Range Trip – Rifle Shoot – 9/15/13

 

 

We have tried relentlessly to have a rifle shoot on the 3^rd Tuesday of every month since our range really opened for the spring way back in May. Attendance has been slim to non-existent. Heavy sigh. Anyway, the “shooting gods” finally aligned today and six shooters showed up for our rifle shoot. A variety of rifles made appearances – Ruger Mini-14s, a couple bolt action .17s, some lever action .357s and my trusty Panther Arms AR-15.

The course of fire was simple:

• 5-rounds standing
• 5-rounds sitting
• 5-rounds kneeling
• 5-rounds prone

The bottom three positions were interesting to “listen” too with most pushing the fifty + mark, more than a few groans and “holy shits” or “I’m getting’ too old for this” were heard throughout the two courses of fire. Most rifles had scopes and I relented and mounted my Eotech 517. Honestly, it helped a lot since it is co-witnessed with the iron sights, I was reasonably happy with my performance since “distance shooting” (OK, I’m not a distance guy like a lot of you – 100 yards is about the limit of my practice) is not really my thing.

Shots were timed with a max of 1 minute 15 seconds for each 5-shot round of fire. We shot in 2-man groups with time to reload between each round. It was a nice, easy pace that allowed everyone to have fun and put forward their best effort.

We used standard A14, 100-yard, small bore target. The target is 14” x 14” with the outer diameter of the 5-Ring 12-inches. Max score for 20 rounds is 200.

One of the reasons I really pushed these rifle shoots was that most of the shooters seemed to settle for bench rest shooting to “zero” their rifles. I thought we all could use a bit of variety. And, at the end of the day – everyone had a great time today which is, of course, the whole point! We had enough time for two rounds before everyone had to head for home. As for me . . . how did I do? Well, here ya go.

Using my Eotech 517 co-witnessed with iron sights my best target was a 107 with 16/20 rounds “on the paper”. I’ll take it.

So, if you’re a rifle shooter – I would encourage you to spend some time off the bench. And, if a carbine is part of your defensive plan – there’s a good chance you will not have a bench rest available when you trying to put down a threat.

Regardless – go, shoot, enjoy . . . winter’s comin!