Range Report 07 Feb. 2009

We managed to make it out to MV's place to get some shooting done. My Darling Wife was tired and didn't want to shoot, but she took the chance to socialize with the ladies up at the house. #2 and #1 were running around outside with the dogs having a great time. #2 must be growing again. He was falling a lot. Once, I saw him take a nasty spill when he was jogging and caught his feet on the steel cable restraining one of the dogs. Straight down, straight up again and back to a jog. He's a good boy. Clumsy sometimes, but he got back up.

Anyhow, we brought out a variety pack:


There were a pair of scoped .22LR self loaders, an SKS, a 1911 A1, a Glock 22, a Kel-Tek P3AT, a .357 magnum revolver and carbine, a 12 gauge shotgun, a .30-06 Enfield, and a pellet rifle in case the kids ever came down to shoot and didn't want to try anything bigger.

MV and I went down his property a ways to where there is an escarpment about 20 feet high that we used for a backstop. The target support was the remains of a few sacks of quikrete that were left out laying flat and got rained on, set up into blocks, and then were stacked up against some sturdy trees. They make an astonishingly good stop for low-power rounds, and will even take direct hits from full-power long guns without falling apart very fast. We figured they would disintegrate pretty thoroughly from high-powered shots, so we went with .22 rifles and handguns first.

I have some 4" diameter yellow stickers that are great for improvised target designation. They don't adhere very well to crumbling concrete but that just means they don't have to be removed when they are shot up. In fact, even with the .22 rifles, when a chunk of concrete spalls off, the target sticker would just jump right off the face of the target! It is sort of a poor man's reactive target setup. Some stayed on long enough to show pretty impressive marksmanship:


(this one had a 1" diameter smudge of lead behind it on the rock). Some were an indication of a near miss or a hit. When the .357 carbine, for example, was hitting close by, the concrete would explode a little bit and the target would go FLYING off. Most gratifying.

We started about arm's length apart and MV started with the .357 revolver and I started with the .45. After the first shots, I made an exclamation about the shock wave coming off the sides of the .357. He mentioned that the .45 was pushing him around a little, also. We separated by another yard and kept blazing away. We switched and when I first shot the .357, HE made an exclamation about the shock wave coming off the .357, and how much more oomph it had than the blast from the .45. These two are the top of the heap when it comes to carry sidearm calibers, and it was interesting to compare the recoil effects side by side. The .45 pushes but it pushes slower, and straight back. The .357 is, shall we say, brisk in comparison. It pushes both back and up, and those both relatively hard. It was smashing the top of my middle finger with the trigger guard, which hurt a little, or else I would have shot it a bit more.

My Marlin 60 was a delight to shoot. The first time I loaded it up, it had some shorter overall-length cartridges and it took 20 of them! It was like a bottomless well compared to the 6 and 7+1 shots of the other guns we had been shooting so far. It was also accurate enough for squirrels (or pigeons but don't tell my neighbors that) and didn't kick hardly at all. The recoil from that weapon is so slight, I could watch my targets with both eyes: little clouds of dust with the open left eye, and the individual target jumping around with the right eye through the scope.

What? You close one eye when you use a scope? WHAT? you close one eye when you shoot anything? Next time you go out shooting, try keeping them both open. Situational awareness is greatly enhanced and, when shooting a scoped weapon, you can easily (easily with practice I guess) track your targets with one eye and aim with the other. It enhances the experience, but it does take some getting used to. Give it a shot!

Just as we were running out of ammunition for the pistols, MV's father came down to join us. My hosts were really smart about range safety. We were shooting at the bottom of an escarpment, but their house is up top of the hill. We were shooting at an angle to put the rounds between the houses, besides shooting into a hillside. AND they had walkie-talkies for communication between shooters and houses. They called down when they wanted to leave the houses and when MV's dad was going to come join us. At any rate, the old man ran half a magazine through the .45 and was impressed with the very poor sights on it, which even our younger eyes had trouble with:

Then he went from the 45 to the .357. He was pretty impressed with the recoil and report of the .357 even compared to the .45. I read once that the only reason to put up with the excessive recoil, report, and muzzle blast of the .357 Magnum revolver is the devastating effect it has on human flesh. From the way it smacked up those concrete blocks, I believe it. It was raining chunks on us from ~8 yards away!

Out of ammunition for most of our pistols, we went to the long guns. The .22s were so gentle and quiet, we could almost ignore it when they were shot. Everyone stood to watch when the bigger rifles were fired. The effect was predictably impressive. We backed up to somewhere around 25-30 yards for safety from the flying debris when the target was struck by the higher powered arms and went to town.

Surprisingly, the 7.62x39 and .357Mag carbine had about the same perceived recoil, with the SKS just a little bit softer due to the squishy butt pad it has. That was a little surprising, but consider:

The cases are about the same size and the bullet weights are within 20% of each other. Interesting. Also interesting was the effect on the target. The SKS was shooting pointed FMJ ammunition. The .357 was shooting heavier, semi-jacketed, wad cutter, soft pointed ammunition. The SKS put the hurt on the concrete, but the .357 just wailed on it. Chunks and chips went flying every which way when the .357 carbine hit and they rained down on a shed at least 20 yards away, sounding like bird shot on the tin roof. Most impressive. I would not consider anyone to be outgunned with a .357 revolver and carbine combination, unless their opponent was wearing armor or far enough away to be using a real rifle. I thought the SKS was more fun to shoot, because there was no lever to pump and the recoil was a little tiny bit softer. It does have peep sights though, so the scoped .357 carbine had the advantage for easy hits for those of us with *ahem* older glasses.

One nice thing about shooting on private land is that you can cook off the rounds as fast as you like. I did it with the SKS but muzzle climb limits how fast you can fire with any accuracy. I did it a couple of times while advancing with the Kel-Tec which is my regular carry pistol, and I did it a few times, including once while advancing, with the Marlin. You know what? It is the most fun I ever had shooting (and that is saying a LOT) when I was emptying a full magazine while advancing on a target. We're going to have to try to find a way to integrate that activity into the Schutzenfest.

Once again I was reminded how snappy that P3AT is to shoot. It truly kicks about as hard as the 1911, but it's harder to hold on to. MV remembered and didn't want to shoot it, and his dad took his word for it. This was also my first time second time firing it one-handed, as well as one-handed while advancing and moving laterally. I hope I'll never have to use that thing when there are people behind the Goblin, because, even at conversational distance, accuracy is poor thanks to the short barrel. Sure you can get a fist-sized group out of your P3AT on the range, two handed, slow-fire. Try it advancing, one-handed, rapid-fire sometime and see what you get!

OH! I found out what happened to those crazy dented-mouth .22 cases from last time. After a hunner't-fifty or 200 rounds including some filthy dirty Remington ammunition, the works were well and truly gumming up. The charging handle was getting stubborn by the time this happened:


The marlin kept shooting after that, but it probably would have started jamming worse and worse if I kept shooting for another hundred rounds or so. Also I found out the Marlin is accurate enough to hit a 4" target from ~40-50 yards, and when all the targets are shot off the concrete, it is accurate enough to chase a 1" diameter stick around the bottom of the concrete pile (toward the end of the shooting session, it was more of a gravel pile than a stack of blocks). Oh, and that was from offhand. I still haven't got it sighted in from a stable rest. Oh well, good enough for good fun!

Firing the shotgun was interesting. MV had a Bad Experience when he was younger with punishing recoil from a single-shot 20 gauge shotgun, so he was a little shy of shooting the 12. I gave him a few pointers on how to stand (see post #83, here)to absorb the recoil properly and he did fine, but he still was a bit more impressed by the recoil of the shotgun than I was. His father declined to fire the 12 gauge. I thought it was fun, and the shotgun pointed fairly well for me, plenty good enough to blast the heck out of the cement. We put a few rounds of buckshot through it first. Then MV put one slug out of it, and that was enough slug shooting for him. I put the other four slugs through it in quick succession, and the last one went all the way through what was left of the cement and into the escarpment behind it. Yowza!

My Darling Wife was getting tired and MV's wife had to go to work so we knocked off after about 3 hours of shooting. Well, it was almost enough range time for one day, anyway!

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Spent case post-mortem:

The .45 is slinging them against itself, not the wall. The flat spot looks like it was rubbed as the cartridge spun out of the weapon, and is almost directly across from the ejector. Most of the cases show nearly identical damage, so I'm going to say I was wrong, it is the gun itself denting the cases on their way out. The extractor is hard on the heads, too.


The .40 is doing something similar, but instead of denting the cases much, it is creasing them in the same general area, and most of them also display a wiped-dent at one side of the mouth. More disturbingly, and I think it is probably typical Glock behaviour, all the spent brass iss visibly bulged at the back of the case. I found a shell on the ground that was expended last time we went shooting at MV's place, and it showed identical damage. Let's guess which gun fired that one, eh?


It was pretty obvious from looking at the 12 gauge shot shells which were for rifled slugs & which were from shot. The slug has a round mouth, the shot has a star-flared mouth.


The SKS put a dent from ejection on all the cases, and that was the only damage they all share. There are various nicks on the steel, but that might be because it was flinging the empties 15+ feet onto rocky ground.


We never found any of the .30-06 cases, but that was partly because it was only fired 4 times. Nobody else wanted to shoot it. Oh well.

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Man Alive is it ever fun to shoot guns at stuff that blows up a little bit when you shoot it. Accurate guns are even more fun, and a variety of guns is good great fun. It also helps when half the guns have historical significance that you can tell each other about, and one of your shooting party is an old man who knows how to tell a good story about when he was growing up in Africa. If you're not shooting for recreation, you are really missing out.