There are trips to the range, and then there are Trips To The Range. Today's trip was the latter.
My son Joey and I took my brother-in-law Mike to the range for his first shooting outing, and we met a fellow Twitter feller, Michael, a.k.a. @RKBArms.
It was a first for a lot of things: Mike's first time shooting; Joey's first time shooting an AR-15; the first time we shot the reincarnated version of my Ruger 10/22, Captain America; and my first time to meet and shoot with Michael. It would not be a boring day.
Captain America
What can I say? The gun is sweet. With the heavy barrel, there is almost no recoil. I was able to get the scope set on the side to side axis in my shop, so it was just a matter of dialing in the elevation at the range, and soon it was shooting just about spot on at 100 yards, or whatever distance it was to the dirt berm at the end of the range. There were several tin cans, pieces of cardboard, and clay pigeons on the berm, and we made them dance at will all day.
I wasn't able to shoot it for a group measurement, since I found it hard to keep steady when I supported it by the foregrip. I need to add a bipod, or bring a chair and a sand bag.
Bucky
Complementing the 10/22, I brought the Buck Mark pistol, outfitted with my Tasco Red Dot sight. A couple of turns at it was spot on at the berm, too. My brother-in-law fell in love with Bucky, and I think he's going to get one.
AR-15
Back when I went to the Blogger Shoot, I had borrowed a friend's AR-15, which lasted all of 4 rounds before it TARFU'd on me. I finally bought the parts to fix it, and took it to the range with us.
I got to shoot about 10 rounds from it. My son then commandeered it and shot all the rest of the ammo. He wants one, bad. Okay, time for Project 3, I suppose.
Shotgun
I also took my newly refinished Mossberg 500 along, and shot about 10 rounds through it. I like the recoil pad that Hogue included with the overmolded stock. I'm going to try to go shoot some trap this week with it, so look for another report.
I also shot Michael's shotgun, a Maverick 88 with an 18 inch barrel. Nice.
Here's Michael with his shotgun.
Pistols
I also took Bruce my Glock 17 and the Duke, my Glock 21, and shot quite a bit through them. It was a good demonstration for my brother-in-law, to compare them to the .22LR of the Buck Mark.
My son shot a lot with the Glock 17, and I took the opportunity to try to talk him into his first competition, the GSSF Match at Conyers in September. We'll see.
Michael also compared my Glock 17 to his Glock 19.
Other Stuff
In the middle of our shooting, up walks a small flock of 6 wild turkeys. They were completely -unfazed by all the shooting, but when my brother-in-law tried to call them over, the ran off into the woods.
We also saw a cheap semi-auto pistol whose slide completed cracked, all the way around, about an inch in front of the ejection port. The person shooting it said he had borrowed it from a friend, and that it was cheap, cheap. I guess so.
Ammo Test
Look for another blog post soon about this, with video.
All in all, a very nice trip to the range for us all.