The Hunting Times

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...

So we finally got good enough weather and the slope of new CV-19 cases to drop far enough that we held the Mulberry Militia Trap Club this month (June).  Usually, we shoot the 4th Thursday of every month from April thru October (weather permitting). There are ten shooters in the club.  Those that show up get to shoot.  Those who are too busy or gone, well they don't get to shoot.  We have an automated clay bird thrower that works up to 300'.  We put the trap out somewhere and then move ourselves to different places to get different looks / angles for the clays. This month we had six of the ten show up to shoot.  We went through 2.5 boxes of birds (90 to a box) and only the Good Lord knows how many rounds of 12 ga ammo we blew up.  Suffice to say, it was more than the number of birds we tossed - maybe more like 2 or even 3X that!  This was, after all, our first month out.  Hey, it's for fun and practice anyway. So we're shooting along just fin...

I utilized the Lab Radar (earlier post) to log the velocities of my .308 and .243 rifles today.  I did this so that I could put that information into an app and calculate hold-overs at greater distances.  This also allowed me the opportunity to sight all my rifles in at 100 yards and set the zero stops. So what did I learn?  Well I shot Federal Match ammo out of the .308.  It was 168 grain boat-tail hollow point bullets.  The stated velocity from the Lab Radar was 2,758 feet / second (840 m/s).  What was impressive was that for 9 shots, the Standard Deviation (SD) was 8 fps and the Extreme Spread was 24 fps - from a Factory Load!  That is some pretty nice work there Federal! The hand loads for my .243 were not quite as impressive.  The SD was 25 fps and the ES was 76 fps.  However, I logged a 0.80" group with this load.  The .308 4-shot group landed at 1.46" - both groups at 100 yards.  3 shots from the .308 landed within 0.75" - ...

I bought the Sig Sauer Sierra 3 BDX scope in 4.5 - 14 x 50 mm along with the KILO 2200 range finder.  My, my, my...has technology changed since I last bought a range finder! Ok.  Now zero your scope at 100 yards.  You enter your bullet information (or you can pick one of Sig's preloaded data points) into the phone app and sync it to the range finder.  Then you pair your range finder up with your scope via bluetooth (yes, there are security measures to ensure no one else pairs with your stuff).  Now all you have to do is range your target.  The range finder gives yardages in tenths of a yard (or meters if you prefer) and angle of inclination or declination.  Then it sends that information to your scope - which lights up with the correct hold-over for your target!  This is A-W-E-S-O-M-E. Look, I know I'm not doing this thing justice via my words.  Go take a look at this YouTube video and then come on back here for the rest of the story... https...