Sports

After a two-week absence due to vacation and other business, we were back at home on the range today. We missed our weekly shootout, so we packed up the handguns, shotguns and ammo and showed up raring to go.

I brought my S&W 686 and 50 rounds of .38 special. I also brought my Glock 30 and 50 rounds of .45 ACP. Damsel brought her Para Warthog and 50 rounds of .45. We each brought shotguns – our Remington 870 12 gauge security shotgun and Damsel’s 20 gauge Remington 870 Junior.

I captured a frame from one of the videos Damsel shot of me firing the security gun. There were a couple of fairly nice muzzle flashes in the video and that is one of them in the photo above.

We took turns firing the .38 special rounds. The revolver’s cylinder holds seven rounds, so after seven turns shooting, there is always one round left in the 50 round box of ammo. Damsel stuffed the remaining round into the cylinder and sent the last bullet downrange. We have been saving the .38 and .357 brass thinking that *one of these days* we will take up reloading.

We shot the .45s without incident except at one point the slide on the Warthog jammed with a live round still chambered (or nearly so). Damsel couldn’t move the slide at all, so she kept the muzzle downrange and handed it to me. I gripped the slide and worked it back and forth for about 15 seconds and it broke loose. Close examination of the open chamber and ramp showed no reason why this should have happened. Damsel also inspected the round that had been stuck and could find no nicks or other deformity. She put it back into the magazine, slammed it into the gun, racked and fired the rest of the rounds in the magazine – all normal.

We won’t be able to go to the range next week because the management is going to refurbish all lanes with new baffles, traps and other equipment as necessary. It has been thirty years since this range has been upgraded – we will report on the new range in a couple of weeks.

Today’s trip to the range went very well. Although the range was fairly busy, we got right in and had our lane within minutes of arrival. We set up the first target at seven yards – a bullseye pistol target. We initially took out the S&W 686 revolver and shot about 50 rounds of .38 special to warm up.

After the target became fairly perforated with our warm up shots, we reeled it back in and patched it up with several adhesive spots and resumed with our .45 pistols – Damsel’s Warthog and my Glock 30. We fired some more rounds at the patched-up target and retired it in favor of a silhouette target.

Image – Gunography: Glock 30, Warthog and S&W 686

We brought the .45s today because we scored two hundred rounds of Remington UMC .45ACP yesterday at the sporting goods store at a bargain price. Interestingly, they had NO 9mm Luger ammo. We still have 9mm on hand in the safe, but decided to take the bigger guns this week because of the availability of the .45 ammo.

The range gun shop was also out of ANY reloaded ammo. They did have a palette with 500 round cases of .40 and 9mm for a nominal price. We would have purchased a couple cases of the 9mm, but we’re saving up for our visit to Phoenix and the 2A Blog Bash in a few weeks. We can wait for the ammo until we get back.

The session concluded with shooting the shotguns. I don’t have video to verify, but we each had a satisfying time by blowing a silhouette target in half. We shot 25 rounds each of 12 and 20 gauge.

There was one event to report in connection with today’s session. We saw several parents with their old-enough-to shoot children in the range today. We like to see the kids shooting with their parents. However, there was one youngster – about 14 or 15, who was in the range WITHOUT PROTECTIVE EYE WEAR. I spoke with the young man and asked him where his goggles were. I got a sort of a blank look from him when his parent took over with the line of questioning. The group he was with quickly rustled up a pair for him. I got hit with a fragment in my shoulder today and I shudder to think what would have happened if it had hit the kid instead. Even ejected brass can be very dangerous.

Folks, take your kids to the range – but make sure that they – and you – are using the maximum safety practices.

We headed for the range today, for our regular target practice and ‘recoil therapy.’ as Robb puts it. The gunography consisted of Damsel’s Warthog .45, S&W 908s 9mm, S&W 686 .357 and her 20 gauge Remington 870 ‘youth model’ shotgun. I brought my Glock 30 .45, Glock26 9mm and my 12 gauge Remington 870 full-sized shotgun.

Damsel received the parts to restore her Warthog during the week and she gave it a test drive today. She will make her second follow-up report on the Warthog in a separate post. Suffice it to say that the ‘Hawg was OK and she put about 100 rounds through it. She shoots ten of those are in the video above.

Our outing today was pleasant. We didn’t try to push any envelopes or make any spectacular shots. It was just a good, healthy shoot, intended to be fun.

We had an entertaining day at the range today. We were late today and the parking lot was full because there was an NRA instructor with some students in the classroom – but there were several booth still available in the shooting range, so we parked on the street and went inside. Shooting was pretty much the same thing, although Damsel’s Warthog is awaiting parts and didn’t make the trip today.

I took some video while Damsel was shooting and I noticed two sequences where she fired five shots. One of the two was her firing my Glock 30 where she metered out the shots in deliberate fashion to hit on or near the target center.

In the other sequence, she did her trademark 20 gauge rapid-fire, in, what I believe, is a record for her. I like when she ejects the last of the five expended cartridges with a flourish.