The Wandering Minstrel

When I get Fat Man and Little Boy home for cleanup after a session at the target range, It takes me less than a minute to get both of them field stripped. The Better Half took this image back in 2008 when ammo availability and prices were in their pre-Obamination modes - that is plenty of ammo and prices were reasonable.

I seldom take both Glocks to the range these days. Although I do have some ammo stockpiled, it just seems like we only take a semi-auto pistol or a revolver for each of us and a couple of the shotguns. Now, there is also a problem with the shotgun ammo since the range only allows slugs or double-ought buckshot, which is also quite a bit more expensive than birdshot/target loads.

The good news is that the cleanup job takes less time.

We stopped today at one of our local gun and ammunition stores hoping to find some 20 gauge slug cartridges. The man behind the counter had only two boxes of five rounds left, so I bought them. For as much as I paid for the goddamn slug rounds, I could have bought two 25-round boxes of target loads.

The reason for buying the more expensive loads is due to new rules at the range where we shoot, to wit: slugs or double ought buckshot only and limited to a specific three out of the sixteen lanes. The reason for the rule is that after extensive revamping of the range and the backdrop, small birdshot can ricochet back to the shooters. Not a good thing.

We have been members at the range for several years, and are disappointed in the performance of the current owners with respect to customer service. Customer service? Hah! Picture George Carlin doing pelvic thrusts as he comically describes “customer service.”

Our membership at this range is up in July and we have decided not to renew. The combination of lousy target hangers and pellet-reflecting backdrop gives us pause. Our planned departure from the Southern California area seals the decision.

Last time out to the range, I shot about 50 rounds of reloaded ammo that I bought from the gun shop there. The reason I say ‘about’ is that one of the rounds failed to discharge. Buying reloads seemed to be the thing to do, what with the price of ammo these days, but it comes with some drawbacks.

Photo credit - The Better Half. Clickable image.

I bought a couple of bags of .45 ACP for about $22 per bag (remember when factory ammo was that cheap?). I shot them using “Fat Man,” my Glock 30. In addition to the failed round, the ammo seemed especially ‘dirty’ to me, leaving more than the usual spent powder deposits near the muzzle.

Fat Man cleaned up OK - I use a CLP product, “Strike Hold,” which does a pretty good job of cleaning and lubrication. Everything got wiped down and a couple drops on the slide rails is all the lube that this gun seems to need.

We’ve been busy for a couple of months, so we finally got our ass in gear today. We packed up our stuff and headed to the range for some target practice. We brought our .45 caliber guns - “Fat Man,” my Glock 30 and “Miss Piggy,” the Better Half’s stainless Para Warthog. As usual, we brought our 12 and 20 gauge Remington 870 shotguns.

As we were just about ready to head into the range, the range officer told us that if we wanted to use our shotguns we could only shoot double-ought buckshot or slug rounds. He advised that smaller shot target loads had been bouncing off of the back stop toward the shooters. The range officer explained that the heavier mass rounds would stick and the lighter weight ones would bounce. Apparently, the recent ‘improvements’ to the range introduced this new phenomenon. Since we only brought target load cartridges, we had to buy some slug rounds for over a buck per cartridge. Moreover, they only had 12 gauge rounds, so the 20 gauge gun didn’t get used. I bought a couple of five round boxes.

This is the first time we’ve shot slug rounds. We put up a target and sent it down range at the seven yard mark and let “silhouette dude” have the few rounds we bought today. The video shows us shooting and the target after we finished with it. In several places, the slugs made some nice clean holes.

Today was our day to shoot the 9mm Handguns. We have been able to get some reloaded 9×19/115gr. at the range, and had some older rounds we needed to shoot.

We took 150 rounds into the range and shot them through our S&W 908 pistol and “Little Boy,” the Glock 26 subcompact 9mm pistol. Both guns performed flawlessly.

We also took the shotguns, a 20 gauge Remington 870 youth model (4+1 capacity) and our 12 gauge Remington security model (6+1 capacity). We brought a 25 round box for each of the shotguns. Although the security gun has a seven round capacity, we generally load the magazine with four and the chamber with one cartridge.

To address the shortcomings of the target hangers (literally - coat hangers with Boston clips affixed to them), we taped a large piece of cardboard to the clips and then taped targets to the cardboard. The greater mass provided by the cardboard seems to stabilize the targets which tend to sway from side to side.

In the video, the Better Half shoots the 908 both right-handed Weaver stance and left-handed single hand grip. She then demonstrates her technique with both shotguns.

We changed our schedule for going to the shooting range. We were going on Sundays, but decided that we were missing too many NFL games. We’re big football fans, so we changed the shooting day to Friday. Due to a dental appointment, this past week we went on Wednesday instead.

At the range, we sometimes like to play a game with the shotguns, where we try to cut the target in half. This past Wednesday, the Better Half demonstrated her skill by perforating the target with five rounds from the 12 gauge shotgun. She then finished it off with two 20 gauge rounds.

As I said in a previous post, this shooting exercise may not develop any useful techniques, but it sure is fun.

I was rummaging (well, browsing the external hard-drive) through some old images when I ran across the archive from the Gun Blogger Rendezvous in Reno last September. There were lots of images, since both the Better Half and I took a lot of photos.

One of the highlights of GBR was going to the Washoe County Shooting Range. We sure enjoyed shooting and watching the other shooters. We saw a wide variety of guns and equipment which gave us an education about how others pursue the shooting hobby. Besides that, it was a lot of fun.

We met a lot of nice folks with like-minded Second Amendment attitudes. When we were back at the hospitality room at the Silver Legacy, we enjoyed hanging out with our new acquaintances. The two guys in the (clickable) image are Ben, who blogs at Reasonablenut, and his Dad, Bill. The Better Half and I had a lot of laughs with these two colorful characters from New Mexico.

Due to a brain fart or something, I did not have Reasonablenut in the blogroll. That has since been fixed.

Thanks to a tip from drjim from Every Blade of Grass, we tried his duct tape solution to stabilize the flimsy target hanger setup when we went to the range today.

The video at the right shows a still of one of the target hanger clips with the duct tape applied. In the next sequence, the Better Half unloads her 20 gauge into the target. As you can see, the ‘teetering target’ phenomenon is still present, although somewhat damped, thanks to the cardboard backing. The last sequence shows her giving the coup de grâce to the lower half of the silhouette. With two rounds left in the gun, she pauses as if to contemplate where to shoot next. She decided to shoot the right shoulder and a well-placed final shot right between the eyes. Last time, a shot like that knocked the target off one of the clips.

So. it looks like duct tape is the fix for the target shoot-down problem and putting additional weight behind the target reduces, but does not eliminate the side-to-side motion.