This was a great day at the range, the weather was great, the wind was calm – all in all a fantastic day to shoot.
I headed out to Eagle Creek Park Pistol Range with my Ruger GP100, my “new-to-me” Taurus Pt-92, the EAA Bounty Hunter .22 WMR, and my beloved Marlin 25M .22 WMR. I was going to enter the EAA and the Ruger in Mr. Completely’s E-Postal match for April. The Taurus Pt92 was going to be function tested with Winchester 115 grain ball, and MagTech Gold 124 grain JHP. Finally, I’ve realized that while I’m a better than fair shot with a pistol, I come up short in the rifleman category, so I wanted to do some work with Marlin. Despite having had it for almost a decade now, I’d never worked it out past about 30 yards – probably because it’s never worn anything other than the somewhat..rudimentary iron sights.
GP100
Well, the GP100 was pretty boring, I was shooting more Magtech 125 FMJ rounds. Pretty much par for the course as usual. So reliable it’s almost boring. Here’s the target I shot for the postal match.
View Target Here
I’m pretty happy with that, it could be better – but for fixed sights and double action only it wasn’t too bad.
Taurus PT92
For those that remember, the Taurus was my BAG day purchase, coming with five 17 round magazines. The exterior is pretty beat up – however the gun runs like a swiss watch. It easily digested the Winchester ball and the Magtech HPs, without even so much as a hiccup. Yes, the exterior is pretty janky, however the gun itself seems fine. I’m going to detail strip and clean it tomorrow just to be sure.
EAA Bounty Hunger
Another gun that I love. I brought the EAA with the .22 Magnum cylinder to shoot it for the postal match – I shot the dickens out of it. For whatever reason, that gun felt just right today. Here’s the target.
Like I said, everything just felt right, with the possible exception of that seven I threw. I’ll know I’m back in competitive form when I start pissing and moaning about shooting eights, but until then sevens are pretty bad.
Marlin 25M
The last gun I shot was the Marlin 25M, .22 Magnum. In thinking back, I realized that I never shot this gun beyond 30 yards really, whether plinking or varmints. So, today I took it out, fired a few at 25 yards to get the point of aim – and then realized that there might be a problem. Everything was hitting high, so I cranked the rear sight up until it was about 2 clicks from the highest position, to try and bring the rounds down. It worked for 25 yards, but once I was out to 50, I had to hold about 8 inches low and 3 inches to the left with the sights up to max to hit the target. That much Kentucky Windage is 2 things, A) frustrating, and B) rather limiting on the rifle – unless I’m shooting at a 16 inch wide target. The targets I had were 8 inches – so I guess at 50 yards I’d just a bigger target.
So, after running the target back to 25 yards, I shot a little rapid fire with the rifle for fun, then I shot one last five shot group to close the day.
That’s the right way to end a day at the range.
