Scope

The guy at my club who runs out informal light rifle league recently bought a target scope that he wanted to check out. He's mostly an Anschutz-and-Leupold kind of guy, and he bought the scope mostly just to see what it was like. The nice thing about this scope is that is focuses down to 50 feet at high power. (Actually, he says it focuses down to 10 meters, but I shoot at 50 feet, so that's what I'm most interested in.) The scope I've been shooting is a 3-9x, but it loses focus at 50 feet beyond 7x, so that's what I've been shooting.

I've hit a plateau in my shooting, so I was thinking about getting a better scope. I mentioned to him that I was thinking of getting this model, so he offered to sell me the one he'd bought. I decided to take him up on his offer.

I put the scope on my 10/22 last week and took it out to zero it and try it out. He had it set at 20x, so I just left it there. You notice the movement a lot more at 20x than you do at 7x. At 7x, I thought I was holding the rifle steady when I had it on a sandbag, but at 20x, it looked like I had the shakes. Once I got it zeroed, I did manage to shoot a couple of perfect targets from the sandbag. (I mostly just wanted to shoot a couple of perfect targets. I hadn't the one time I tried it at 7x from the sandbag.)

Shooting off-hand takes a bit of getting used to. My first target was pretty sad, an 84. That's the worst I've shot on that target in a while. I got into the low 90's on the next target, but then I shot a 97 on my last one. None too shabby, and it certainly gives me hope that I can start shooting consistently at 370 or above.

Good shooting

Woohoo! I actually shot a 360 this afternoon. That currently stands as my best score on the light rifle target.

So, how'd I get there? Yesterday, I was shooting with my fairly-stock 10/22. (It's had some minor part replacements, but I've not replaced the barrel.) My shooting was pretty abysmal, low 80's and high 70's. I decided to try my heavy-barreled 10/22 this afternoon. I still didn't shoot well, a 332. Benchrest showed a larger grouping than that barrel should produce, so I tried some Eley Target ammo I'd gotten recently (rather than the el-cheapo ammo I'd been using.) That made a significant difference. I shot a 91, 90, 88, and 91 for that 360.

It remains to be seen if I can reproduce that, but I'm looking forward to finding out.

This week's shooting

Wednesday morning, I had the chance to try out the new barrel on my 10/22. I'd like to say that it's a tack driver, but that would imply that I can shoot well enough to determine that. I shot the light rifle course of fire benchrest with it and shot a 384/400. Note that this was with a 4x scope, so it's entirely feasible I could have done better with a better scope. OTOH, it could just be me. (For comparison, the Master's-level shooters are shooting in the 380's in our club's light rifle competition. Standing.)

I did give it a try standing, and I shot an 89 and a 91. I didn't have time to shoot the whole course of fire, but I was pleased. (Again, for comparison, I've shot 91 a couple of times with my other 10/22 and its stock barrel.)

This week, I decided to replace the Tech Sights on my other 10/22 with a scope. So I'll be shooting that one scoped from now on.

I shot pretty well yesterday morning. I was under a time constraint, so I rushed my last few shots. Specifically, my last three shots were 7's. While it's certainly conceivable that those would have been 7's, anyway, it did lower my score to a 344. I was a bit disappointed that I could have shot anywhere from a 347 to a 350 if I hadn't dropped those three, but I'm still reasonably happy with the 344.

This morning's shooting went well, too. I shot the light rifle course twice, shooting a 342 the first time and a 346 the second time. I'm pretty pleased with how I'm doing, specifically that I'm consistently shooting in the 340's.

SSAFU

Shooting schedule -- all fouled up.

I didn't get to go shooting this weekend. My wife's flight left late Saturday evening, so I would certainly have had time to go Saturday morning, but Friday evening, she had an accident that required some emergency dental work first thing Saturday morning.

I did get to go this morning, though, while my son was in school and my mother-in-law had the twins. Nothing to write home about (although apparently worth blogging ;-). A 329 and a 340-2x. The 340 actually could have been a bit better. I was on my way to shooting a high 80's or possibly a 90 on my first target. I was sitting at 80 after 9 shots, and my tenth shot went high. Non-scoring high. Guh. I lost focus from having shot so well on that target up to that point.

After I got home and ate lunch, a package arrived. I'd ordered a Butler Creek target barrel/stock combo for my other 10/22. The leaves needed raking, though, and then kids needed attention, so I didn't have the chance to play with things until after bedtime. The stock was a bit of a tight fit, but everything's assembled now. With luck, I'll be able to try it out Wednesday morning.

Weekend shooting -- iron sights vs scope

I had a little extra time this morning, so I took along my scoped 10/22 (a 4X scope) to see how I could shoot with it vs. with iron sights. I'd previously commented on how I felt more comfortable with iron sights, but I hadn't really put it to a significant test before this morning. I shot the light rifle course twice on each.

I shot the scoped rifle first. I shot a few sighting rounds benchrest to zero the scope, but the first shots I fired offhand were for the record. My first target was a 79 -- about what I'd expected, thinking that I was going to be worse with a scope. I got better as I went, though, as I followed that up with an 83, an 89-1X and an 89-2X, for a 340-3x. The second course I shot scoped was an 81-1X, 85-2X, 90-2X and 90-1x, for a 346-6x. Certainly towards the top end of how I've been shooting lately.

Then I picked up old faithful, my iron-sighted 10/22. My first course was a 78, 91-1X, 80 and 83, for a 332-1X. The second course was a 82, 83-1X, 80-1X and 85, for a 330-2X.

So, this morning, I shot better with a scope than with iron sights. Even though this isn't enough data to say that I'm better with a scope than with iron sights, it's certainly enough to say that I can shoot at least as well with a scope. Perfectly logical, of course -- everything else is equal, I just need to adjust to a different sight picture.

This weekend's shooting

As I'd mentioned before, I took my wife shooting Friday night. That was actually the first time I'd shot pistol in a few months. Given my fairly tight schedule and current obsession with working on my rifle marksmanship skills, I've been completely ignoring the pistol. I'd like to participate in some of my club's pistol competitions. But then again, my commitment to see my kids as many evenings as possible makes that a bit difficult. I'm already committing to one night a week for the light rifle competition, and my monthly club meeting and monthly technical group meeting eat up some other nights during the week. As the kids get a little bit older (and my wife frees up from her 24/7-minus-whatever-relief-I-give-her daycare schedule), I'll probably feel more comfortable with doing more of these competitions.

But I meant to talk about shooting. Saturday morning's shooting wasn't too bad. Of five strings, I shot above 70 on two and would have shot above 70 on the other three if not for the one dropped shot per string. For the moment, I'm just concentrating on getting each shot in the black, which will, statistically speaking, essentially guarantee me a 70. I'm making progress, as I was shooting mid-50's a few weeks ago. I think 80's are certainly within my reach, but I'll likely need some help to do better than that. (Yeah, some people consider an 8 to be a dropped shot, but they've been doing this a lot longer than the few months I've been at it.)

This morning's shooting was abysmal. I replaced the hammer and sear in my primary 10/22 last night. I also installed an extended bolt handle. I want to think I dry-fired it at least once after installing it, but this morning, when I pulled the trigger, nothing. Not the it-went-click-instead-of-boom kind of nothing, just plain nothing. No release whatsoever. I made a quick trip home to grab a couple of brass punches and a screwdriver, disassembled and reassembled, and things started working. However, on my ninth shot, I got a failure-to-eject. The case was halfway out of the chamber, but instead of locking the bolt back and manually ejecting, I figured I'd let the rifle's ejector do the work. Close bolt, pull it back, and now the case is firmly seated in the chamber, with no possibility of manually ejecting it. Of course, I didn't have a cleaning rod on me, so that put an end to my morning's shooting. Guh.

Fortunately, my wife has offered to put the kids down, so I'm going to give it another try this evening. I'll be taking a cleaning rod, and for pure paranoia's sake, I'm taking the trigger group from my secondary 10/22, as well as the tools to install it. The first evening of my club's light rifle competition is Tuesday, so I want to make sure I have a working rifle.

Iron sights vs. scopes

This afternoon, I had the opportunity to do some shooting (because I was already taking the day off for other reasons.) I decided to take my other 10/22 out. This is the one I put a scope on. I'd had it out to sight in the scope, but I hadn't had it out since installing a Power Custom hammer/sear combination. Also, since one of the reasons in building a scoped 10/22 was to see how it compares to iron sights (Tech Sights, specifically), and since I've mostly been shooting the iron-sighted one, I wanted to see how I'd do with a scope.

My shooting was pretty bad. I'm sure this is mostly because I've been focusing on the iron sights, but I just couldn't seem to get good shots with the scope. Shooting benchrest, sure, I was doing fine. Standing, though, it seemed like I was far less steady with the scope than with iron sights. This may have been purely psychological, though, because I could see the target much better, and that may have changed my expectations on how well I should have been able to shoot. And, of course, it was hardly a scientific comparison. I wasn't shooting at the same time of day, this was the first time shooting standing with this rifle, etc.

Morning shooting

On the weekends, my wife and I split the child-care duties. I typically get the morning off, and she gets the afternoon off. I work my shooting into this schedule by going at 7 AM both mornings.

I went this morning, got ready, put up a 50 foot target, take a deep breath and take my first shot. A perfect 10. (On the 50-foot smallbore target, the 10 ring is really close to .22 inches.) Wow! I'm an excellent shot! My second shot hits at 5:00 outside the 5 ring. Oh, well. Need to work on the consistency. And need to maintain expectations.

On the whole, not too bad. I'm starting to get more shots inside the 9 ring, which makes me happy. On my practice A-32 target (the target for NRA light rifle, which I'm getting into this fall), I shot an 81. More 9's than last week's 82, but obviously more 7's, too. But still above 80.

This rifle has the Tech Sights sights on it. I've also recently bought a second 10/22 to put a scope on. I mounted the scope this week, and I sighted it in this morning. No off-hand shooting with it, though. I want to replace the trigger first. The factory job is awful.

The new 10/22 has the reasonable magazine release lever, which is nice. Unfortunately, it appears that the magazine will only release if the bolt is locked back. Don't know that I care for that feature.