Range Report Part 2! This time it's personal

Eager to get my .22 back out to the range the next day, I went to Turners and (yet again) found them woefully lacking in ammo. So, I did what any self-respecting gunny would do; I went to Wal-mart!

When I got there, they only had some Remington Thunderbolt. Says high velocity; should be fine... As the woman rang up the 5 boxes of 50 ($0.0264 per round woot!) and I was enjoying the puny total that was being displayed, my attention turned to the gun accessories section. I asked her to put my purchase on hold, while I took a quick look. I checked if they had any bore snakes damn, and then allowed my eyes to drift across the small selection of goods. My eyes stopped on the rifle scopes. I couldn't.... Could I? It does have a 20 inch barrel... And it certainly has the mounts... But it's only a 50 foot range... Ah, what the hell. I grabbed a cheap BSA scope, and some cheap mounting rings. If I don't like it, I didn't spend too much on it. I can always upgrade. (I tried to find a picture of the scope, but couldn't without more details, I'm surprised to see that it has a very similar profile to the one in the picture.) I returned home and pulled my no-frills scope out of it's wrapping, and opened up the instruction book. X many clicks? Adjustable parallax? Battery compartment? Riboflavin? I just want to shoot the thing... Oh wait; it's a generic instruction book, my scope has none of those things! Nice.

I get the rings onto the weaver mount, and try to check that they're lined up. Hmmm... This one isn't fully seated on the weaver mount... Bugger. I reseat it, and try swapping the rings. Nope. Seems the weaver mount is wider in the front than to the rear. Hmmm... I seat them as best I can, and put the scope on. It's noticeably leaning to the left a few degrees. Well, as long as it's on solid, and it doesn't move, I should be able to adjust... Maybe I should have spent more than $6 on the mounting rings. :)

So now, I've got a silly looking gun, with a silly looking paint job, and an oversized scope mounted atop the whole package of nonsense! Oy. Oh well, it's cheap (and therefore fun!) to shoot!

I arrive at the range, and admit to feeling a little bit insecure about my silly looking gun with a $25 wally-world scope on top of it. The gentleman from last week is there with his wife, and I realize that I was there at the same time as before; Sunday morning. I look around, and realize that I recognize a few other people from last Sunday morning. Church? The gentleman recognizes me, and we talk briefly about the G22. I offer him a chance to shoot it, but he's just leaving (like last week). They must be getting in right at opening time. I'll have to get here early next week to let him shoot it. I grabbed some cheap targets, and a pen, and headed out to my lane.

I colored in the 1.5 inch X to make it more visible (like usual), and sent the target out to the end of the range. I put myself prone with my elbows on the naval-high bench, centered the crosshairs on the big black dot, and slowly squeezed the sloppy trigger. The shot was about 6 inches low. I was about to adjust, but I realized that I should probably put a few more shots downrange first to make sure I didn't just suck. I adjusted the scope, and shot until I was right on the spot. By now I was getting used to the trigger, it had a lot of take-up, and had a heavy portion at about 50% then got soft at about 65%, then broke at 75%. The trick was pulling hard enough to get past the 65% without pulling through to the break. I tossed up a fresh target with a few tiny target spots, and shot off the rest of the box of ammo.

Barring anyone shaking the bench, or my occasional inability to stop just past 65%, my shots were right on top of each other.

There's something cool about pulling a target, and seeing one .22 inch hole where three shots were placed. Something VERY cool.

After some nice shooting, some more people arrived, and with shots going off around me, I found it hard to keep the trigger controlled. But I took advantage of the time to focus.

About mid-way through my second box, someone the lane to my right started shooting off a .44 magnum. In an indoor range, you can feel that in your chest. I watched the flames shoot 7 inches out the sides of the large revolver, and smiled. I returned to my shooting after the 6 shots were spent, and heard one more shot. A long length of string came out of nowhere, and bunched up in the air for a second before falling to the ground in a small heap. Dude, that guy just shot the string off the target runner with a .44 magnum! The shooter swore up and down that the sights were off on his friend's gun, and after the string was replaced, and independent shooter verified that the gun was shooting about 6" high (at 20 feet!). Although their groups were all over the paper anyways, so I kind of figured it might have happened even if the sights hadn't been off...

Anyways, that ragged hole where 3 rounds of .22 entered is still fresh in my mind. Now I can't wait to get my scoped space gun out to some longer ranges to see what it can really do...