Range report

After getting the M&P15-22 a couple weeks ago and getting the sights zeroed, I really didn't do much with it - because I had an "audience" at the range.

Sunday after work, I grabbed one of my friends and we took my new M&P and her new Savage MkII to the range.

We started with her rifle and got it roughly zeroed at about 12-15 yards, then started pushing it back. I'd forgotten my ShooBoy hammer and brass punch, but fortunately the windage was only off by about 2MOA. We got it set for a pretty good zero at 25yd, then she stopped playing with paper and started pinging steel.

She had a few failures to fire that I'm suspecting were a bad batch of ammo combined with a gunky firing pin channel. We ran a couple mags of her ammo through the M&P with similar results - around one in every magazine or two wouldn't ignite the first time.

Once she was settled in with that, I started playing with the M&P some more. Steel at 25yd? Almost boringly easy. Ten satisfying *tings* in a row as quick as I can get the dot back on the plate. Moved back to 35ish yards and it took a second longer to get the dot steady on the plate, but still running 10-for-10.

Once my rangemate was bored at that distance we moved the plate back to 50yd and kept plinking. I was doing 8/10 pretty consistently at that distance until my accuracy suddenly fell apart. Given the weather (mid to high 80s and humid) I'm fairly sure I had just reached my limits of endurance, so we called it a day. I'll confirm that the next time we're out.

Total round count? North of 300 between the two guns. Any failures were pretty clearly ammo issues.

Monday morning we tore down her Savage for a thorough cleaning and degreasing. The extractors and firing pin were pulled and cleaned up, the trigger assembly was torn apart and degreased, and that smoothed things out a fair bit. Unfortunately, there isn't a whole lot that can be done with the trigger pull itself. She got the rifle at Walmart ($119!) and it doesn't have an Accutrigger. I'm not sure it can be upgraded with one, but the truth is: it's not worth it. It's a great inexpensive plinker. The trigger will smooth out some as time goes by and she runs a few thousand rounds through it. It'll never be a match trigger, but it wasn't meant to be. My advice: leave it as-is, toss on a scope if she wants, and start saving for a new rifle.

She already wants a semi-auto (a few mags through the M&P decided that), so I rattled off half a dozen options. I look forward to seeing what she decides on. :-)

Yeah, we're still working on positions and form. Need to get the elbow down on the bench. But one step at a time.