Shooting Saturday – March 10th

I love Shooting Saturdays, those days of the month where all my cares evaporate in the smoke from my guns. I love it. I’m also thrilled that the weather is decent again, because that means that Eagle Creek Park range is once again open. As I mentioned over at Snowflakes in hell, I hate indoor ranges, so it’s nice to be able to shoot outside. The focus of today’s outing was to A)sight in my 10/22 at 50 yards, B) establish my maximum effective range for hog hunting with the .357 Taurus Tracker, C) Shoot my new 1935 Beretta, and D) get some good trigger time in with my GP100.

10/22 Sighting in
The sights on the 10/22 are the XS Ghost Rings, which is an excellent ghost ring style sight. I was worried that the front sight post wasn’t going to be high enough; low and behold I was right. I had the rear sight bottomed out – as low as it will go and still had to hold about a foot low at 50 yards. I’m normally fine with using a little Kentucky windage when I shoot, but that’s a little much. So, after I established that I need a higher front sight post; I moved the target in to 20 yards and proceeded to burn up the rest of the Mini-mags I had with me. There is something incredibly satisfying about shooting a .22 rifle as fast as you can pull the trigger.

Taurus Tracker shooting
I’m planning a wild pig hunt sometime in April, I’m going to be using my Taurus Tracker and another revolver; I needed to establish the maximum range that I could hold my shots to MOBP (Minute of Big Pig) shooting offhand. The Tracker is a 7 shot .357 Magnum with a ported barrel and excellent adjustable sights. Turns out that my max offhand range is about 35 yards with iron sights where I can hold all my shots on an 8 inch target. At 50 yards, I’ve got to have some kind of rest to make hits. I moved the target in to 20 yards and my groups tightened up to about 2 inches, proof that the Taurus will do its part. I’m very pleased with the revolver’s performance, and I’m looking forward to nailing some Tennessee pork with it.

Serious Wheelgun practice
This was a lot of fun, shooting the GP100 rapid fire at 7 and 10 yards, loading in a hurry. Good times. By the time I was doing this, I had already fired about 150 rounds from other guns, and my index finger was getting worn out. Lots of fun, good practice, had a little friendly competition with another shooter who was running a Glock.

Summary
I wish had brought my camera, because it was just a lovely day to be on the range. I reviewed the Beretta over here, so I’m not going to cross-post that. It was a great day to shoot, and I’m in a wonderful mood right now. Can’t wait for those pigs in April!