the settings back down.  Next bank of chickens.  Miss 5 more.  Blow through 5 pigs without a hit, trying to figure out where I am, crank up, crank down.  Listen for the “tink” of hitting the rail telling me I’m getting close.  Blow through 4 more.  Finally!  I hit one.  I’m in the ball park.  I check on paper a few times on the even relay.  Could be better, but no more mucking around for this match.  Take down 12 turkeys and rams.  Oh well, at least an A score, not a B.

We broke for lunch and I went back to the chickens and got them right where I like them: hold on the leg.  Then back to rams to see where I was on them.  Hold on the back.  Great.  Pigs will be just about where chickens are, and turkeys will be pretty much dead on body hold.  Second match I shot a 33, which is a master score, and the highest score I’ve ever shot with air pistol open sights.  I won 5 dollars for having the highest open sight pistol score.  I won’t complain!

I am currently AAA for outdoor air pistol open sights, but now have one leg up into master.  If I shoot two more master scores, I will be bumped up to master.  It’s always good to have goals, but in trying to achieve them, listen to those who are more experienced.  I could possibly have been a match winner if I hadn’t mucked around with my sites.  We have several master shooters, so those opportunities don’t come around often.  Rowland can typically figure out in a few animals where his sight settings are.  I do not yet have that talent.  For me, I think the best recipe is not to change my settings once I have them, and to check before the match starts.  The last thing you want to be doing is trying to find your sight settings while you lose points in a match!