What did you do at the range lately?

[DenverGP]

More fun with the garand. I've got a total of 60 rounds thru it so far, runs like a champ.

My wife shot 8 rounds from it today, off the sandbag. She did pretty good once she got the sight picture worked out. She was worried about recoil with it, but it didn't kick as hard as she expected.

I'm getting better at loading it, and slowly improving my offhand accuracy. 16 rounds offhand at 25 yards (I know a real shooter can do much better, but at least I'm improving)

[JohnnyDrama]

Nice shooting DenverGP.

I managed to get twenty rounds off at a B-27 with my Glock 29. Sort of a cadence drill. Ten rounds each at seven and ten yards.

[DenverGP]

What sort of drill? I've done a few, but haven't found one that I liked enough to make it part of every range visit.

My pistol accuracy has been improving, but I still tend to slap the trigger when I try to go too fast, resulting in pulling the shots low. I find I need to force myself to go slow for a bit, then gradually pick up the pace to avoid the slap. Every range trip to play with one of the rifles, I'll put 20-30 rounds thru my carry pistol as well.

Saw a older gentleman at Bristlecone today who was working on some USPSA practice with his full on race 1911 (huge magwell, compensator, etc). He was shooting some pretty fast strings, but I noticed his first 3-4 shots were nice grouping, but additional shots were climbing the target pretty steady up and right, usually resulting in his last shots from each mag ending up/right off the USPSA target.

[electronman1729]

Not exactly from today:

[DenverGP]

Not exactly from today:

What kind of distance you shooting at? I really want to take some rifles out to longer distances, but haven't found anywhere close. Planning to head down to Cheyenne Mountain Shooting Complex one of these days.

[JohnnyDrama]

What sort of drill? I've done a few, but haven't found one that I liked enough to make it part of every range visit.

My pistol accuracy has been improving, but I still tend to slap the trigger when I try to go too fast, resulting in pulling the shots low. I find I need to force myself to go slow for a bit, then gradually pick up the pace to avoid the slap. Every range trip to play with one of the rifles, I'll put 20-30 rounds thru my carry pistol as well.

Saw a older gentleman at Bristlecone today who was working on some USPSA practice with his full on race 1911 (huge magwell, compensator, etc). He was shooting some pretty fast strings, but I noticed his first 3-4 shots were nice grouping, but additional shots were climbing the target pretty steady up and right, usually resulting in his last shots from each mag ending up/right off the USPSA target.

"Drill" is probably not the correct word. It's hard to get much out of a drill if 20 rounds is all you're going to shoot. But, since I said drill, I guess I would describe it as a very slow "Bill Drill" with three to five shots. Such an exercise makes for a quick range trip, 15-20 minutes maybe(?) that I can get in a couple/three times a week. What I was doing consisted of drawing from concealment, picking up the front sight, getting a good sight picture, exercising good trigger control and proper grip, then watching the shot as I "follow through". The 10mm Auto isn't as scary as some writers have led the public to believe but it is a handful, especially in a relatively small frame. It's easy for me to get too much "hand" on the gun and drive the shots low and to the left. Especially when I increase the tempo.

[DenverGP]

Took the garand out to 100 yards today at blucore (indoor range, lighting wasn't great). Shooting off sand bags on the bench.

I had previously sighted it in at 25 yards (9 clicks up). I had read to lower by 1-2 clicks for 100 yards, but even with that, I was still coming in high. The target I was shooting was a white paper target with some red lines on it. At 100 yards, it was just a white sheet of paper. After I put one of my 6" shoot-n-c stickers on it, suddenly I had some reference to actually aim at. I figured out I was aiming way too high on the initial shots. Fired 8 shots working on the sight picture, but sights were adjusted low... that resulted in a pretty large group of 8 rounds spread below the black sticker, with one round on the sticker.



Adjusted back up 2 clicks (ended up just a single click lower than my original 25 yard sight in), and sent the target back out to 100 yards to try for a careful 3 shot group (on the same black target sticker):



Measured out about 1.25" for that 3 shot group.

A little later, I actually had a "bump fire" where I didn't hold the trigger back after the shot broke, and as my shoulder pushed the gun forward after the recoil, fired a second shot. Amazingly, the bump fired shot was still within the 6" circle.

[DenverGP]

Shot my best group yet with my PSA 18" AR. If i'm measuring right, it's .32 MOA. First and second shots are pretty close to thru the same hole, but if you jump before and after the 2nd shot, you can see the hole get slightly larger.

Did some warm up / sighting in shots using my regular plinking ammo, then switched to some hand loaded rounds using Federal Fusion 62gr BTSP with 24gr of Ramshot TAC.

[driver]

I put another 300 rounds through my AR9 build. The first 600 of TUL only had one hiccup, re-rack and the stuck round chambered and fired. The 300 rounds today were Wolf Polyformance and I had 3 failure to chamber. Two chambered and fired when re-racked, one just got real short, glad it didn't go in on the second try. I need to look at other barrels with cut 9mm ramp or maybe get one cut. It don't think it will ever chamber anything other than FMJs the way it is.

The Spikes lower has/had a LRBHO in the lower. It didn't work at all during the initial build and dry fire tests. Correction, it always worked, always locked BCG back. When I got home today I replaced the bolt catch with a strike industries unit. The original spikes spring and plunger appear to be out of spec. I might reinstall the LRBHO and see if it will work now. Not a big deal but I would like a LRBHO if I can get it to work reliably.



Edit to add pics of the Spikes LRBHO.

Unit removed.


Spring installed.


Spring and lever installed with roll pin in position.

[theGinsue]

Finally, after almost a 2 year absence, I made it to the range yesterday.

Mission: Sight in my new backup hunting rifle I recently purchased from another site member.

Specs:
Rifle: Tikka T3 Lite LH bolt .308 Win
Optic: Nikon Monarch 3 4-16x42 Mildot
Ammo: Federal .308 Win SP

I started with 25 yard bore sighting. Once I had that narrowed down I moved out to 100 yards (note: the Monarch 3 is made to be zeroed at 100 yards).

At 100 yards I plinked a few rounds to get a feel for using this scope at that distance, then I moved to actually performing the sight-in, all using the lowest power (4) on the scope.

Attachment 71909
<click on photo to enlarge>

The picture shows 2 outside shots taken at the 4-5 o'clock position. These were with the fore end supported by a rest and the butt into my shoulder. Poor grouping which I attribute to the shooter, me. I usually take 3 shot groups and see where I'm hitting, but I went ahead and made some small adjustments then took my next 3 shots using both front and rear support for the rifle. These are the 3 center shots.

Feeling that the rifle was accurately sighted, I took 2 more groups of three shots onto another target. I don't have a pic of that target but they were just slightly better than the final 3 center shots in this pic. I feel satisfied that this rifle is ready for elk hunting and I'm comfortable enough with it to be successful should I encounter a legal bull elk.

To complete my hunting rig, last night I ordered a sling for this rifle which will use Uncle Mike's QD swivels (already in my possession. The sling is a Brownell's 1" leather Quick Set Latigo sling. I've used one on my other hunting rifle exclusively for over 25 years and love it. I bought a cheap set of Butler Creek rubber Bikini Scope Covers but they're not nearly as good as the similar styled one from Nikon that I got with my Prostaff. Need to find decent scope covers. Lastly, I'll be ordering 2 5-rnd mags for the rifle to get a good starter set for hunting.