Tag: range goals

June 3, 2021 – ‘Tacticool’ Thursday

June 3, 2021 /

We are starting to get into a tough season. This weekend is the only free weekend we have this month. July has at least half of the weekends claimed already and at least one in August. I love the summer but it is hard to do the things that I want to do.

Since I haven’t been to the range since February, I am very delayed in my planned goals for the year. In my head, I am OK with it because I have shot trap a couple of times and there is no ammunition to refill once it is gone. But I thought that I would share my plan on how to make the most of my time.

I am going to do my best to get there this month. But just in case, I will call it my next range trip plan. I have two 20 gauges. Last year I purchased a shorter barrel and a red dot sight for one. Neither have I ever had on the rifle range to see how slugs would perform, let alone sighted in. I would like to see the difference that a longer barrel vs. a shorter barrel would make. I would like to switch brands of ammunition to verify effect.

Said another way, I plan to sight in the red dot with slugs at 50 yds. Then I plan to check the difference of ammunition. After that, I plan on checking the pattern of buckshot at that difference. Along the way, I am going to switch barrels and firearms to see if I can tell the difference of different variables on the same ammunition. Below is the breakdown of my plan.

870 20 – sight in red dot on 18″ barrel (15)
870 20 – slug test field barrel (5)
870 20 – brand change (5)
R22/20 – test fire on range (5)
870 20 – pattern buck on range
870 20 – field barrel buck pattern
R22/20 – test fire buck

If you look carefully at the picture, you can see that the Remington slugs are 5/8oz and the Winchester slugs are 3/4oz. Reportedly, both are at a muzzle velocity of 1600 fps. It is highly likely that they will not zero at the same point with the red dot. And certainly, the heavier slug will have more drop at distance. This is why it is important to take your check your hunting ammunition at the range.

This is a fairly simple plan. It will likely take a couple of hours to perform. And even at 40 shots at most, it is still $125 worth of ammunition. My dad wants to go as well, so it will probably go a little longer, I would say it will be a good half day,

If the cost (and availability) of ammunition wasn’t so much of a problem, I would also have liked to try more ammunition variations like 2 3/4″ vs 3″ shells of the same brand, standard vs reduced recoil of the same length shell and some different chokes. I would also like to move out to 100 yards and maybe even 200 yards. I would also like to do some similar variations with buckshot as well. I am just not going to be able to get this done at least at this time.

Change Your Programming Routine: When time and resources are limited, planning makes the most of both. Being deliberate with your actions is the most efficient training that you can perform. I don’t know anyone personally, but I have heard through podcasts and radio people that shoot 1000 rounds a session. I have never had the inclination to shoot that much from a cost and time standpoint. I just want to make everything count.

March 4, 2020 – ‘Tacticool’ Thursday

March 4, 2021 /

I finally made it to the range last weekend. It was the first time since August and I had some goals that I wanted to accomplish. For one, I have had a rifle that I have owned since 2016 and have only test fired, not sighted in. I also made changes to some of the parts and I didn’t really know if those changes effected the function or not. This trip was planned for April of last year before the pandemic closed the range so I have been looking forward to this for quite a while.

One of the problems for a reloader with a semi-automatic rifle is that spent brass is flung out of the rifle as it is fired. In the past, I have been able to find most of the brass, but sometimes it is muddy or you step on them as they are fired which is less than ideal. Fortunately in the AR platform, Caldwell has a solution for this. This range trip was also a first for this gadget as well.

I have to say that it worked pretty well. I didn’t get close to the 100 rounds before it was full. I would say that by about twenty or so, the weight was heavy enough to pull it out of place but it is pretty easy to unzip the bottom and empty it. I could have made some effort to make sure that the device was mounted more securely but I was mostly shooting off of a bench and working on sighting in so I rolled with it.

One downside I would say is that the brass catcher interfered with visibility of the action. I cant say for sure that it actually interfered with the function but I did have a few issues.

On two out of three magazines, I had issues with initial charging. That very easily could have been the magazine. I have heard that people typically load 28 instead of 30. Again, this is the second time I have shot this and I haven’t even tried all the different magazines I own. I did experience one failure to eject. At this point, I am going to attribute that to the brass catcher. I suspect that it can interfere with the flight path of the empty casing.

In the following years to come, I will pay more attention to all of these variables. The goal of this trip was to function fire all of the changes and get the sight reasonable at 100 yards. A firearm that is not sighted in is really not useful beyond point blank range. Plus, with the ammo shortage, the cost is astronomical at this point so I am going to put off more heavy shooting until things calm down a bit on the market.

My plans for the next range trip is to spend some time on shotgun slugs and sights. I have some new sights that I want to get sighted in and I figured that zeroing on a slug would be the best way even though I would primarily plan to use buckshot with it. After all, a shotgun is most advantageous with shot because I have better rifles.

Even though I have the shotgun interlude planned for next month, my goal this year is to get my Rossi 92 tuned up. It needs sighting in as well as it shot 10 inches to the right at fifty yards. I didn’t have a punch to make the necessary adjustments as this was the first time I have shot it beyond 25 yards. I need to spend some time deburring sharp edges and probably will spend some time smoothing the action as well. Those will be iterative efforts. Both this one and the AR were supposed to be more plinking toys with inexpensive ammo. So much for that.