New Shooter Report

So, my brother came down to go to Hap Baker rifle range. He brought his son with him, and the boy had never shot anything more powerful than a nerf gun before. My brother wanted some rifle time and to familiarize his firstborn with firearms. He was given the drill and had memorized the 4 rules.


The trip to the range was POURING rain. But that is typical lately. It is traditional this year for any day of the week ending in a 'Y' for water to actually come out of the sky. It made me happy because rain usually means a less crowded range.


To start off, we shot the pump .22. Taurus' discontinued line of a clone of the Winchester model 62. The boy was not a natural, but he was no slouch either. I don't have a pic of his targets, as he took those home as a souvenir.


Next up was the the 1894c lever action rifle. But then again it wasn't... more on that later.


And finally, I had put on the new trijicon front sight on the M1A. And I wanted to be sure it was still sighted in ok. It was. Easy swap out, that. And after checking, we blasted a few. The Nephew tried it for one shot. He is a waif of a boy. 14? 15? I can't keep track. But skinny. We were lucky to convincing him after my brother complained about shoulder pain. Hmph.


The first thing we worked on with the nephew was sight picture and then squeeeeeeezing the trigger for a surprise break. After the first cease fire I could have kicked myself. I forgot to tell him to focus on the front sight, not the target. He got much better results with he did that.





I'm no deadeye, but I kept all the shots on the splatter target. Inside the splatter's 10 ring is inside the 9 ring on the official NRA 100 yard target. So no .30 caliber scored less than 7 for me. Meh. Nothing to write home about but I'm certainly effective at 100 yards. And I called the flyers at 2 and 9 o'clock. There is even a coupla three .22 I got out there, but real .22 at 100 yards, for score, is a pipe dream for us.



And my brother was no slouch, neither. At least he wasn't an order of magnitude better than me, as he is with pistols. And the rifle sling is set up for me, not him.






Since we were both hitting lowish generally, I went from 9 clicks elevation to 10 clicks. Could probably go with 11. More info to play with on a future range session. And that is probably the new front sight being sized just a few hairs different than the original.

We would have brought the Paternal Parental unit along, but dad just had some hand surgery and I doubt he could have shot well. I'll try to drag him along by the fall.

[It's a shame Taurus isn't making a Model 62 clone anymore. And this is a new development. But Taurus introduces and drops models like it's going out of style. They are really fun guns, pump 22s. Get yourself one. Better yet, get the actual Winchester. The Winnie is a bit pricier, but worth the 800 beans, if you got that kind of money for .22s.]