A Little Fun Time

Ever since the Boss had her hand surgery I've spent every Saturday driving her around running errands. We spend the entire day accomplishing what she normally gets done during the week while I'm at work. Then most Sundays I drive her to church. Consequently I have very little time for me. I'm afraid I'm getting a bit grouchy, in need of a day wandering the woods allowing stress to melt away. Yesterday though, I managed to steal an hour at the indoor range with a relatively new shooter.

He started with a snubbie .22 double action, then single action. Then we moved to a Browning Buckmark. He learned the relative merits of sight radius and the difficulty of double action fire. From there he tried the .44 Bulldog, .44 Mag Super Blackhawk and 454 Casull. Each time we moved up in power his grin got bigger.

He only got 6 out of the 454 due to time constraints. Afterwards he said he would've done 6 more from the big 45, but that would've been his limit. Twelve in a row is usually my limit as well.

I've learned through experience that bullet acceleration has an influence on felt recoil and ease of pistol control. I know that in the .454, the 300gr bullet at 1600f/s is more comfortable than the 240gr bullet at 1800f/s even though the former unleashes more energy.

Yesterday I shot some .44 special loads published as 210gr at 950f/s through the Charter Arms 4" Bulldog. That's a light weight revolver with a slim rubber grip. I found it difficult to maintain my grip, as did my guest. I know a lot of people who would've found that load extremely uncomfortable. In the future I'm going to either back down the powder charge or go to a heavier bullet. I'm going for a bit more controllability since this isn't a hunting gun.