What Did You Shoot Today?

[JWinAZ]

Went to the range to check the repair that Ruger performed on my Marlin 1894. The lever would stick a little when just about closed and stick open, hard, after the last shot. The rifle went to Mayodan, NC via FedEx at Ruger’s expense. They had it for one day and sent it back. The report was that they replaced the lever and fired 20 rounds without a malfunction. The shipping and quick turnaround were all really good.

I have installed a Williams Foolproof receiver sight and Skinner Patridge blade. The light was good so I used a 0.070” diameter aperture.

I loaded 30 rounds with the Accurate 43-215H on top of 7.6 grains of Viht. 340, a mild load. I was satisfied with the accuracy. I had vertical stringing but that is my eyes, 3” at 44 yards. I’ll try a larger aperture and bullseye next time.



The disappointment is that the lever still stuck open after the last shot was ejected. Requires a firm bump on the lever to close. The hitch on closing is gone. The problem only seems to occur if more than one round is loaded. Unfired rounds can be cycled through with no problem. Recoil seems to be a factor. I sent another service request to Ruger, we’ll see.

 

[Rushcreek]

The thing that I like about this one is the accuracy and the perfect feeding. It feeds CCI Quiet to Stingers with nary a jam.
It also will shoot anything from Short CB to rat shot as a break open single shot.
The frequent “click” is annoying but a second pull of the trigger works every time.
I have a LCP .380 but it’s basically a “nose blower”due to its nature and mouse tit sights

 

[Mitty38]

The thing that I like about this one is the accuracy and the perfect feeding. It feeds CCI Quiet to Stingers with nary a jam.
It also will shoot anything from Short CB to rat shot as a break open single shot.
The frequent “click” is annoying but a second pull of the trigger works every time.
I have a LCP .380 but it’s basically a “nose blower”due to its nature and mouse tit sights

Kinda wish I would have kept ours for a range gun. It was pretty accurate for what it was. Plus was definitely a conversation piece.

 

[CWLONGSHOT]

I took three to the range yesterday...

A S&W 15/22 ta site. What a fun chooter!! Scope has a Specail turret to set for yardages to 150 yards. Its pretty durn close!!! Going back and forth was very repeatable.

Then a 350 Legend AR. Needs work. Shoot 3" patterns.

Last my Ol '98 8mm sporterized by my Grandfather. It was his war trophy. Years ago I settled on 49g 4064 and a Sierra 175. I remember a inch. But that was thirty years back... I made a few changes theu the years and last was a scope last fall. Never sited.

Loaded three ladders. One 150g, one Speer 170 and last 170g Hormady RN.

First two was bad, 150's PITIFULLY SO... But the Hornadys and 4320 shot well but slow around 24-2500. But into 1".

Fun day, Blue skys lil breezy but 38°. I enjoyed the day.

CW

 

[Winelover]

We have a 22LR LCP II that is picky with ammunition. Especially, the promotional stuff..................most of which is 90's vintage. Some of them won't fire after three hits. There could be various reasons........... the age of ammunition, lite firing pin strikes, insufficient priming compound or any combination of the aforementioned. The most reliable seems to be the premium loadings. CCI Stingers, Velocitators & Mini-Mags, or such. Get a lot of practice doing FTF clearing drills.

The curious thing is the same lots of ammunition are very reliable in both the 10-22 and Winchester 9422, as well as the Mark II target model. Some FTF's in the Mark IV Lite and the CA Pathfinder but nowhere near the LCP II. Further testing is required!

 

[popper]

I remember a report yrs ago from a competitive 22 trainer. He bought ammo by the pallet, tossed all the 'exterior' cases. They found cracked primer in a lot of shells that caused miss-fires. Ammo was 'Olympic competition' quality. I haven't had a FTF in my 'junk' ammo. Have had bullets fall out of the case though ( famous junk stuff).

 

[CWLONGSHOT]

We have a 22LR LCP II that is picky with ammunition. Especially, the promotional stuff..................most of which is 90's vintage. Some of them won't fire after three hits. There could be various reasons........... the age of ammunition, lite firing pin strikes, insufficient priming compound or any combination of the aforementioned. The most reliable seems to be the premium loadings. CCI Stingers, Velocitators & Mini-Mags, or such. Get a lot of practice doing FTF clearing drills.

View attachment 39426The curious thing is the same lots of ammunition are very reliable in both the 10-22 and Winchester 9422, as well as the Mark II target model. Some FTF's in the Mark IV Lite and the CA Pathfinder but nowhere near the LCP II. Further testing is required!

I have one as well and it WAS very picky. But shooting it has lessened that allot! I keep it in my pistol box and shoot at every opportunity. Mostly just to break in. That was over a year ago and many, many hundreds if rounds. Now any HV is fine and most SV target also runs.

 

[L Ross]

After our hike, I SHOT! It has been months since I stood on my hind legs and shot offhand. I hauled 10 prairie dogs down to the 80 yard rail, got out my Bergara B-14 trainer, a handful of Auto Match and went to shooting. No warm up targets, no stretching nothing, just shot. There was a slight wind issue. The dogs needed painting and the wind was so strong from West to East, (right to left on my range), that even holding the Rust-o-leum 2X spray can 6 to 6" off the dog a lot of the paint just bent away to the right. Sue asked me if I thought shooting was even a good idea.
Four out of ten for the first ten, boy the rifle got heavy over Winter.
Reset the targets and got six of ten on the second bank. I even had a run of four targets, 50%. In a month I should be back up to about 80%.
After I shot I worked on the boat getting it set up for hand lining on the Mississippi. I'd like to go fish the Wisconsin by casting jigs and plastics for walleyes but the river is so low as to be unsafe to travel on.

 

[Ian]

Perishable skills, that offhand stuff, not that I have any skills to begin with. The upcoming muzzleloader competition will likely take place first in blustery rain, then one nice day (maybe), then two red-flag wind days. I have to learn how to shoot a group with a flintlock while the target is passing by! The test run a few weeks ago was in freezing conditions with a wind gusting to 25-30 and I kept them on a 12x14" target at 50 yards so there's hope I guess.

Today I ran a practice run with paper shot cartridges using 2F this time, pretty good but patterns are more open compared to 3F. More consistent, but bigger. I'm going to enter the "First Timer's" shotgun class with my little .58 smoothie trade gun, shooting position is eight yards behind the trap so maybe I'll break a few if I get on them fast enough. Need to get them within 25 yards, 20 is better.

I did figure out why the gun shoots so low with shot but on with round ball. Yeah. Dry fired a couple today and figured out I was pulling the 3-1/2 pound gun low with the trigger. Good grief. I ran about a dozen paper cartridges through it at stationary clays and then wrote myself a note to tape to the lid of my shooting box: DON'T JERK THE GUN. FOLLOW THROUGH THE SWING. Probably won't help but I bet it will be fun anyway.

 

[fiver]

ounce in a cylinder gives you 30yds.
no need to be anything more than a bit aggressive after making sure you see the bird.
hold the gun into the house [head on stock] and let your eyes focus out in front of it about 10yds.

 

[Ian]

I was consistently getting 4-5 #7-1/2 pellets on a 4" ellipse drawn on paper at 22 yards 7/8 ounce and 55 grains of 2F, nice consistent, full patterns but just a bit bigger than I prefer. With one ounce and 60 grains just dumped in the barrel (powder, cornmeal, shot, damp ball of paper rammed on top) I was breaking hand-thrown ones but mostly cracking them in half or maybe getting three pieces, but I was breaking them at about 25-28 yards when I managed to hit them. One of my friends that was there shot it a few times and had the same lame breaks but had no trouble hitting them. He was absolutely crushing the same birds with his full-choke Mossberg and I did pretty well with his gun, too.

 

[L Ross]

I used to mess around with shot loads in flinter smooth bores from 24 ga. up to Brown Bess'. The more serious I got about a proper wad column and a thin over shot wad the better my patterns got.
Card wad over the powder, then a cushion wad soaked in melted Crisco, then shot, the a thin card wad with 4 little awl holes punched on it. The holes allow the air to escape when you are seating that over shot wad. Otherwise the compressed air will pump it right back up the barrel.
Killed a turkey deader'n Kelsey's nuts with a .69 caliber English Officer's smooth bore and an ounce of 6's at 22 paces.

 

[CWLONGSHOT]

I got to the range again yesterday.

Brought my H&R 357 Maxi, AR 350 upper (I recrowned again) My 300 HAM'r and the new 6 ARC.

Good times and good targets.

 

[Snakeoil]

Interesting match yesterday. It was our regular BPCR silhouette match where we allow vintage mililitary and smokeless. I shot my 03 with a 20X Unertl. What was interesting was the berms. Frustrating is probably a better descriptor. Sand does not really freeze like regular dirt or clay. The moisture in the sand freezes and of course expands as it does. Then when it thaws, the sand stays in this loose almost "puffy" condition until something compresses it. I'd never paid that much attention to it before. Could be that this condition only lasts for a day or so and we've never seen it before. Anyway, the result was any miss that struck the berm was practically impossible to see. Normally, when a centerfire round hit the berm, it makes a very noticeable splash in the sand. Even wet sand after a rain seems to make a good spray of dirt. But this puffy crap does nothing or damn close to nothing.

At first I thought it was my partner. His eyes have been giving him problems. He's 87 so I avoid making a big deal about stuff like this. But yesterday it was very frustrating. I actually got on my spotting scope and I could not see any impacts in the berm. My guess was the rounds were landing behind the target and there was not enough splash to see it hit. After the match, I heard others complaining about this. They were all going on about how they just could not see where the misses were going.

I learned my lesson. We'll be raking the berms when we set targets from now on, at least in the early spring.

 

[CWLONGSHOT]

Got to range yesterday..

Just one guy there, but before, I returned to line and set up 5 cars and 9 other people had arrived!
Not suprised it was first day we say a nice week end day in a month and first day it was 60+°!
Then as we was about ready for hot line, another guy pulled up. As he got his things to the line, we asked if he wanted to set a target or wait. If he was gonna set this cease fire. He said he was not gonna wait... (nice feller) but didnt rush at all making entire line wait on him... Now we have cease fires, if wanted every 30 min. It was now almost 10min to NEXT hour. So 50 minutes since cease fire. As he arrived back on the line... (usually its 15 seldom ever 30min for a cease fire.)

He shot for LESS THEN a hour and started asking for cease fire... Got to me. As I was shooting... It was 14:17 (not quite 30min after he started shooting.) I told him, "On the half hour." I closed my bolt and settled in, to shoot... Apparently another shooter told me he said "BULLSHIT" to my reply and simply walked out, across firing line. Headed to his target, almost infront of me!!
Three guys hollerd loud!
I looked, then moved my barrel away and quickly opened bolt, then shouted at him. He turned and then turned back and just kept walking.
I motioned to line camera in front of line and then behind line, to make a reference place to be later reviewed.

WOW!! I probably gonna stick with week days!!

CW

 

[Tom]

Got to range yesterday..

Just one guy there, but before, I returned to line and set up 5 cars and 9 other people had arrived!
Not suprised it was first day we say a nice week end day in a month and first day it was 60+°!
Then as we was about ready for hot line, another guy pulled up. As he got his things to the line, we asked if he wanted to set a target or wait. If he was gonna set this cease fire. He said he was not gonna wait... (nice feller) but didnt rush at all making entire line wait on him... Now we have cease fires, if wanted every 30 min. It was now almost 10min to NEXT hour. So 50 minutes since cease fire. As he arrived back on the line... (usually its 15 seldom ever 30min for a cease fire.)

He shot for LESS THEN a hour and started asking for cease fire... Got to me. As I was shooting... It was 14:17 (not quite 30min after he started shooting.) I told him, "On the half hour." I closed my bolt and settled in, to shoot... Apparently another shooter told me he said "BULLSHIT" to my reply and simply walked out, across firing line. Headed to his target, almost infront of me!!
Three guys hollerd loud!
I looked, then moved my barrel away and quickly opened bolt, then shouted at him. He turned and then turned back and just kept walking.
I motioned to line camera in front of line and then behind line, to make a reference place to be later reviewed.

WOW!! I probably gonna stick with week days!!

CW

Some people are just more important than the rest of us!

 

[Snakeoil]

WOW!! I probably gonna stick with week days!!

It's his world, CW. You just happened to be shooting in it that day.

The fact that he walked in front of a hot firing line should pretty much get him booted out of the club or at least have his range privileges suspended for 6 months or so. I'm a range officer at the most public club that I belong to. I always have the tag that identifies me as such in my shooting box. I'm not one for wearing it unless it is an open match were ROs need to be easily identified. But if someone did that at that range, I'd be whipping out that tag and that feller and I would be having a long talk and I just might be asking him for his card and/or gate pass and tell him he can pick them up at the next meeting.

 

[Matt_G]

^^
What Rob said.
That guy needs to be gone...permanently.

 

[Rick]

I ran the Los Angeles Silhouette Club for several years and the Inland silhouette Club for a short while. I was Chief Range officer at several NRA National Championships. Someone walking out in front of a live firing line is the height of stupidity and would not be tolerated by any rule book I have ever seen. Serious consequences would quickly follow. Aside from injury to himself the range/club insurance would be in jeopardy. In this day and age you simply cannot run any sort of live firing range open to the public without specific shooting range insurance. Had the idiot been hurt or killed he could also have gotten the entire range shut down.

 

[popper]

Old fella (kinda feeble acting) finished his revolver (cast) shooting and started down to the target. Good thing my voice was loud back then. Never did see him again. Unsupervised public ranges can be a little hazardous. SIL & I were in Co few yrs back looking for a place to shoot. Told just go down the road to a quiet spot. Nope, not me. Not shooting into somebody else's property. How did the Hamr do?