West Side Pistol and Rifle Range.
Nov. 16th, 2005 08:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
camwynWell, now. That was fun.
I got down to the Range today at a time that might've been sixish, or not. I don't know- I left my celphone home this morning by mistake, and it's my only portable timepiece. Didn't really matter, though, as there was still someone there for the lesson. 'Classroom instruction' basically means sitting down at a table and going over the parts of the gun, the loading of the magazines, the direction the bullets have to go in, the use of the safety, etc. The rifle they let me use as a first-timer was a Ruger .22 caliber semiautomatic rifle; I wanna say 10/30 but I didn't look closely enough at the stuff printed on the side to be sure if that's accurate. They gave me two boxes of ammo (bit of a surprise, that, as I was almost positive I was only supposed to get one) and a bunch of targets, and after I signed the appropriate waivers ("Not a criminal, not wanted for a crime, not a psych patient, not under a restraining order, not under the influence of anything, and also I promise not to sue you guys if I get blinded or die or something like that") they gave me my eye protection and ear protection and let me out on the range.
It is not really all that different from archery, in some ways, although more is expected of the left arm and less is asked of the right shoulder and upper back. The butt of the rifle braces against the front of the shoulder; the right arm is to be held at a ninety-degree angle from the body; the left arm is to be held steady and under no circumstances are you to allow your left trapezius to tense up at the wrong time and move your aim. Line the white fin at the front up with the white diamond under the little notch in the metal blade closer in, aim this at the point you want your impact (the instructor said that this is how they do it at the range and not how they do it in any military anywhere), hold the trigger across the middle of the fingertip and not the tip or the crook of the knuckle, and bring it back smoothly. And do not, do not drop it or move it as soon as you've completed the deed; hold it exactly as if you were still firing, until you're sure the shot is done. It's like that on the archery range.
I didn't shoot at anything further away than 25 feet, and most of my targets were between 15 and 20 feet away. Nevertheless I am still rather proud of having achieved groupings of eight or nine shots (every so often there'd be a problem with an ejected casing and in the process of getting it loose I'd have a bullet be removed from the magazine as well) in an area somewhat smaller than the palm of my hand. The targets were mostly the ring type, but they gave me a few police targets and a few hostage scenario targets. I could still group fairly well when I shot at the police targets; I was aiming for the space just over the gunman's knuckle, or for a particular wrinkle on his forehead. Doesn't mean I hit that space or that wrinkle, necessarily, but understand- I do instinctive archery. No sights at all. You sight using the length of the arrow. And in instinctive archery, you're supposed to aim for the cross at the center of the cross at the center of the target- or, if you shoot at animals, for the specific hair that lies over the heart. You might not hit it exactly, but you will hit very, very close- whereas if you aim for the heart, or if you just aim for the yellow on a ring target, you stand a good chance of hitting the next ring out or missing the heart zone entirely. My groupings were better at first, partly because of the targets being closer and partly because my left medial deltoid and upper bicep were not yet going 'WTF?', but they were still respectable later on. I think I hit the white rings instead of the three inner black ones maybe... mmm, five, six times out of all the shots fired. That amounted to 149 rounds of ammo expended, although I used several non-ring targets and didn't write down my results.
I am, however, proud of the hostage targets I used. I was in an SCA event some years ago and they included an archery competition called Shoot the Barbarian. There was a barbarian warrior target at about fifteen or twenty yards, but there was a stand-up of a pregnant noblewoman between the barbarian and the shooter. I did pretty well in that, mostly by aiming under the standup's extended arm (and thus hitting the barbarian repeatedly in the goolies, but that was not by design). This, I felt, was rather similar- which is why I spent most of the time shooting the hostage targets and aiming for the bridge of the gunman's sunglasses. I only pegged him there once, but I kept the rest of the shots confined to his head area, once hitting the ear and once going through his hair without actually hitting the head. Most of them, though, were clustered in the sunglass region- even though the last two magazines were expended at the 25-foot distance. And not one shot ever went anywhere near the hostage.
My shots tend to go to the left and a little up. I must be careful how I rest my finger on the trigger, and exercise my left arm more, if I am to do this again. It's interesting, and it has quite an appeal to it. I do have to remember to wash my hands before I leave the range, since there's lead involved- and my face, since the instructor said to rest part of the riflestock against the cheek. But they have two large sinks for that and big signs up about it, so no problem there.
I got down to the Range today at a time that might've been sixish, or not. I don't know- I left my celphone home this morning by mistake, and it's my only portable timepiece. Didn't really matter, though, as there was still someone there for the lesson. 'Classroom instruction' basically means sitting down at a table and going over the parts of the gun, the loading of the magazines, the direction the bullets have to go in, the use of the safety, etc. The rifle they let me use as a first-timer was a Ruger .22 caliber semiautomatic rifle; I wanna say 10/30 but I didn't look closely enough at the stuff printed on the side to be sure if that's accurate. They gave me two boxes of ammo (bit of a surprise, that, as I was almost positive I was only supposed to get one) and a bunch of targets, and after I signed the appropriate waivers ("Not a criminal, not wanted for a crime, not a psych patient, not under a restraining order, not under the influence of anything, and also I promise not to sue you guys if I get blinded or die or something like that") they gave me my eye protection and ear protection and let me out on the range.
It is not really all that different from archery, in some ways, although more is expected of the left arm and less is asked of the right shoulder and upper back. The butt of the rifle braces against the front of the shoulder; the right arm is to be held at a ninety-degree angle from the body; the left arm is to be held steady and under no circumstances are you to allow your left trapezius to tense up at the wrong time and move your aim. Line the white fin at the front up with the white diamond under the little notch in the metal blade closer in, aim this at the point you want your impact (the instructor said that this is how they do it at the range and not how they do it in any military anywhere), hold the trigger across the middle of the fingertip and not the tip or the crook of the knuckle, and bring it back smoothly. And do not, do not drop it or move it as soon as you've completed the deed; hold it exactly as if you were still firing, until you're sure the shot is done. It's like that on the archery range.
I didn't shoot at anything further away than 25 feet, and most of my targets were between 15 and 20 feet away. Nevertheless I am still rather proud of having achieved groupings of eight or nine shots (every so often there'd be a problem with an ejected casing and in the process of getting it loose I'd have a bullet be removed from the magazine as well) in an area somewhat smaller than the palm of my hand. The targets were mostly the ring type, but they gave me a few police targets and a few hostage scenario targets. I could still group fairly well when I shot at the police targets; I was aiming for the space just over the gunman's knuckle, or for a particular wrinkle on his forehead. Doesn't mean I hit that space or that wrinkle, necessarily, but understand- I do instinctive archery. No sights at all. You sight using the length of the arrow. And in instinctive archery, you're supposed to aim for the cross at the center of the cross at the center of the target- or, if you shoot at animals, for the specific hair that lies over the heart. You might not hit it exactly, but you will hit very, very close- whereas if you aim for the heart, or if you just aim for the yellow on a ring target, you stand a good chance of hitting the next ring out or missing the heart zone entirely. My groupings were better at first, partly because of the targets being closer and partly because my left medial deltoid and upper bicep were not yet going 'WTF?', but they were still respectable later on. I think I hit the white rings instead of the three inner black ones maybe... mmm, five, six times out of all the shots fired. That amounted to 149 rounds of ammo expended, although I used several non-ring targets and didn't write down my results.
I am, however, proud of the hostage targets I used. I was in an SCA event some years ago and they included an archery competition called Shoot the Barbarian. There was a barbarian warrior target at about fifteen or twenty yards, but there was a stand-up of a pregnant noblewoman between the barbarian and the shooter. I did pretty well in that, mostly by aiming under the standup's extended arm (and thus hitting the barbarian repeatedly in the goolies, but that was not by design). This, I felt, was rather similar- which is why I spent most of the time shooting the hostage targets and aiming for the bridge of the gunman's sunglasses. I only pegged him there once, but I kept the rest of the shots confined to his head area, once hitting the ear and once going through his hair without actually hitting the head. Most of them, though, were clustered in the sunglass region- even though the last two magazines were expended at the 25-foot distance. And not one shot ever went anywhere near the hostage.
My shots tend to go to the left and a little up. I must be careful how I rest my finger on the trigger, and exercise my left arm more, if I am to do this again. It's interesting, and it has quite an appeal to it. I do have to remember to wash my hands before I leave the range, since there's lead involved- and my face, since the instructor said to rest part of the riflestock against the cheek. But they have two large sinks for that and big signs up about it, so no problem there.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
nifty.
Date: 2005-11-17 01:50 am (UTC)Cool, sounds like you had fun.
no subject
Date: 2005-11-17 02:23 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-11-17 12:04 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-11-17 01:37 pm (UTC)I started archery as a gym class in college. I took it for one semester in... I think sophomore year. Didn't shoot again until I graduated and found an archery range in my neighbourhood. The stringing always gave me hell, even when we were starting out with the school's 20-pound bows. My first recurve of my own wasn't so bad in that regard, if only because I think I got a better stringer, but my second- well, it was a 40-pound Hoyt Custom Pro and for some reason I had purchased a longbow stringer rather than a recurve stringer. I got whacked in painful areas once or twice the first in the process of learning to string it. I mostly practice archery on ring targets, but when I got the chance I used to occasionally shoot at animal poster-targets or three-dee foam standups. Generally deer or wild pigs, since they were the ones I'd be most likely to hunt if ever I went hunting (plus with the pig you have an incentive to be accurate, namely, the possibility of an angry oncoming boar if you don't plug the kill zone on your first shot).
I've never shot at an animal target further than fifteen yards. This is partly due to insufficient accuracy on my part, and partly because I have heard that an ethical instinctive hunter won't take a shot much longer than that because the possibility of a clean kill with a traditional bow drops sharply beyond that distance. A rifle might be another story, once I get used to using one and see if I'm up for the possibility of genuinely hunting.