Finally Got to the Range

I’ve been away for part of the week on work related travel again. I’m getting tired of my new project, but it’s success is important to my organization and I feel (felt) honored when my bosses named me to it. Still, it’s been a lot of work and a lot of travel. I’ve said before that I’m not overly found of business travel. Oh well, enough with the griping.

Last weekend Bill and I had a truly gunnie time of it. We went to State Line Gun Shop so often named in these pages. We bought ammo and I paid off a Luger I put on layaway. I will feature it in an upcoming “One From the Vault.” It’s always good when a new gun joins our household. We don’t have a ceremony or anything, but we feel good to have done our part in giving a good home to good guns.

Sunday was range day. We shot Mr. Completely’s “Jack and Jill” challenge (results will follow). We fired the new (old) Luger and it lived up to its reputation for accuracy and reliability. My only beef with shooting a Luger is the tiny front sight. My fifty-year-old eyes need something a little bigger to look at when I’m shooting.

Bill finally got to fire the AK-clone I bought him for his birthday. It behaved well, but not wonderfully in the accuracy department. Bill checked its sights at 25 yards and then moved out to 100 yards. He kept his shots on the paper, but I’m not sure one could call it a group. He’s planning a lot of practice with it.

I shot Bill’s AK too and realized the gun didn’t like me. With every shot the stock kept slapping me smartly on the cheekbone. I got a firm cheek-weld on the stock, eased back the trigger, and recoil pushed the stock slid off my shoulder and into the underside of my cheekbone. I’ve never had such an experience with a rifle. I changed the way I shouldered it, but to see the sights I had to get the same cheek-weld and kept getting knocked about. It must have hated me because it didn’t do it to Bill.

I’ve never shot AK-clones before (I’m a blued steel and fine wood traditionalist when it comes to guns), so I don’t know if another AK would be so nasty to me. Probably so because the problem most likely stems from my body build, cheek structure, and other physiology. I’ll try shooting another AK, but I have a feeling it’s one gun I won’t be shooting much.

I also shot my Boomershoot rifle should we get there this year. It’s a Savage Model 11 in .308 Winchester with a Smith & Wesson scope. I went shooting primarily to sight in the scope, but I made a serious mistake in only bringing one box of ammo. I started sighting in at 25 yards and grouped three shots to the left and low. A few adjustments put my next three shots in the middle of the target but still to the left. I kept going and managed to get a quarter-sized group, but still a little left of center.

I moved to the 100-yard bench and fired my last six rounds grouping them high, but not to the left. I'll need to do some serious shooting and figuring here to get the accuracy I expect. I’m not a neophyte to scopes and I expected an easier time of it. Oh well, best-laid plans and all. Maybe I’ll need to break down and RTFM (geek-speak for “Read the Fricking Manual”) for the scope.

So that was our gunnie weekend. More reports to follow.