Had a fun morning with Daughter.

The main purpose was to go to the gun range to have her try out the AR with the scope. But we made a morning out of it, stopping for breakfast at Denny’s. We were going to go to Waffle House but there was a Denny’s on the way and Daughter wanted to try it because she’s never been to one. No problem, we changed plans and stopped at the Denny’s for breakfast. I figured as long as we were doing firsts, I had a t-bone steak and eggs for breakfast; never done that before but always wanted to. It was terrible, but I loved every minute of it. 🙂

We were surprised how many people were out at the range this morning, given the temperatures were just above freezing. Apart from that tho the morning was very nice, so it made sense some people were out. We settled over on the “E” range because no one was there so it would give us the most flexibility. The one downside was I wanted to start her at 25 yards (thus originally I hoped to use position 41 on the “A” range), but 40 meters would have to do and frankly I didn’t think it’d be a problem.

Got settled in, got her set up on the rest. Still, she was too short. Luckily we found an old office chair and we could raise the seat up some, which got her there. Set up the targets on the 40 meter rails, and let fly. Daughter did quite well. A few days ago I had a talk with the kids about trajectory, “height over bore”, zeroing, point of impact vs. point of aim, and things like that. That this rifle was sighted to be zeroed at 100 yards, thus when they shot at the closer targets they wouldn’t hit where they were aiming. I told them, for, now, to keep aiming dead center on the target and just watch where the bullets impact and strive for good groupings. I’m glad we had the talk before we went as it made it much easier to handle things on the range.

Daughter shot for a bit, then I shot for a bit. I was pretty happy with my shooting, with some pretty tight groups. I did have some fliers and I know it’s because I am not used to that heavy single-stage trigger. I know the trigger also was giving Daughter some troubles, and I think that convinced her to dry fire the rifle at home to work on it. Between the cold air, the steady cold breeze, and the heavy trigger, I know it was giving Daughter troubles in breaking the shot. She had no trouble getting on paper and putting the bullet basically where she wanted, but doing it in a timely manner was rough. It’s just going to take practice with the rifle, but I think she’ll be fine. Next time we go out I’ll try “walking” the target rails on the “E” range (it’s a silhouette range), starting at 40 meters, then 50, then 75, then 100 and see how they do. I am pretty sure that as long as they can keep things steady, they’ll do fine out to 100 yards/meters.

Daughter didn’t get as much trigger time as she wanted — she was just too cold. So we packed it up and she sat in the car while I worked with my XD-9 a bit. No targets, just shooting into the berm. I’ve been re-reading the Brian Enos book and I wanted to do some stuff with grip, relaxation, and “floating the gun.” I picked up some good feedback and some points to ponder. I’d like to try running a lot of Bill Drills at this point and see how I do, as that’d give me a lot more tangible feedback. The cool thing was how much I stopped thinking about everything else and just let my eyes “drive the gun,” as Enos puts it. It really does make a big difference. As well, while I see lots of merit to the Todd Jarrett “grip 20% tighter kung fu action grip”, there’s also Enos’ take of being more relaxed and just letting the gun do its thing. You can’t be limp wristed, but yes I find the gun works a lot better when I have a “medium” grip and just let the gun do what it does. There’s a balance to find. More things for me to play with later.

A good morning. Not just because I got to go shooting, but because I got to spend time with Daughter. That’s the best part.

Updated: I forgot. Daughter got to learn some things about ammo. We were shooting Georgia Arms Canned Heat. Daughter pressed trigger, it went “pop” not “bang”. She looked up, puzzled. Her first misfire. I took care of it. I pulled back the charging handle and when the case ejected I noticed a lot of powder still in the case. Ugh. Good thing I had a cleaning rod with me. Bullet was only lodged an inch or two into the barrel, but I explained how this could be a bad thing. When I examined the case I immediately saw the problem… and I showed it to Daughter and asked her if she saw it (I didn’t say what it was), and she saw it. The primer wasn’t fully seated.

I’ve generally had good luck with Georgia Arms stuff so I’m not really holding this against them. But these things can happen. Glad Daughter got to experience and learn about them.