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Range Report

June 13th, 2013 · No Comments · Personal

With back-to-back-to-back fireworks shows keeping me busy next week through the first week of July I wanted to hit the range as much as possible before then and the weather has been cooperative this past week. I went on Sunday and Wednesday and also plan to go this coming Saturday as well. I’ve been running low on ammo – what else is new – so today I went out hunting. I just missed picking up a bulk box of American Eagle 5.56 so I managed to get 3 boxes of Remington .223 and a 325 round bulk box of Federal Ammunition .22 from the Dick’s store in East Brunswick. I then drove further north to the Dick’s up in Woodbridge and they also had the same ammo but said I could only walk out with a bulk box or 3 boxes of smaller quantity. What the hell? I didn’t bother arguing and just took another bulk box of Federal .22. So now I have 650 rounds of .22 to last me a while but only 100 rounds for my AR15 – 60 .223 and 40 5.56. 9mm is still impossible to find – I just have enough for one clip in my P99. Better than nothing…

Range Report Sunday

I managed to squeeze two hours in Sunday between a private lesson in the morning at 9am and open gym in the afternoon at 2pm. By the time I was at the range and setup the temperature was edging towards 80 and the breeze was light – less than 5mph out of the east slowly swinging back west as the afternoon went on. Either way not really an issue. I put out a target and clays at 200 yards and settled into my prone position with the Viper PST 6-24x scope, sending lead down range but not able to see where I was hitting. I had the scope set up but just couldn’t see anything on the target. I gave each of the 4 clay pigeons 3 rounds to try and hit, but failed. During the next cease fire I walked out to check and saw a single hole in the target. Soooo that was when I realized the last time I was at the range I hadn’t even used my 6-24x scope, so it was probably way off from the new mounts. Idiot. So I went back to square one – 50 yards – and put up two new targets on the board. I sighted into the center of the one on the right, and ended up hitting high-left on the target to the left. Woah. After several large adjustments to the turrets I was edging the bull. You can see below I walked the shots rightwards then downwards to the right target, then placed some in the center of the left target.

Once I was dialed in at 50 yards I blasted some clay pigeons to smithereens and moved back to 100 yards – actually I brought the 200 yard target and the 4 clay pigeons up to 100 yards. I also set up some additional clays at 50 yards so I could send a few spare .22 rounds I had found in my bag downrange with the CZ bolt-action and ensure that the scope was zeroed at 50 yards. Then I took the AR15 back up and worked to dial in at 100. I started with the center target, then the bottom two and then the top-right one. Once I was edging the bull, I dropped the sights down and blasted all 4 clay targets in a row.

My time was up after that, so I started to pack up and ran into a problem. I had found an old car kit while cleaning my room that included a ratchet with socket attachments. It was small, and I decided I could use it to lock the screws of my scope mounts to the rifle, since when I just tighten them with my fingers they tend to shake loose from the recoil after a few shots. I must have torqued them too much though because when I went to unscrew them the ratchet couldn’t get them undone. The problem now is I had to figure out how to case up the rifle so I could transport it from the firing bench to my car without getting in trouble – let alone transport it home. I asked around for a socket or adjustable wrench but no one had one. So I took practically everything out of the case except the two rifles (the AR and my air rifle) and managed to get the AR settled in without fear of damaging the scope.

Still, it was a tight fit! Once home I used a normal socket wrench to get the screws undone and I am keeping that in my case for future use.

Range Report Wednesday

Again I squeezed in 2 hours between the time the range opened to having to coach later in the afternoon. I didn’t make it to the range in time to partake in the first firing session, but it took me almost that long to get all set up anyways. Temperature was roughly the same that day as Sunday, but the wind was gusting upwards of 20mph and giving a pretty steady 10-12mph breeze, though mainly WNW so mostly down range. I decided to work both scopes today, and to do so from prone, sitting and standing. I began at 50 yards with the 1-6x scope with a target to sight in on and then 9 clay pigeons – 3 for each position. Well, the target got blown over before I could use it but I knew from the last time I used the scope it was zeroed at 50 yards so I just went prone and sighted in on the first pigeon – BAM! No more pigeon. I worked the other two then got in a sitting position and blasted three more. Standing up took a few more rounds but I nailed the last three. I forgot to keep track of rounds, but it had to have been around 15 for all 9 birds. Not too bad. In the image below you can see the 3 groups – center was prone, right was sitting and left was standing. There is actually a small hole in the right-most bird of the standing group.

Next ceasefire I replaced the clays at 50 yards and put the target back at 100, making sure to dig it in deep so it stayed upright! I put on the 6-24x scope and repeated the process, prone then sitting then standing. Sitting was rough, but standing was nigh impossible with the scope zoomed in to 24x. You don’t realize how much muzzle movement you have until you’re in that close on something. I don’t know why I didn’t think to zoom out – probably because I’m too stubborn to admit defeat and knew I could nail the suckers regardless if… I just… concentrated… but no, by the next ceasefire I hadn’t even touched any of them. Checking down range I realized that two of the sitting birds I hadn’t actually hit – I had cleaved through the poles holding up them up! How cool if that had been on purpose hahaha.

This ceasefire I moved 6 of the clays back to the 100 yard line and left the 3 I had missed. I spent some more rounds trying to hit them standing, and actually got one, but then gave up. Just to make sure it was the position not the scope I hunkered back down in prone with 4 rounds in my clip and put two rounds through each bird. Yup, definitely the standing that was throwing off my aim. During the next ceasefire I found out that the one bird I thought I had hit was again a miss – I had struck just low on the target holder post again!

I was running out of time so I decided to stay on the 6-24x at 100 yards and I also moved the intact target holders back to 100 with new birds. After sighting in at 100 on the paper target I tried to do a clean run of all 8 pigeons I had set up. I got through 4 and then had to come off the scope to reload. When I got back on the scope it took me 4 shots to hit the pigeon I had targeted last – that was frustrating. Moving down the line the next one took me 3 shots and then I went clean on the last two. Again, one of them looks intact in the picture below but it does have a hole in it.

When I brought the target back after I started to clean up to leave I noticed how I was shooting low the first few times I missed, and you can see the powder blast scoring from when I actually hit the pigeon a bit higher up. Two round practically went in the same place, just a bit off to one side each.

I thought it was also cool to see the blast scoring on the back of some of the pigeons I put a clean shot through

Finally, here’s a closer look at the 3 target holder poles I cut down to size 😛

So now I have my 1-6x scope zeroed at 50 yards and the 6-24x scope zeroed at 100 yards, which I think works well. I also have reminded myself that if I want to shoot further than 100 yards I need to get some of those targets that highlight the holes in the paper so I can see them through my spotting scope.

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