What Did You Do At The Range Today?

[arakboss]

This thread is a place for you to share your shooting range activities. Maybe you went shooting, helped out with an event, took a guest to shoot, took a class, helped with development or maintenance of range, etc. Private Clubs, Public Ranges, Home Ranges, Popular forest shooting spots, they all count here.

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[arakboss]

I have found the What did you do to exercise today and the What did you reload today threads very helpful in motivating me to engage in those activities. I am hoping this thread will do the same for others and myself to encourage range visits.

 

[arakboss]

Heading to the range later today to try out the Savage trigger job and heat up the barrel. I am thinking about using bacon wrapped around the barrel to cool it off. I figure I might as well not waste the heat. That should make Greta happy.

 

[WestcoastWes]

Went to Fishtrap on Wednesday with a friend of mine. We had a great time all the way through. It was about 1/2 hour 45 from Spokane and neither of use had been there. Took a minute to find the place, We saw one spot which looked a bit tweaker-ish with an RV parked there but moved on down the road. We pulled up to the next spot and met a nice guy who was policing up his targets. We had a nice conversation and he tipped us off to a new and friendly outdoor range south of Spokane called Rock Lake Range. I was expecting a little more in the way of scenery but was there to shoot so it did not bother me too much. Bob and I brought pistols and rifles galore and wanted to just test some stuff out and I wanted to try to sight in a scope on my 10/22. We set up targets with some boxes, bricks and paper targets, but will bring something to get the targets up off of the ground better next time as it helps with sighting in a rifle and apparently helps a lot with ricochets. The ground is way crazy hard out there and you get a bunch of them. I was not worried so much about my own but Bob mentioned that he wondered if the guy 300 yards to our left was ricochet-ing towards us. We had great cool weather for about and hour then sun. Next time we will import more water, more snacks and some shade.

Bob's carbine jammed, my scope is junk, and his Mosin would not extract. We shot no less than TWO 100 year old pistols, a Broomhandle Mauser and a brass 22 short pocket pistol from around the turn of the last century.!!!!! I sold that brass one to Bob as a junker and he resuscitated it. It was a great sense of accomplishment. Neither of us could hit the broad side of a barn with it, but Bob got closer than me to the targets. The Broomhandle ejected shells STRAIGHT UP about 15 feet in the air and was the coolest thing I have ever shot. We shot two amazing Smith and Wesson 357's (my 27-2, four inch and Bob's 19-3 snubbie) and a bunch of 9mm. I did not get to my 45 and Bob never took his 45/70 out of the case.

All in all it was a great few hours. Shooting and friendship together is a time honored tradition. Fishtrap is great but has some limitations. Be patient, be mindful and grateful and you will have a great time. Also I would feel way less comfortable out there alone.

PS bubblegum that rat bas#### who left all the shotgun shells out there and your crappy old targets. Have some respect for yourself and your fellow weapons enthusiasts. You will be the first guy to scream bloody tampons when they stop letting us do it because we litter too much.

 

[arakboss]

Poor man's cooling equipment. It might also work if I ever want to snipe from a dirty laundry pile.

 

[Capn Jack]

Took the newly finished 9mm muzzle loading rifle and the Blunderbuss over to Green's yesterday.
Andy came along to chase the deer off of the range.

They were pretty sure they were safe and I couldn't hit anything. They were right.
Then, after the last shot, two bucks popped up over the berm to find out what all of the noise was about.
We did manage to keep most of the hits on a 3x4' sheet of cardboard a few even close to the bulls eye.

 

[oremike]

Not today but Sunday my wife wants to try a bowling pin shoot so we'll do that at Emerald Empire. Wednesday I'll work on my Shotgun skills by shooting a round each of 5 stand and trap. Later in the year on I'll be a Range Officer for hunter sight in days. Other than that, random trips to a BLM gravel pile with some guns and a litter stick and trash bags.

 

[arakboss]

Great day for the range trip. I ended spending almost 3hrs there instead of 1hr.

I figured out partly why I have been sucking so bad at shooting. I need glasses. I assumed scopes corrected any vision problems but clearly that is not the case. I used a set of dollar store readers today and that made a huge difference. I need a different pair though, one that works at average eye relief distance on scopes.

Anyways I had some decent luck today, definitely kept the shots within a pie plate. All groups were shot at 50yds. The scope is a budget Nikon 3x9x40.



This is 8 five shot groups of my handloads with 69gr bullet and 25 grains of Varget powder. Now I understand why people like the Varget. The green center of target has two separate 5 shot groups in it.



These targets each have a 5 shot group of this 69gr load. I had 50rnds total. Ignore the TAC label for 69gr loads. All 69gr loads were Varget.







The factory loads were not great and the reloads I purchased from another member were OK

 

[arakboss]

Here are Targets with my recent handloads using similar to TAC powder and 55gr/62gr bullets in various charge weights. Bullet weight is at top. Charge weights are written near each group.






The surprise group of the day was this 9 shot group using the many decades old "IMR4831" I recently bought from one of my favorite NWFA members. This was a compressed load of 26 grains topped off with a 62gr penetrator bullet. It will make a great plinking round powder. I could tell it the velocity was probably low as it felt softer shooting than the full house loads. It hit pretty well where I was aiming and grouped pretty darn well for the $10 a lb price. I am very happy with that purchase.

 

[arakboss]

Visited the shipping container range at TCGC this morning and blasted off a bunch of tests loads. Everything went bang except I had one squib from underpowered load. It was a quick fix to remove it. The Astra revolver is back in the fight and ready for action.

I shot some 38spl BP subs in my Rossi RP66, which was worth the clean up chore.

I put less than a box worth of 9mm test loads through my 43x. A few of the lower charged rounds didn't cycle but they all went bang and cleared the barrel.