06 March 2010

Range report - InLaw edition

"I want to go!" said the voice on the phone. It was the SC Father In Law. We had tentative plans to hit the range. It's supposed to rain tomorrow but today was beautiful. On arrival at the range We were pleasantly surprised by empty benches! We grabbed a pair side by side.

As previously mentioned, he was a range officer back in his day. The SCQueen reports he won a shooting medal at some point (I hope we can find it and learn more about the circumstances.) I don't know when he shot last.. to him it was last year, it wouldn't surprise me if it was during the first Bush administration.

No matter, clearly he remembered the safety protocols, stance, sight picture and was calling his shots. Even when a scope bashed him in the safety glasses hard enough to draw blood [it doesn't take much to draw blood from an octagenarian], he still kept the rifle pointed safely down range with one hand while holding a hankerchief in the other to stop the blood.

He picked up the Garand, probably for the first time since his Army discharge in the late 1940's. But he took right to as if it were yesterday, remembering how to load without a case of "M1-thumb". He struggled a bit due to lack of strength but loaded the clip and ran the op-rod forward.

By the end of the day he'd shot everything we'd brought and even gone off to the end of the range to help another shooter that noticed we were also shooting an M1-Carbine. Turns out he can't get his to feed. SC FIL has a lot of experience from way back then so he headed back to help the other shooter. Most of the problem was likely a bad magazine. I lent him one which ran his feed rate from 0/15 to 14/15.

The Sister In Law (SC SIL) has been out to the range with us before. She likes to shoot and is a natural. Here she's shooting this month's ePostal. She has an awesome score to turn in!
Needless to say on a day like this I don't shoot much... I did make a couple attempts on the ePostal, but nothing to write home about and the SIL out scored me about 15:1!

ETA: I just tallied the scores... the SC SIL out scored me 4:1! Stay tuned for her target!

2 comments:

misanthropic777 said...

Was this out at Rio Salado? I really need to get myself a membership out there.

danno said...

Yes...

IMHO Rio (http://www.riosaladosportsmans.com/) is one of the best deals around... The family membership is under $100/year and allows free use of the main range and discounted fees at the different matches.

I've looked at other clubs that cost more and offer less.

$.02