Range week.

My week was pretty good. Of the last 5 days, I got to shoot on four of them. Of those 4 days, I was paid to shoot other people's ammunition on 3 of them, and on the one day that I was unpaid, I shot with my father.

The new Glock 19 is reliable, and easy to shoot, but I'm having accuracy issues with it. Even with the new sights, I'm not getting groups under 4" at 25 yards, from a rest. I honestly am not sure if the problem is me, or the gun. That said, shooting from the holster while qualifying with it yesterday, I was fast, and centered on the silhouette target. I went to a plate rack, and was shooting it fast. It will be great for off-duty carry, but I'm saddened that I'm not shooting better with it, even with fancy new sights. (Trijicon HD XRs).

We had a challenge match at qualifications, in which each officer fired at a bullseye target with their pistol (four shots at 15 yards), shotgun with slugs (2 shots at 20 yards) and patrol rifle (4 shots at 25 yards), all in 10 seconds. Highest score wins. I'm embarrassed to say that I came in second, and that I wasn't sucking up when the chief came in first. I will say that my scores were abysmal not least because the wind was steady at 29 mph, gusting much higher, during the shoot. But it was for most of the other guys' shooting, too. It's shameful not to be making all 9's or better, with a carbine, at a mere 25 yards.

I also taught an hour block on Use Of Force and Officer-Involved Shooting Post-Incident Procedure, as regarding our new policies.

The next day, I took out the officer who wasn't able to come (because he had to work that night) to group qualifications, and we went shooting.

Yesterday, my chief and I went to qualify, and I got my little BUG G42 qualified along with my G19, duty G31, duty shotgun, and duty carbine. After he finished, he noted that he had a few mags still loaded up for his SIG P220, and suggested that we hit the plate rack, at the side range. We went there, and happily knocked down plates at speed.

I noticed an older man a few lanes over, shooting at a paper target with a Beretta PX4 Storm full-sized .45. At 10 yards, he was barely hitting the 3'X5' silhouette  target paper. It was hard to watch. He had a very low grip on his pistol, with the better part of an inch of air between the web of his strong hand and the upper part of the tang of the pistol. His support hand was in a teacup grip. As a result, the muzzle flip was utterly uncontrolled, and he tried to fight the recoil by pushing back into it, "helping" the round by another one foot per second down range. It also caused his shots to go low, on average.

My chief and I picked up and went toward our cars, discussing work scheduling as we went. We stopped for a minute to converse in the parking lot before leaving, and as we parted, the older gentleman came walking up, new pistol case and new box of .45 in hand, with his ear muffs over his forearm. "How's that Beretta Storm working out for you?" I asked.

He sucked his teeth, and said, "Well, I've been around firearms all my life, but never much handguns. My wife and I got our license to carry, but I'm having some issues with this gun."

I asked him if he would mind if I offered him a couple of pointers. He said that he welcomed them. I started to show him (with a half-empty water bottle) how he could help his grip, and then said, "Hang on." I grabbed some of my personally-purchased extra ammo for my G19 and my duty G31, and took him back to the plate racks. It took him two magazines, and then, everything clicked. I loaded a magazine for the Glock 31, and had him shoot a hostage plate target with it. It had a 5" red plate on either side of a reduced-sized black silhouette steel target, which swung back and forth to either side of the head of the silhouette when hit. With my 9mm, I could just get the heavy steel to swing around, if I shot it at the outside edge of the plate. He was hitting it on the near edge with the .357 Sig rounds, and was flipping right smartly to the other side. Bang-clink flip. Bang-clink flip back. Bang-clink flip... and so on for 16 rounds, missing ONCE.  I began to think that I'd been set up with a ringer. All of the bullet splashes on the recently-painted plate were slightly low of center, in a 2 or 3 inch group.

This was costing me a little bit of money, and I was low on ammo. I said, "Sir, you keep doing that, safely, and I think that you need to start shooting local pistol matches. Consider it." He told me that he and his wife were mostly interested in being able to defend themselves, and I pointed out that the stress of being timed and shooting against others while being watched was pretty good practice. I looked at my watch; my chief had left an hour before. Time to go.  We shook hands and left. I think his name was Larry. I'm not going to lie; bringing a guy from "barely on paper" to reliably hitting a 5" plate at 10 yards in two magazines was pretty damned fulfilling. Worth every cent of the box of ammo he shot.

Responding to a comment from an old post.

I just got a reader comment about a post that I had written over two years ago, in which I was asked,

"Why is your off duty course different from your duty course of fire?

Wednesday, October 12, 2016 12:25:00 AM

The answer I gave was: "A worthy question. Frankly, we want our officers armed while off-duty, but we don't want them inserting themselves into every hazard which they might come across. By policy, if they carry off-duty, they are are to carry concealed. For that, and for convenience's sake, off-duty guns are typically much lighter and more compact than duty guns. They are frankly harder to shoot well. An Airweight Chief 1 7/8" barrel five-shot revolver just isn't as easy to hit with, as a full-sized Glock with good sights is. Our duty qualification far exceeds the state-mandated qualification minimums, includes multiple timed reloads, and shooting on the move. (In fact, 24% of our shots are fired while moving, at 10 yards.) Our off-duty qualification, however, meets the state mandate." For the past couple of years, we've considered differentiating between "Off-duty" and "Backup Gun" qualifications, but have decided not to. However, if an officer wants to wear a gun that he's qualified with for off-duty, but wants to wear it in uniform (say, for an off-duty gig, or if it is approved for carry on duty), he must shoot the full duty qualification course with it, from his proposed duty rig. The question may be posed: "Why aren't you holding your off-duty shooting to the same standard as you hold your on-duty shooting?" The answer is that, usually, the off-duty officer is not going to have the same duty to intervene as he would when on-duty. The off-duty officer is carrying, first and foremost, to defend himself and his family in the face of retaliation. Some of us will carry bigger guns (which are easier to shoot) during the cooler months, and then switch to lighter, smaller guns during the summer months. The fact of the matter is, we need to adjust our response to an off-duty deadly force encounter to meet what we are equipped and prepared to work with.

A good day.

1. I got paid to shoot for three and a half hours, yesterday. I shot ammunition that I didn't pay for.

2. A cold front came in yesterday. The high was 78 degrees.

3. I had lunch with my father yesterday. We had Indian food. It was delicious and inexpensive and filling.

4. I took a nap.

5. After taking my kid to a meet-the-teacher thing at the middle school, I got home to find that my wife had fixed a superb green-chiles-and-rice dish.

6. I ended the day at home with an adult beverage or two, of higher quality than is commonly found.

I'm calling it: Best Day Of Summer, 2015.

Blogorado the ?th I've lost track. (6th, I think.)

I didn't have much time this trip, so I raced northwest, visited, and then raced back. There just wasn't enough time. But I was honored to be able to ferry a friend who otherwise wouldn't have been able to make it.
I roomed again with my great friend Ambulance Driver. There are a few people in this world that become one of your best friends the first time you meet them. One for me was my old patrol partner, P. Another is Ambulance Driver.
I didn't get enough time to shoot. And that what I shot wasn't great. I kept getting distracted from what I was going to do. I didn't spend anywhere nearly enough time with my good friend Gay Cynic.


I didn't spend anywhere NEARLY enough time with my gracious hosts, Farm Mom, Farm Dad, and Farm Girl. I got in some good breakfast time with Tam and the Nerds.


I didn't hang out much with my Dad and his wife, because we see each other all the time. PhlegmFatale I got to chat with a fair bit. AEPilot bought me a lovely hat. And he provided a LOT of food. Thanks, man!


Old NFO took Spear and Gunsmith Jason to shoot on Sunday morning, but didn't invite me. He sends me good coffee, but he doesn't invite me for the early morning rifle frivolity. Hm. I made coffee at the range again. Because dammit, I like a little coffee at the range.


DanielS arrived with his lovely wife, who was a maven of the open range, cooking burgers.


And others. We had a good time. We'll do it again, I hope.


Then, there was ChristinaLMT and SciFi and SciFi Wife and... I'm missing people.

Let's all get shoulder-to-shoulder on this one:

A South Carolina state trooper named Sean Groubert shoots a guy. The guy (Levar Jones) was reaching for his wallet. The last shot was fired as the victim was actually raising his hands and surrendering.

Oh, and the victim was black, with the trooper was white.

The race of the victim may or may not have influenced the trooper's perception of what the victim was doing, but if so, this cop was so badly out of check that nothing was going to correct it.

There is nothing redeemable about this shooting. This trooper needs to be fired (done), charged (done), convicted (soon), and condemned by all cops. This isn't us. This was a fool who should never have been allowed to slip between the cracks and be a trooper.

I'm sorry, y'all. There's nothing more that I can say. We're better than this.

Qualification day again.

Friday morning, I made a great breakfast for the family, and saw my kids off to school, and then got my stuff and went to the range under a bluebird sky the likes of which would make one F. Beuller take a day off.

First we shot duty pistols. Since I had a new duty gun, I was interested how the backstrap on the Generation 4 Glock 31 would shoot. It was okay, but I'll try the bigger ones, next.  I did actually have one delayed feeding, which had the earmarks of a hollowpoint catching on a feedramp. This would be unlikely, given that this is a bottlenecked cartridge (.357 Sig). I suspect that the gun just needs a proper first cleaning. As it was in the middle of a timed string, I didn't evaluate it; I just slapped it, got it running, and finished the string of fire. Its predecessor (a Gen 3 Glock) has never in 7.5 years hiccuped.

We switched from Gold Dot to XTP, which is a heavier bullet. I frankly didn't notice any difference.  (It was a Gold Dot round that caught, though.)

My shift partner, who had some problems with his 870 shotgun last time, had none this time. In fact, I took a picture of his target. This is 5 rounds of buckshot and 2 rounds of slug at 10 yards, with three slugs at 25 yards:

That mark just outside of the A zone at 5 o'clock is a wad impact. The right two holes were slug shots at 25. What impressed me, again, was how tightly 5 rounds of double aught buck went into a compact hole at 10 yards. This is a testament to the greatness of the Federal FliteControl Premium buckshot load, of which I have commented before.

Oh, I suppose that I should post mine, too. I took it as a matter of pride that at the whistle I was first on target and first to finish my string, but this meant that my group opened up a tad. But I reiterate: it's a high-brass buckshot load at 10 yards; a mediocre hit is still a pretty good hit.

Well, of course I put all the slugs (two at 10 yards, three at 25 yards) into the head. And never fear: that punch to the right side of the head is just a wad impact; I'm not missing a headshot with my shotgun at a piddlin' 75 feet. We got some Federal low-recoil 1 oz slugs which performed very well. I was very pleased at accuracy and gentle thump to the shoulder. We just started with these, and they beat our old stuff all hollow. 

I shot my S&W 637 Airweight Chief's Special with some UMC 125g +Ps that I had paid too much for at WalMart. Shooting it from the holster, it was gratifying to be first on target, just about every string. But I griped at my fellow officers when, in a fire-five-reload-fire-five-more string, I was first to get rounds on target after the reload (at 7 yards). Everyone else (there were six of us on the line) had auto guns. 

I shot my Kimber Stainless Classic (Series 1) .45. As expected, it gave me the same 100% as I had gotten with the Airweight Chief.  That's not saying much; the off-duty course of fire is LAME.  But there are timed reloads and I turned up the volume with the Kimber. 

For rifle, I turned up the volume a LOT more, and I'm embarrassed to say that I threw one round. There's really no excuse; I was showing off. I hadn't even gone down to check my target, but later found that one just barely missed the neck/shoulder junction, likely when firing rapidly from kneeling at 100 yards. 

After three hours of shooting and running others through strings of fire, I talked guns with the rangemaster, who showed me his pretty new .300 Blackout AR, and I went home. 3 hours of overtime. Half of the ammot that I shot was paid for by the city, and I was paid to shoot all of it. 

Some days at the office are better than others. 

While loading up, I commented to the sergeant that I'd love for us to go from twice a year qualifications to four times a year. He snorted and said that some people would quit if that happened. I'll be honest: I can't understand why. We were paid to go shooting.

Revolvers.

I recently shot my qualification course for my PD recently with my little 637 Airweight. Afterward, I called my friend Joe Speer and thanked him for the good work that he had done on the trigger, and bobbing the hammer with serrations over the back of the bob. Frankly, for 50 rounds, I shot like I really knew what I was doing. I was a rock star, even though I was shooting the entire course with 158g +P loads out of a 15 oz revolver.

I could use some work on my reloads, though. If I'm only acceptable with reloads on the range, how well do I expect to be in an incident where the balloon goes up?

The single most realistic movie depiction of a revolver reload when the adrenaline is pumping is in The Silence Of The Lambs, in this scene here. Keep in mind that (temporary) Agent Starling has just gone through extensive training, and is at 27 years old probably in the best shape of her life, but she can barely get that M13 reloaded, for all the involuntary shaking.

Sure, we're seeing an actor portray it. But I've had fight-or-flight adrenaline flowing through my veins before, and my motor coordination was about like that, too. Reloading a magazine is a darned sight easier under that kind of stress.

Various Friday prattle.

--I lost a thousand words on this post, when my daughter logged me off when I wasn't looking, and it didn't auto-save. Ah, well. I go on too much, anyway.

--Elvis died 36 years ago today. I never understood those who worshipped him. But then, I never much understood worshipping a human that they didn't personally know. But he was admittedly talented. This one's for you, Elvis.

--The ol' boy could put together an earworm, when properly edited.

--It just now occurred to me that I'm older than Edward James Olmos was when he played Lt. Martin Castillo here. And now I feel really old.

---And do you remember when weapon-mounted lasers were as big as this one? That's like putting a VHS camcorder on your carbine.

--I'm not really big into sports. Tam, who loves baseball, tells me that what most people call sports are actually games, and that the only true sports are big game hunting and racing. There was a time when Sports Illustrated would post real stories about such sporting. I wish I could have met Papa Hemingway. I only tend to think that during the summer, when I'm reading something alone, or having a drink on a Caribbean beach, like I was when my wife took this picture:

My wife and I were betting who could get a better picture of the full moon with our tiny-apertured Nikon CoolPics point-and-shoot digicam. Obviously the flash had to be turned off, and I was sitting on a padded bench, trying to stabilize the long exposure. My wife sensibly set the camera on a low partition wall, set the timer, and let the camera take this exposure. She won. :)

--You could do worse than to sit and drink coffee and listen to my elder daughter pick scales and strum chords on her bargain-priced 6-string guitar.

--Taser has put warning boxes in their literature warning of heart captures and other potentially fatal effects of use. Some administrators are pulling Tasers off the line, as a result, because they perceive that the Taser is a "deadly weapon". This is over-reaction. You know what's a deadly weapon? A baton to the head. A shot of pepper spray to an asthmatic. A beanbag round to the head. Sure some departments have over-used tasers, but that's a misuse of force issue, not an equipment issue.

--Although there are those who consider me something of a student on the subject, I will occasionally have questions on Texas Code Of Criminal Procedure that I need to answer right away and don't have time to look up. If an assistant district attorney isn't available, I tend to call my buddy LawDog, like I did last night. I always enjoy my chats with LawDog. I should call him way more often.

--I'm pretty sure that I've never seen a corner store product come from an internet meme, but if my younger daughter has anything to say on the subject, we will be the first people on our block to have bottle (or even a case!) of Grumpy Cat coffee drink in our house.

--Tell me this is a farce. I refuse to believe it until it is checked out. I'm a cop, and a volunteer fireman. When I'm on a fire rig, I leave my cop self at home. You're going to have to beat your kids or slap your grandmother, before I'm calling the cops over what I see. As for acting as police? Nope. Not while in my fireman's hat.

--Sunday morning, I take a girl out shooting. She just graduated with a degree in criminal justice, and is putting applications into local police. My graduation gift is a couple of sessions of firearms instruction. Her daddy's a cop with a local department and a friend, and he's gotten her a decent pistol and rig. I just want the shooting part to be the least of her worries, when she's in academy.

Regarding patrol shotguns.

During qualifications last weeks, we shot some shotguns.

--I had a conversation about shotguns with the rangemaster, and brought up some of my points that I made here. He's salt who keeps a fairly open mind about firearms, but he couldn't tolerate my assertion #6. I expected that, and don't think less of him for it.

--It just occurred to me that the high-brass shotgun loads used during quals with the 870 may be why my right shoulder has had a dull ache in it this weekend. I was shooting for speed, and may have misplaced the butt just slightly, during one of the slug loads*. Hey, I'm just glad if it's not arthritis.

--Yet again, I marveled at that Federal FLITECONTROL buckshot. We're using the 2 3/4" Vital Shok 00 buck shell. It doesn't begin to expand for the first 10 yards. This is a game-changer, for riot guns with open chokes. I'm not going to say that it's "hostage situation ready out to 20 yards," but it's close. Lots of guys have stopped putting slugs in their magazines at all.

--Do you mix slugs and buck? How do you load your magazine?
_________________
*Actually, I remember EXACTLY which one did that. I threw on well to my left, still on target. I'm certain that was one where I threw the butt toward the point of my shoulder, rather than in the pocket of my shoulder. Using the rear eye as the sight, that means that it pointed left as I fired off the shot. While embarrassing, it happens.

A retraction.

A month or so ago, I wrote about Dr. Bill Holda's misstatements about the Killeen massacre. The statements were harsh contrasts to historical reality, and were being used to explain his position against concealed carry on the campus of the college over which he presides.

I declared him a liar.

It would seem that I was wrong: he was simply not educated on the matter, and is doing what he can to educate himself.

Popgun has contacted Dr. Holda, and invited the college president and his wife out for an educational day of shooting.

Go read. Seriously. It's a remarkable story.

Dr. Holda is thinking outside of the box that he had been led into.

For that, I applaud him.

I formally retract my declaration. A large note will be placed on my original post.
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H/T to Tam, and a bigger tip of the hat to PopGun. GREAT job, friend!

Liar.*

*The subject of this post has since decided to begin educating himself, and seems to have reversed his general position. Good for you, Dr. Holder! The will to educate one's self about subjects that one finds distasteful shows the soul of a true academic.
__________________________
It is to be presumed that a college president would be educated on that which he speaks, yes?

So, when Kilgore College President Bill Holda states a specific falsehood, openly and directly about an occasion in recent history, we may assume that he is lying.

In this interview (the money quote starts at 01:15), Holda refers to the famous massacre in Luby's in 1991:

"...in the Luby's restaurant and others, where you had multiple shooters, innocent people were killed by other people who had concealed licensed handguns because they weren't sure who was the shooter and who was the defender."

Okay, wait a second: The October 16, 1991 Luby's shooting in Killeen, TX was pivotal in Texas handgun carrying rights history, for the very fact that there was, at that time, no such thing as a legal way for a citizen to carry a handgun for self-defense, if that citizen wasn't one of the Only Ones. In 1995, the State Of Texas responded to that very event by creating the concealed handgun license (CHL). There was ONE shooter, named George Jo Hennard, who cornered a bunch of legally-disarmed people in a crowded restaurant, and murdered them one by one.

This incident motivated Texans like nothing else ever had before, to change over 100 years of law, to permit them to pack a handgun.

I am astonished that Holda does not remember this event, which happened in his state, like it was yesterday. I certainly do. I remember exactly where I was when I heard about it (at work, doing some production art). I remember my rage at the fact that one person could take so many people down without resistance.

Imagine if, yesterday, you had heard an educator tell about how he remembered the I.E.D's going off and killing Kennedy in Dealey Plaza, right before the Migs dropped their redundant-yet deadly load of explosives on the horrified watching crowd. I mean, sure, there's some dispute by some about the method of Kennedy's death, but we can agree that he was shot in the head, and was the only man to die in the plaza that day, 47 years ago.

You would think, "there is NO WAY that a thinking human who was alive at the time could forget these details. He is lying, to push an agenda. Or he's crazy. Either way, he is not trustworthy."

I cannot believe that he was not challenged on this issue by the talking heads.
____
H/T to Tam.

Unexpected sidetrip.

After we got the venison boned out and under dry ice, Vine took me to his favorite range in Grand Island, Nebraska. It was a bit of a drive, but the trip proved to be worth it.

First he took me by the Hornady plant. This was nothing short of a treat.

After we signed their guest book, a nice gentleman named Paul came out, and took us on a tour of the plant. We got to see how the lead came in in huge ingots, was cast into 180 lb cylinders of pure lead, 3% lead, and 5% lead, and then moved to the extruding machine. This extruding machine was amazing: it pressed the cylinders up into a forcing cone, pushing out lead wire of the proper diameter, which was then rolled onto large spools. I was most impressed to find out that this was done with cold lead! The force of the hydraulic press seemed incredible. We got to watch as tapes of brass (mostly copper) film were pulled off of spools that looked remarkably like movie reels, to have coins stamped out of them, and other machines took the coins and stamped them into brass cups. We saw other machines punch out those cups into longer cups, then shove the proper diameter of lead wire into them before sizing the bullet down to the wire, putting in the cannelure, sizing down the jacket to the proper ogive, inserting synthetic ballistic tips, crimping it, and kicking it out. Paul handed us each a .338 bullet and a 150g .308 bullet, literally hot off the press.

Then we got to go down to The Tunnel. I had seen pictures of this so many times, not the least of which in the front of my Hornady Rifle Handloading books. We saw testing done at 100 yards with test barrels, and looked at the target at 200 yards. The techs down there would load up some rounds, and test some of the bullets of each loading every 100,000 rounds, to test the accuracy. Doesn't sound like very often, until you realize that they're punching out 2 million bullets a day.

They have a very, VERY nice vault full of specimens of guns to test fire out of, too.

In the tunnel, I looked at the test rifles, and noticed that one of the test barrel had a piezo-electric pressure sensor wire leading out of the lab to the computer outside. But on the shelf above it, standing by as backup, was the Old Way: a copper crushing setup. This was the method used for over a hundred years to check pressure before pressure sensors were created; they literally allow the pressure to crush a cylinder of copper, and measure the length of the post-fired cylinder against the length of it pre-fired.

After the tour, we went back up to the front lobby, and talked with our guide. It seems that the Hornady family wants shooters among its staff. They guys running the presses, the gals packing the boxes, and the ladies at the front reception area all are shooters. Betty, the friendly mature lady who rang me up for some factory reject bullets* that I bought on my way out, is apparently quite the competitor in the shooting sports.

As we were about to leave, VP Jason Hornady saw us, and asked if we preferred red or green. I said red, and Vine said green. He presented us with some very nice hats with the Hornady logo on them, in those respective colors.

These people know a little something about building customer loyalty. Leaving the plant with my swag in hand, I kind of wished that I had shot my deer with the Hornady 250g .35 Whelen loads that I had for my Springfield, rather than the Noslers with my .243.

On to the range.
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*About those "Factory Rejects." I gather that they are basically just cosmetically-deficient, but they sold them. Paul assured me that I would like them. I got 100 of their all-copper GMX .308 150g bullets, and 200 of their 220g RNSP .308. The price reduction was so awesome, I can't really say it here. But now I have to figure out what in the hell I'm going to load all those 220g thirty bullets into. Suggestions? We have the normal thirties.

Nebraska 3. The Hunt.

The Farm
Jim showed us around the farm. He led us around a section of woodlots, corn, alfalfa, and soybeans. When he mentioned casually that the deer would regularly come out of a particular woodlot and walk along the open, cut alfalfa field, I took notice. A farmer knows his land, and it pays to heed his advice.

Vine and I wondered around the place. We found a flock of young turkey, and I briefly regretted not having picked up a turkey tag. But at $95 for an out of state tag, it seemed a bit high. I play by the rules, and so I wistfully watched the flock walk away from 20 feet. I could easily have taken one with the M37 2" Chief's Special I had with me.

I decided to simply sit in the shade of a round hay bale in the middle of the cut alfalfa field. (Blue dot in the middle of the green field, upper left quadrant, above.)

The Rifle
I had a .243 Winchester with me that I had bought a few years ago from friend Art Eatman. The rifle, which was his uncle's, is an interesting specimen. It is a Featherweight, and has serial numbers that show that the receiver was made in 1955, the year before the first Featherweight in .243 M70 was introduced. Obviously, a short-action receiver was milled, put in stock, and pulled down and put into service later. From my reading, this was common to pull parts from different eras to put on current production rifles. It makes sense, and is the esoterica that makes for long searches and proud finds by collectors. This rifle might have had some collector's value, but it's a shooter. It has been carried through many a field. When I bought it from Art a few years ago, he sent along some boxes of ammo that his uncle had loaded for it in 1965 and '66, which I found grouped under an inch. (The load, which was penciled on the side of the old boxes, was within acceptable parameters. Call me a risk-taker if you want.)

I pulled out of my borrowed backpack a copy of The Model 70 Winchester 1937-1964, by Dean H. Whitaker. If I had realized what this signed copy was worth*, I would never have carried it out hunting. Fortunately, it came through it all right. As it amused me that I was using a pre-'64 Winchester Model 70 rifle as a book rest for a book on pre-'64 Winchester Model 70 rifles, I took a snapshot with the Nikon camera that Vine had loaned me.**


The Hunt

The situation was about as good as I could hope for. Clear skies, a cool (59 degree) breeze to my face, the sun to my back. Vine had wondered off to a meadow on the other side of the woodlot, to my right. A stand of corn was south of me, to my right. I didn't even bother looking straight ahead of me, because that zone was too close to the direction Vine was hunting in. I wanted to keep about 90 degrees of shooting arc away from him. Probably a 100 grain Nosler wouldn't make it through that woodlot to him, but why chance it?

I got chilly. The round bale that I was leaning against to break up my outline provided good shade, and I was lightly dressed. I stood up on the south side of the bale, and watched the tree line to the NE of me, as I read the book now propped on the bale.

The sun got lower, and the light changed. The Golden Hour commenced. I have seen more deer in the last hour of the day than all of the other 23 hours put together. I found that I paid less and less attention to the book, and finally just closed it. I looked at.... there. On cue, the large doe and her yearling stepped out of the woodlot to my northeast, and began to browse the alfalfa. I took a picture of them, and figured the range. Just shy of 200 yards. I watched them for 10 minutes to see if they got closer. Then it occurred to me that, if they got much closer, they would be decreasing my arc toward Vine. I took a rest on the bale, and shot the doe. (Red dot, above and to the right of the blue dot, in picture above.)

As seen before, I was at about 3.5" high at 100 yards. With that bullet at 3.3", the zero would be at ~270 yards, given that the 100g Nosler SPBT (B.C. .446) bullet was starting at 2850 fps (44g RL 22). I later paced the distance of the shot to 185 yards. I held dead on, and shot her in the right side chest. She ran into the nearby woodlot. I considered shooting her again, but given that the shot felt good, a second shot, highly likely to miss at the running deer, would just urge her to continue running. I held further fire.

Unless all was amiss, I knew that I had hit her well. She had run off without a reaction, but that's not uncommon for well-shot deer. I knew not to go after her for about 20 minutes.

I walked over to the spot that she had been standing in. Good blood.

At about this time, Vine arrived. We agreed to wait out the remaining 15 minutes, and went to get his truck, and my iron-sighted Springfield to go into the dark woodlot.

As we arrived at his truck (yellow dots), parked on the west end of the farm, Vine observed deer coming out of the woods at the joint with the corn field, east of us. We went prone, and he shot a good doe with his '06 Remington 700 scout rifle (purple dot), and I missed a young yearling. The doe, which was visibly hit hard, ran into the corn or the woods (south, at any rate), and the yearling and its sibling began running toward us. This is not uncommon. The bullets from the shots fired had struck the ground or brush behind the deer, and they heard that over the reports of the rifle. They galloped on toward us. We put the two yearlings down, at the very edge of the corn field. They each rolled into the corn.

I discovered that corn fields are deceptively good at hiding downed deer. It took us 20 minutes to find the deer at the edge of the field. One was four rows in, the other, only one.

My large doe, Vine found by smell, as we were entering the woodlot. The exiting bullet had pierced the gut. We dragged her out, and figured her weight at about 185 lbs on the hoof. She had managed to go between 30 and 40 yards.

The other doe, we searched for for hours. We searched in the woods. We searched in the corn. We retired for the night (there was a hard frost that night), and got up early to look for her again (this was when I took the video). There was no question that she was hit hard by Vine's .30-'06. There was no question that the deer was dead. But we finally had to accept that she was not recoverable. As ethical hunters, this pained Vine and me immensely. We don't like to waste meat. I'm convinced, based upon what I saw, that she didn't last much more than a minute. But we never found her.

The Meat

We had hung the field-dressed deer the night before, and we quartered the deer for the trip to Vine's house. At his house, we butchered the meat, and packaged it. We pan-fried some cutlets for supper.

Vine loaned me a cube cooler with the meat that I took home. Once back home, with no ice it it, I found that the full cooler weighs 67 pounds. The cooler by itself likely weighs 10 lbs. Thus there is 57 lbs of lean, boneless meat to put up. It's currently chilled with dry ice. Time to make the sausage.

_________________

*More than I paid for the scoped rifle.

**Strangely, the camera date is off. The date was actually October 2nd.

Hunting prep.

While at Blogorado, new friend Joe mentioned hunting in Nebraska. As a guy who likes to see the world but has seen but little of it, I speculated that it was probably mostly beanfield hunting out there. He smiled and explained that in fact, there's some serious broken ground hunting out where he hunts, and while the deer are in fact corn fed (the farmers desperately want their numbers reduced) and heavy, they spend a lot of time in drainage woodlots, and the best way to hunt them is to walk them up.

Long story short, I begged an invitation, and have gratefully accepted that which I sought when it was proffered.

According to Joe, a 100 yard shot would be long, and somewhat unusual. So it was that this week, days before leaving to go to Nebraska to hunt, I found myself needing to check the zero on my stalking rifle-- a Springfield 1903 re barrelled to .35 Whelen. It's been awhile since I loaded for it, and frankly, I didn't recall where the zero was with the loads that I had on hand. And I was VERY short of hunting ammo.

This morning, I checked some handloads today (250g Hornady softpoint spitzer over about 53g of Reloader 15, if memory serves), and found that it was centered a couple of inches high, and maybe just right of, dead center, from 100 yards. I didn't cover myself with glory with my shooting today, and that was a shame, because I didn't have much ammo to practice, and still go hunting. I shot a group of factory 250g Remington, and was irritated to see that I shot it better. I'll carry the Remington loads, probably.

Every hunt needs a backup rifle, so I checked my 1953 vintage M7o .243 with our handloads. The first two shots put my 100g Nosler SP Spitzer into a 1/2 at 3" high.
Screw it. I wasn't going to waste more ammo. Hold dead-on out to about 300, which probably wouldn't be a problem (this is still blowing my stereotype of Nebraska.).

I checked the old cut-down Super Blackhawk and found that, as comfortable as Dad's 240g SWC Special loads are, I was frankly shooting the factory Remington 240g JSPs into a tighter group. Call it 3" at 25yds. With full Magnums, that tiny trigger guard, and that short (4 1/2") barrel, I'll take that. The group was about 2" right of where I want it, and about 4" high at 25. Something to remember. The sights will NOT come down any further, and I didn't have a screwdriver anyway.

Of humorous note-- in changing from my work clothes to run out with Dad to go sight in this morning, I somehow, um, sort of... forgot to put a gun on. Well, except for the Super Blackhawk that I had in the Thad Rybka holster on my belt. I got into Dad's car, realized that I had no carry gun on me, and shrugged and loaded it with 5 Magnum rounds. (It's an old model Flat Top). Let's all say it together, class: Load One, Skip One, Load Four, Cock and lower the hammer. I may have been a little slow on the draw, but I was not poorly armed. I had to run into the PD to pick up something that I had forgotten there, and I know my chief was mildly curious, but he just smiled and didn't ask. I let the mystery be.

Friday morning, I'll be in Omaha.

Blogorado II

Dad and I rolled up on Thursday evening, and joined the Farm Fam for a very pleasant round table discussion. I was suffering heavily from sleep deprivation and a bad (BAD) bout of hay fever, and fell asleep on the couch during discussions; I'm afraid I didn't contribute much.

Friday evening, however, the Roundtable Discussions On The Lawn were epic. Get a group of story-tellers together, lubricate with easy-drinking, hard-kicking Nerd Beer, and stand back!

Old NFO would have a great tale for us, and Ambulance Driver would try to top it. And Peter would give his take on a topic. The Atomic Nerds would speak up. LawDog and Phlegmmy and Gay Cynic and AE Pilot would all throw out great accounts, and all the while Oleg Volk was circling, circling, his lens lingering on one person and then another. FarmDad always had a good one to toss in, in that easy-going way that may be country, but sure ain't slow-witted.

Later came Sal and TD and the lovely Vine, and new friend Joe, all of whom fit in splendidly to the Round Table chats. We tended to group around the beer, and the discussions would sometimes form into breakout groups, with members moving easily back and forth as it pleased them, eating good food, drinking good drink, and enjoying each others' company. I know-- we all showed up to talk about guns and shoot them, and such. And we did. We shot at targets near and far, and sometimes even shot far targets with guns associated with nearer targets.

Here's JPG, for example, popping 3 gallon water jugs at ranges of 100 to 175 yards, with a 4" Colt Trooper:

(Click to embiggen. Target is the white dot at the left of the screen.)

And I rambled about some miles open country, plinking with Joe and Ambulance Driver, with the sun setting behind the only promontory for dozens of miles:
(Click to embiggen this picture, which by the way I took with my frickin' camera phone.)


We set up targets of opportunity:


And we shot at a half-sized silhouette steel target that Old NFO turned into an Easter-egg hunt, out against a rolling hillside with scattered brush.

But it was the exchange that I enjoyed the most. This is why our breakfasts always convened at 8:00AM and didn't break up until 11:00AM, and why the evening chats always went into the wee hours of the morning.

What a pleasant group of people to exchange ideas with. We missed some of you who didn't come, and invoked your names fondly and often.

I cannot express enough my appreciation for the generosity of time and resources that the Farm Family presented all of us.

Exactly right.

Like friend Stephen Camp, I'm not a fan of the PRC, but this undercover police officer there did exactly the right thing when assigned to deal with a hostage-taker who had already stabbed his victim. She waited until he was distracted, and shot him in the central nervous system, repeatedly. (Video with English captions here.)

Some may try to make an issue of the smile and relieved chuckle that she gives to the surprisingly aggressive* interviewer's question about being nervous.

But she had won a fight, rescued an injured and endangered hostage, and had not gotten hurt herself. Moreover, she comported herself well throughout. Hell, she even had rounds left over.

When you win a fight, it's okay to give a relieved smile.


____________
*They ran up behind her to video over her shoulder as she fired the last rounds. You think American news crews would be so bold, on average? And would they get that kind of access? State-run news, people.

Practicing like we play (?)

I shot the local law enforcement pistol/carbine match this weekend. This is held at a small-ish outdoor range, and when each shooter shoots a stage of the match, he is the sole shooter. Shooting my P.D. carbine, I went to a stage where I was to run hard to a square, fire three shots from weak hand, move up to another square and do it again, and move to another square and do it again. I got to the second square, and found that my cheap oversized ear muffs were interfering with my cheek weld with my stock, so that I couldn't see my carbine sights. This stage allowed no "make-up" shots for misses, and misses were 5 seconds apiece. The clock was ticking. I angrily knocked off the muffs so that they clattered to the ground, and fired... "Cease fire! Cease fire!" yelled the range officer. I complied, and made the Colt M4 safe. I had gotten one shot off before he hollered. "No shooting without ear protection at this range." "Am I DQ'd for this stage?" I asked. "Yes. You can shoot the next stage, with ear protection. But you are disqualified from this stage," he said. "Okay," I said. You don't argue with the range master. It's his range. But I've got to admit, it seemed pretty danged silly to punish me so for failing to be muffed against the outdoor report from my suppressed carbine, which was so quiet that on the previous stage the timer hadn't heard my shots. I'm going to start keeping cheapy yellow foam plugs in my carbine kit, from now on.

P.S.A.:

Natchez Shooters Supplies has PMC Bronze 90g .380 acp for $19.99/box of 50.

Most folk I know have been hard put to drum up .380 for much under a dollar a round, lately.

That is all.

Interesting things to note on tasing.

No matter how NOT afraid you may be, when you think that you might have to go hands-on with a guy that presents the high probability of a fight, you're going to get an adrenaline dump.

Even though a taser has no recoil to notice, that adrenaline is why it's a good idea to use two hands while pointing your taser device. The very lack of weight on that dang plastic dingus gives it little or no inertia to resist your involuntary adrenaline-fueled twitches. Going one-handed recently I was noticing that the guy I was addressing had a very bright red dot bouncing alarmingly all over his torso.

Tasers need both darts to hit to work. That means that dot needs to be right in the center of the broadest part of the body presented to you. If it's bouncing all over, that means your chances of getting a barb to miss are significantly increased. This also means that you've lost a beautiful opportunity to end a fight before it actually started. Someone may very likely get hurt, due to this minor glitch.

Simply putting your support hand on the taser, even at a low hold near the waist, makes all the difference.

I am not ashamed of the shake that I exhibited the other night. Nor am I proud of that shake. I simply will now plan for and train for the shake, to make sure that it doesn't affect things again. I was surprised to see it, having shot animals with firearms, having shot attacking dogs with tasers, and having come very close to shooting men with firearms. Every unique experience is one that we can learn from.

I really did not want to fight or taze this person. I'm so glad that, in the end, I did not have to.

"Blogarado" Part 1. It's good to go see good people.

So Dad and I left a wedding on Saturday night, and drove across the Texas Panhandle and the Oklahoma Panhandle to end up in Colorado, at a blogmeet first proposed by FarmGirl, and hosted by her whole family.

"Mountains!" you're thinking. Nope. We were in a part of Colorado where the terrain is less geographically interesting, though I liked it.

The people there are quiet, and fiercely independent. That's not to say, though, that they are distant or rude; they just don't need Nanny Government to help them live their lives. People carry guns, and generally do it in the open, without comment about it. Elderly man limping around his pickup at the Dollar General? That's a 4" revolver on his belt. Plump woman at the Loaf 'N' Jug? That's a small auto on her belt. They're not brandishing; they're just being compliant with the law, which requires them to obtain a concealed carry license if they want to cover their guns, or requires them to carry openly if they don't have a CHL.. Carrying a gun is not a stunt; it's just a simple aspect of living.

We showed up early in the sleepy little town, and decided to nap in the car outside the breakfast restaurant, waiting for our friends to arrive. FarmGirl and friends went in, past our snoozing selves, and texted me to come inside.

I met plenty of great folks that I had read, and a few that I had not.

After a leisurely breakfast wherein we all snickered at the effect of a large and amorphous group (that constantly changes number and tables) has on a well-meaning but scatter-brained young waitress (bless her heart), we retired to the range.

At the range, there was a pistol table and a rifle table, and we had reactive targets at the lines near both. The first firearm I shot was the most famous Bersa Thunder on the Internet.

I then fired the Atomic Nerds' Wedding Rings: A pair of Les Baer 1911s that Stingray and LabRat had given each other in lieu of literal rings, for their wedding. I'm not kidding when I say that I almost choked up.

I won't go into the litany of all the guns we fired, because, frankly, I'd bore you. I will say that people were more than eager to share their guns with each other, and more than happy to give each other ammo, to levels of generosity that were just silly. Old NFO handed me a Browning Citori in the keenest leather-and-canvas fitted case that I've ever seen, and told me to go have fun shooting clays, when I lamented that I had left my shotguns at home. The beautiful over/under looked unfired. When the dadgummed case for a shotgun costs more than most of the firearms that I brought, that's a sweet rig.

FarmGram fed us all like kings. To say that we ate heartily would be an understatement.
Nobody watched where their guns or worried about them. Everyone took the safety of the others on as their responsibility, especially the safety of little KB, AmboDriver's daughter.
Everyone took care to make sure the others got their stuff back.

We had a great time.

But then...