Baby Shower or Range Day???

Daughter-in-law's baby shower was Saturday.  So I called the boys out to the farm to do some shooting whilst the womenfolk were busy.  I had Nick, Alex, Dad, and Nick's father-in-law Rod out.
But first, we met at the South Fork restaurant in Mulberry for their Saturday lunch special of catfish, chicken wings, Rocky Mt. Oysters, and fries!  That already makes it a GREAT DAY and we haven't even fired the first shot.

We set a steel plate in the fence row, angled down to deflect any bullets into the ground.  And we guessed at the distance.  I speculated "over 400 yards."  I was right, and I was also way off.  Laser ranged distance was 550 yards (503 metres) from bench to steel.

And then we set off to a shootin'.  Folks pulled out whatever they had and wanted to fire.  Ole Rod is a pistol dude and had never shot a rifle before in his life.  I set him up on the .300 Win Mag, followed by the .243, .223, and the suppressed .22.  He laughed the entire time.  I think he's hooked and will be looking for a rifle in the near future.

Our targets were set up at 100 yards, 200 yards, and 550 yards.

We finished with the rifles and broke out the pistols.  Of course, we moved to the 25-yard line with the backstop to shoot pistols.  We fired .38's, .40's, .45's and 9mm's.  We picked up all the brass we could find for reloading as well.

And then we jumped on the gator to go check out the "gong" hits.

Pictured below are 3 2-shot groups fired by Nick, Alex, and myself - at 550 yards!  The upper left-hand group is less than one inch.  The top right side is close to 1/2".  And the bottom group is about 2.5" - all eye-balled and not measured.  5.5" at 550 yards would be 1 MOA.  We are WELL UNDER that!  Yes, I know, it's only two shots, but still - that's awesome shooting!

We all used my Ruger Precision Rifle in .243 caliber.  I have it zeroed at 500 yards.  Due to the wind, we all held LEFT of where you can see in this picture (upper left-hand side of the white paint) to compensate for drift.  We also used hand-loads with Sierra Match King bullets weighing 95 grains.  All bullets were also extended to seat 2 thousandths off the lands.  So we were using a pretty great rifle with matched bullets to the weapon.  But with scope and all, I still have only about $1,200 in the entire set-up.  Winning!


3 2-shot groups from a Ruger Precision Rifle chambered in .243 fired from 550 yards out
by three different shooters.

We called it off after about 3 hours of shooting.  We did not calculate the expense of the bullets because you cannot put a price on FUN.  And trust me, we had fun!  Better than an ole baby shower on any day of the week and twice on Sunday.


Comments

  1. Dave PorrillMay 24, 2017 at 10:50 AM

    Jealous!! Sounds like a really good way to spend a Saturday afternoon.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Cleaning Winchester SX3 / SX4 Shotguns

Image
The Winchester SX4 is my Go To shotgun for everything - clays, doves, ducks, geese, pheasants, whatever.  It is an awesome firearm.  The drawback?  There are multiple moving parts and a few of them like to collect carbon.  And this carbon sticks as if it were put on those parts with super glue! Specifically, the magazine tube and the gas piston are the main carbon collectors.  Those parts come out more black than silver & gold. The inner components of an SX3 / SX4 with highlights where carbon will form So what is my trick for cleaning those bits?  I drop the gas piston into my Hornady sonic cleaner.  Inside the cleaner I put in about a cup of Hornady's One Shot Sonic Clean Solution for gun parts, add some DI water, a couple squirts of Dawn liquid dish soap, and then top it off with a dash or two of the citrus version of Dr. Bronner's pure castile liquid soap.  I have found that the citrus Dr. Bronner's is awesome at removing grease and oil....
Read more

Winchester SX4 Trigger Assembly Update

Image
First, you need to read the post immediately before this one to understand why I had to take my Winchester SX4 shotgun apart - all the way apart - specifically the trigger assembly. Second, my bad.  I had neglected to clean the gun after returning from last October's pheasant trip.  I had about one bale of grass seed inside that gun, which in the end, may have kept the #8 pellet from getting out on its own.  Shame. Finally, I did not give up.  I watched four different YouTube videos on how to disassemble and reassemble the trigger group.  Sadly, no one did the SX4, only the previous version, the SX3.  Close enough.  Why did it take 4 videos?  Because no one explained HOW the damn sear goes back in.  Everyone either ASSUMED we all know how OR in two cases, the reassembly process was out of the camera frame.  Aggravating! The key, and this is more for me to remember, was on the fourth video, the author said, "The sear kinda slides down int...
Read more

Determine Sex of Deer from Tracks

Image
It IS possible to determine from a set of tracks whether the deer you are tracking is a doe (female) or a buck (male).  And, it's actually pretty simple if you know a few facts about deer. First, you have to know what a deer track looks like.  Deer leave a track that looks like the outline of a heart. Next, you have to know the direction of travel.  Deer are moving toward the "pointy" end of the heart.  So in the above example, the deer is traveling toward the top of this post, or up. Here is an actual photo of deer tracks in the wild so you can get a better idea.  Again, this deer is traveling up, or towards the top of this page.  (It is also clear that this deer was STANDING, not walking - well clear enough to me.  Read on to find out why I know that). Sometimes if the ground is soft or if the deer is traveling really fast (jumping), the track left will show the deer's dew claws at the rear of the direction traveling, like so: The ...
Read more