More Range

Ok, that was interesting.

I am now through the .38 Special ammo I had accumulated for range work, and am working on my .38+P blasting ammo. I load +P hyrdroshoks right now for CCW carry, I thought it a good idea to get a lot of practice with cheaper +P range ammo. The brand is Lawman. And I don’t know if it is me or the ammo (probably the former) but my results with the snubbie aren’t as good as they were a couple weeks ago with Federal .38.

First off, this Lawman stuff is jacketed and the powder is clean burning. Noticeably so. Instead of being black with carbon the inside of a spent case is almost as shiny as the outside. I like that.

Being +P, the pistol jumps in my hand a bit more than with regular .38. I noticed that I get better shots if I don’t let my finger slide across the trigger face anymore, and just park the edge of the joint on the trigger. But it took 40 shots to realize this. But this is why we practice. To learn the foibles and idiosyncrasies of the shooter and the individual gun. In the .38 targets I got better as range time progressed.

It was the opposite with my SIG. With all the DA and weekly practice my shots with the SIG were very decent (for me) from the git go, increasing my confidence in the pistol. Accuracy only fell off when my concentration lagged and I tired and I was rushing the shots.

Oh, and .38 +P feels much snappier in the recoil department than the .40.

On to the targets. The left side is .40, the right side is .38 +P. Range is 21-25 feet. This is my traditional cold first target:

The .38 is marked with only one in the black. The shot on the left from the .38? Would that have hit an attacker? I need to be better. I only have 5 shots, I should make them all count. Lots more of the .40 on target.

Here is the second set:

See what I mean? That .38 is way to spread compared to last week. And only 2 shots from the Double Action only SIG .40 were off the 8 inch diameter shoot n' see target. Unacceptable for the .38, but I can rely on my .40 performance. That is, if I froze my skill in time to this moment.

And target #3:



Here is where I finally figured out a better trigger finger position for the revolver. The revolver jumped less on follow through and the group tightened up to a more acceptable accuracy. The Sig still isn't too bad but you can see the later shots starting to drift off as I lost concentration.


~~~

And hey, look. JayG is in a similar boat as me. .22 works good, but we anticipate too much with heavier calibers. And practice seems to help us both.