It’s been far too long since my last range trip. Weather, life, things get in the way. I dream of having my own private range just outside my  backdoor. Working on that, but it’s going take years. But I digress.

I went to the Austin Rifle Club with Oldest today. Here’s a report.

Me

For the longest time I’ve wanted to shoot these drills. So I figured, why not today. I actually didn’t shoot them all, only the first two groups. Reason is, as I was going along, patterns quickly emerged and my issues were made most evident. So after shooting those I just did a bunch of Bill Drills and everything remained. So what was my issue?

First, the draw. I’m decent at getting concealment out of the way, gun out, and on target. But what was I doing wrong? I wasn’t getting on the trigger soon enough. I would draw, gun out there, then on the trigger. Too much time wasted. But it wasn’t just a matter of the trigger finger, it was also a matter of my eyes. My eyes want to see this proper sight picture, even at 3 yards. But at 3 yards there’s a different amount of what you need to see (read Brian Enos’ book), so really I can and should be getting on things sooner and just trusting myself as to the amount that I actually need to see. So after hearing the start buzzer until my first shot, I was slower than I should be. When I pushed myself I did better but there was some cognitive dissonance because my brain was saying “what you’re seeing isn’t right!”  I just have to work to get over it.

Second, I had good cadence in my Bill Drills, but the split times were not where I wanted them to be. So again I pushed myself faster. I got a little sloppier (i.e. all 6 shots weren’t in the A-Zone, or were wildly spread throughout the A-Zone), I shaved almost a tenth of a second off my split times. But I wasn’t as consistent. But I also know this was truly the place where my eyes were hating it. I know I was slower before because I was always working to get that proper sight picture, not the “good enough” sight picture.

So the key things for me are:

1. Continuing to work on getting on the trigger sooner.
2. Allowing myself to have something other than the “perfect sight picture”. That I have the “good enough” sight picture for the distance I’m shooting at.

I can work on the trigger in dry practice. The other will require a lot more live practice. In that, what I’m going to have to do is just shoot faster and see what I see. I have to get my eyes used to seeing whatever they see for that fast and accurate shot so they can start to say “OK, THAT is a normal sight picture for this distance”.

I also started my practice and ended my practice doing slow groups at 25 yards. That’s a good thing, and I need to make that habit for every live fire practice I do.

Anyway, didn’t have to blow through a lot of ammo today to get what I needed to get. So, this was all good. Aside: I was shooting my reloads and about 5 of my first set didn’t want to go bang. The primer would dent, but nothing happened. I’d load and shoot them again and sure enough bang… but I don’t know why these were problematic. Had no problems after those in that one magazine. Not sure what gave. I’m almost through my stockpile of stuff loaded with Berry’s bullets (probably next range trip I’ll be done and into shooting the Precision Delta’s).

Trigger Job

That trigger job? Ran about 50 rounds through the gun, slow and fast. Ran like a champ. Yes, the trigger feels slightly different from the first trigger job, but it’s still pretty good. Needs a few hundred more rounds before I’ll say it’s reliable, but so far so good. I didn’t want to spend too much time on my things because I wanted to give Oldest some time.

Oldest and the Buckmark

Oldest loves shooting that Buckmark. We set up 3 6″ paper plates at 10 yards, stacked in a column. He started with some slow fire on them. I eventually had him try moving between the targets, so shoot at the bottom, then shoot at the middle, then the top one, then the middle one, and so on until the magazine was dry. He liked that. I also had him work on trigger reset and steady cadence. He had a lot of fun and he’s improving. Still not drilling a single ragged hole, but things are tighter than before and he’s getting better in his stance, grip, trigger, and other things. I think we may need to work on sights a bit, but so long as he’s enjoying it and improving, that’s all that matters.

The 6.8

So remember how the last time I took the 6.8 rifle out it shot like shit? I haven’t touched the thing until today.

First, I wanted to recheck the zero. I set up a target at 100 yards. Oldest spotted me. There was a bit of a breeze, but still I grouped about 1.5″ at 100 yards, just to the left of and slightly above center. Good enough for me given the conditions. I hadn’t adjusted a thing since the hunt. So why in the world did I miss so badly at the hunt? Who knows. Maybe I screwed up in figuring out the holdovers. Maybe there was some cosmic destiny to get me to shoot a buffalo (because if I had nailed the deer I’d be eating venison, not buffalo). Who the heck knows. I’m going to chalk it up to me screwing up somewhere (or cosmic destiny). I do plan to take the rifle to the local indoor range and try it out again at 100, 50, and 25 yards to try to get another bead on things. I am also giving thought to changing the zero from POA=POI @ 100 yards to maybe a 50 yard zero or something like 1.5″ high at 100. Something like a RIBZ for 6.8 that would allow me to put the crosshairs center on whatever I want to shoot from 0 to 200 yards and get it within 2″ on either side of that center. Have to do some math.

Second, I wanted Oldest to shoot it. Getting the 6.8 was motivated in large part to have something more manageable for the kids to shoot. Plus, Oldest recently has expressed more interest in going hunting, but he’s gotta shoot something bigger than that Ruger 10/22 if he’s going to do that. In the past he’s expressed the noise as the reason for not wanting to shoot bigger stuff, but he was willing to give it a go.

He only shot 5 shots, but that was enough. He said the noise actually wasn’t too bad, but the recoil surprised him a bit. That’s understandable given it’s the first time he’s ever felt anything like that. He shot off the bench at 100 yards (since we were already on Range “C”) and he was able to get his shots on paper in an 8″ circle, tho certainly at the edge of that circle. For a first time? I’ll take it. I think what he needs is some dry practice to get used to the notion of rifles, plus some work back with the Ruger 10/22 to deal with rifle shooting technique (e.g. inhale, hold it, break the shot, exhale). Adding ear plugs to the ear muffs may help too. I also need to start looking at reloading 6.8 so I can have some inexpensive (relatively speaking) plinking rounds.

Sum

So, it was a good day at the range. I learned what I need to work on. I got to try out the trigger job. I got to check on the 6.8. Oldest got to do some shooting and try out a bigger rifle. And we got to spend time together (and have Sonic for lunch!).

Good times.