Given the weather forecast, and a weekend roughly aligning with MrsZ's, we took advantage of the weather.
Saturday morning I met my new shooter Kay and her son Karl at the range for a bit of playtime. Since it was finally nice out we were able to use the outdoor range, and set up zombie targets at 25m and 100m along with a couple water bottles at 100m.
We started small, after a quick review of safety rules, with my Savage MkII. As always, it performed like a champ and both Kay and Karl were knocking out quarter-size groups at 25m. We switched to 100m, which is well inside the capabilities of the rifle, and they both put a couple magazines worth of headshots into poor Zombie Bob. (For those curious, the come-up for Federal 550 bulk pack .22 is about 6MOA between 25m and 100m.)
Both of them were pretty bored with .22 by that point, so I brought out the AR. We went over the function of the rifle and then they settled right in with it. A couple boxes of .223 later, Bob was well-ventilated and Kay had knocked over the half-gallon milk jug. A few tries on the half-liter bottles were unsuccessful, though...
Last but not least, I got out my .270, showed them the difference in cartridges (with a note about the trope of "high power assault rifles") and let them have at it. My .270 is nothing to write home about; it's a budget rifle with budget glass but it can turn in respectable groups and has a not-bad trigger. Each of them put a few rounds in to Bob, then I showed them the 250m plate we have at the range. Waaaaay back there in the treeline... I smacked it one for three, then let Karl take a crack at it - that young man knocked it two out of four. One of the nice things about those mid-bore rifles is a pretty forgiving maximum point-blank; a 150m zero will give me a 4" MPBR of about 280-300m, with plenty of power for a deer anywhere in that range.
Range trip over, I dumped the guns back in the safe and grabbed lunch with MrsZ and my folks, then it was on to work at BBHIS. Nothing of note there.
Sunday morning we slept in, then wandered over to the "gun" show in a nearby county. Talk about disappointing. The web site listed it as a 350-table show, which would have been well worth the trip. It was on an indoor soccer field, and they used perhaps 1/3 of the available space for perhaps 80-100 tables. Fewer than half the tables had guns of any kind, and those were mostly field guns... bolt- and lever-action rifles, double shotguns, etc. There was one display with modern pistols; all over-priced, and a half-dozen black rifles of various flavors. ($950 for a "Delaware Machine" no-name AR, MSRP for a S&W M&P15-22, and no interest in negotiating.) Lots of milsurp of various flavors, and a LOT of Nazi-ish stuff. (MrsZ came to me after about 15-20 minutes of wandering and asked why there were so many swastikas on display.) A few tables of ammo at ridiculous prices ($10/20 Silver Bear .223). Overall, very disappointing. I'll save some pennies for the spring show in Syracuse, I think.
Sunday late afternoon I put the gable walls into the barn, so that's nearly done. It needs a few more pieces of trim work and such done, but it's weather-proofed and will stay dry for the winter. We watched a movie with dinner and headed for bed early...
And today it's back to work. I'll be working on things outside this afternoon and as many afternoons as possible while the weather holds. There's plenty of cleaning and organizing to get done; bow season starts this coming Saturday, and and and...
On the plus side, we've got a good start on getting things put up:
No comments:
Post a Comment