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Sunday, November 9, 2008

11/9/08 at the Range

Yesterday the eldest son, my brother-in-law and I spent about 4 hours at the range. Altough we all seemed to enjoy ourselves yesterday, the gout in my foot is making me pay a little. The meds are keeping the swelling and most of the pain down, but I'm starting to feel it in my other foor as well.


Here's a couple of pictures, at the range.
This is from the long range benches where we spent most of our time. The left bank is 75 yards, center is 100 yards and above and behind it is 200 yards. It's hard to see but just to the right of the 100 yard bank is a smaller bank at 150 yards.


This is the brother-in-laws newly acquired used Ruger Mini-14. It has a Tasco Propoint red dot sight. Accuracy seemed typical for a Mini-14, that is it's not a tack driver but adequate for the intended purpose. His intended purpose is to have a semi-automatoc carbine as a family defense gun. Yep, before the socialists make them illegal, and as defense against our own government.


Here you see 3 of the guns my son brought. Top is a heavy barreled Nagant, then a Swiss K31 and his heavy barreled AR. His AR sports a 4-16X scope and a 16" fluted, chryogenic treated barrel. He's still playing around for the perfect hand load. So far he has several that are in the 3/8" group range. Sure wish I could shoot that accurate. He out shoots me with my rifles and his. Bummer! Oh well, I can still best him with a hand gun.


I only brought 3 long guns with me this time. One of my favorites, not in the picture is a slightly modified SMLE No. 4 Mk 1. It has a synthetic stock, 3-9X scope and I worked the trigger a little. With my hand loads I routinely shoot 1" groups. About 8 years ago I took a couple of Russian Boars with it.


Shown below are the other 2 I had with me. On the bag is a Nagant M44 with the bayonet folded. Some say they shoot better with the sticker extended, but I haven't noticed a difference with this one. I replaced the rear sight with an aperture to help out these old eyes. Using the bag as a rest I can regularly hit a 10" plate at 200 yards using old Mil surplus ammo.

Laying on the bench is my AR. One of these days I'll replace the HoloSight with a scope just to see how well it can group shots. I'll surely put a scope on it when I start working up hand loads, though I doubt it'll be a permanent fixture. I'd rather have it as a utility/battle rifle. I have other scoped rifles that work just fine for long range precision like the above mantioned SMLE, Swedish Mauser and a Ruger 7mm Rem Mag.


I regularly use CCI Blazer .22 ammo for rifle and pistol work. Yesterday I was shooting the pistol at 25 yards and had several failure to fires and some that hit 2-3 feet higher that I was aiming. My son was having similar problems with his Ruger .22 rifle. Seems like quality has become an issue for CCI.


Oh, and the brother-in-law has a fairly new H&K Mosquito. That's a .22 pistol close in size and identical function of the H&K defensive guns. The CCI Blazer ammo wouldn't funtion in his gun. Seems it requires higher velocity ammo to work the slide adequately.


Oh & Oh, he also has a S&W 40 caliber that's only seen about 50 roundes through it. The magazine release broke. This gun was supposedly designed for law enforcement. As far as I can tell, the quality coming from S&W has been on the decline for everything except their XD series, and they're made in Chroatia.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

My M44 shoots all over the place with the bayonet folded. Extended, I can make about 3moa with the iron sights from a rest.

Folded, it doesn't shoot groups...it shoots patterns.

I couldn't believe the difference the first time I shot it. It's got to have something to do with barrel harmonics to make that much difference.

I'd thought about buying another one specifically to make into a scout rifle, but I'm afraid if I completely remove the bayonet, I'll never be able to get it to shoot accurately.

Hearing that at least some of them shoot accurately with the bayonet folded may make me reconsider.

Anonymous said...

BTW. I'm sure the rifle can be more accurate than that. I was shooting old surplus ammo, and I simply could not get the sights adjusted to point of aim. The ruskies made good, simple, solid firearms, but, considering the lame sights they put on virtually every design they've ever produced, I'd say marksmanship is not considered a high priority in their military.

trajectory said...

My son has a model 38, I think, that he has trouble keeping on a 16x16 target at 100 yards. It doesn't have a bayonet. His $$ doesn't do as well as mine, even with the sticker extended. Luck of the draw?

It's strange, I have 2 old beat up long barreled Nagants with absolutely terrible bores that shoot much better than expected. I wonder why?

All of my old Mil rifles wear aperture rear sights. Those tiny little V rears are made for good light and much younger eyes.