On Target

This past Friday afternoon was pretty darn miserable. It pretty much rained most of the day and got harder and steadier as the day progressed. Cathy took part of the afternoon off as she had worked 50 plus hours the past couple of weeks and already had 39 logged as of mid day Friday. All that from a job that never has overtime.

In looking for something to do I suggested we go hit the range and sling some lead. I packed up the new Savage Mark II we got with the custom Eastern Sierra Armory stock. Very nice setup for Biathlon, which with the lack of snow this season we've done exactly ZERO times this year.

I also threw in my Remington 887 Nitro Mag tactical and some clays. Yea, I know, it's not really designed for clays, it's designed to chew bubble gum and kick ass, and it's all out of bubble gum. Works fine though even with the breacher choke. Good for opening up doors and busting clays. Anyhow, we shot a box of shells in the rain and the weapon continually jammed up. It's never been right and I just did some searching. Turns out that it is a common problem. Guess I need to contact the manufacturer.


After that we made our way to a different range and set up our little spinning steel triple target against the back stop along with one paper target to sight in on. The range was about 53 meters or so as we were shooting under cover from the bench. The targets are 4", 3" and 2" for the steel and 8" for the paper. A few magazines and we had it dialed dead on. We then moved to the spinning targets.

Lots of fun for not a whole lot of money. You have to love the .22 for that. We shot high velocity ammo as it's way cheaper than standard velocity, which is used in competition. Only difference is in the trajectory, slightly. Cathy was killing it hitting like 10 for 10 in a row on the 4" from a rest.

We then tried to hit the smaller targets, which was difficult as you couldn't actually see them. You could barely see the 4" through the peep sights with no magnification. We would sight on the 4" and then just creep over a little to where the other target "should be". It worked more often than not and Cathy even hit the 2" at 50+ meters once.

We each took turns shooting offhand as well. I managed 3 in a row on the 4" but then ran into trouble seeing the target as we'd shot the neon sticker, which was all that we could actually see, pretty much off from it.

Good fun and a great way to spend a dreary afternoon. Thanks Cath! On a side note, I just installed a new upper on my AR. My S&W M&P15 is the sport model, which didn't have a forward assist or dust cover. It does now as well as a new sling mount.