Today at the Range

Our local range offers a class "M1 Clinic and Introduction to High Power shooting".  The SCSon learned about it from classmates and he's been asking to take the class.  While I took the same class many years ago and had a great time, I have been less than enthusiastic because of the show time, and the length of the class:  class starts at 0700 prompt and today's class took ~ 8 hours.  The range is at ~30 minutes drive from the SandCastle*.  And I am not a morning person, especially on weekends!

Lucky shot - (Mine in catching the brass mid flight)

But he's been getting up early for years (to his credit) and the SCQueen is naturally a morning person so we made a deal:  She'll drop him off and I'll make it out for the shooting portion of the class (We make a great team!).

While his scores were unremarkable, he had a great time shooting the Garand and it was his first time shooting high power in a competition setting.  It is interesting to note his prone rapid-fire scores were 50% better than the prone slow fire scores.  Go Figure.

Some lessons can only be learned through experience.  However he also noted of the three scoring classes (M1 Garand, Current Military, and Youth), the only class an M1 won, was the M1Garand class!  Both Current Military & Youth were won by AR-15 platforms.  So he's eager to compete again, but with an AR...  (I expected that ;-)  Still there is something... ...magical... about shooting the older equipment.  I felt it too.  I also felt that flying 60 YO airplanes...

BTW, it just occurred to me...  I took *this* class those years ago, to buy *this* very rifle...  How poetic!

Next weekend appears to be a repeat of same..  He shoots the state Trap event in Tucson with an 0845 appearance time.  That means on the road no later than 0645.  And there is no early/late deal to be had with the SCQueen.  I just gotta suck it up...   Maybe I can request the SCQueen prepare a pail of coffee for the ride down ;-)  Come back next week for a full report!

* But this weekend there was a freeway closure to deal with and a 2nd unavoidable detour :-(