See, Erin Palette, over in her blog, has been chronicalling her experiences in marksmanship and gunplay. And, frankly, it sounded fun. I was a decent shot, once upon a time, but I haven’t picked up a firearm in 15 years and was never what you might call trained or anything.
Teresa seemed startled when I mentioned it. I’m not the manliest guy around, and while that’s not required, shooting does tend to fall into the realm of things I don’t generally do, along with playing football and working on cars and knowing how to bevel an edge of something.
But I was curious, and Erin seemed delighted with the idea, and off to the shooting range we went. She made sure I knew basic gun safety (I did), had read the range rules (no problem, I read fast) and knew how to load the rifle (needed some help there). I was using her lighter rifle, a bolt-action Savage Arms Model 46 — we’ll just pretend I know what that is — while she was firing her Mosin-Nagan. She started me off slowly.
Shooting ranges, you should know, are loud. You go in, pass your fee or flash your pass — or, in Erin’s case, just nod at the guy behind the desk — and go set up while trying not to flinch at the astounding variety of bangs, cracks, and booms going on. There are ranges with targets at 25 yards, 50 yards and 100 yards. In the picture to the right, the 25s are on the right and the 50s can be seen way back there on the left.
There were also a fair amount of people there, and most of them looked like normal people. That is to say, not redneck gun-happy choose-your-own-cliche psychos. There were young and old folks, a few father-son outing types, a very attractive girl in her late teens or early 20s who was blasting away at a 50-yard target, and us.
Erin showed me how to load, watched me fire a few rounds, and went to set herself up. Thankfully, I didn’t embarrass myself, much. Here’s my first targetful.
Not the “oh my God, you’re amazing!” results I was hoping for, no bullseyes or even close, but at least I hit the thing.
You shoot for 15 minutes and then the call comes to cease fire, and you unload your weapon or shoot the bolt or otherwise make it unable to be fired, set it down and back away behind a line. A staff member walks by to make sure everyone’s firearm is safe, and then people are free to walk out and put up or change targets, or just stare at them like I did with barely controlled glee. I hit something! If we were attacked by zombies I could marginally injure one of them! Go me!
The small black circles are stickers you can place over your shots after you’ve plugged the target too many times and can no longer tell which holes are new.
Clearly I was hitting low and to the right, but at least I was consistent. (Yes, I know how to correct for that. Now.)
As I was pop-popping along, Erin was setting up her rifle which, as it turned out, did not go pop so much as BOOM. She grinned happily at my expression and turned back to blast away and have a merrily violent time.
Ear protection is mandatory at the range, and really should be in place before you go near it. It’s not the sound so much — which can be loud, sure, but I’ve been going to rock concerts every week and taking pictures from in front of the amplifiers — but the air pressure. After one of the breaks I forgot to put my left ear plug back in, once. Once. That ear is still ringing a bit, days later.
Some more of that and Erin asked if I wanted to try the 50-yard range. What the hell. If anything I did a little better (see the pic on the right).
It also helped that Erin added a bipod so it was easier to hold steady. I could barely see the thing even with the scope and couldn’t clearly tell when I hit it, which for all I know helped.
My main problem, and the reason I was unable to get into a good rhythm, was that bullets kept jamming for me and I would have to eject every third one or so. Kind of annoying.
By the way, while I was doing this, Erin was calmly putting shot after shot in the circle, which is about the size of a CD, in her own target half a football field away.
Remember CDs?
Oh, did I mention this was in Florida last Saturday, a day that broke 9,000 temperature records across the country? We were slugging down water, toweling our faces and just generally suffering every time we slogged out to the target. Not a blistering heat, but a relentlessly oppressive one, so, you know, the perfect time to deal with heated gun barrels and hot flying bullet casings.
Erin gave me a big black sticker the size of the circle so I could cover all those shots and reuse the target. This is my final result.
I had to quit after about 2 hours, from the heat and the back ache from the unaccustomed muscle use and because my rifle was jamming steadily now. Erin let me fire her higher-powered rifle at her target (not pictured) while she worked on the other one, and I have to say I liked the Mosin-Nagan better. Much better scope, more accurate, a boom and kick that I admit I found highly satisfying in a purely atavistic way. Also, it has AVADA KEDAVRA painted on it.
In shooting, like with dating and produce selection, there’s always something better out there. The guy next to Erin was firing his own weapon, a something-something with a polished wooden stock and, I assume, other cool stuff because she was openly eyeing it, and he let her fire a few rounds. It made an even louder boom, followed by her scream of “I want one!”
I left Erin there to keep going and I went to meet my son James, my brother-in-law Rodger and my friend Dan at Tony’s Pizza in Deland to hydrate, blow my diet and brag about my exploits. Rodger, who owns several firearms and regularly hunted for food back in Indiana, politely praised my shooting. I expected that.
I didn’t expect the young waitress who saw my iPhone pics and stood there for 10 minutes, holding our dishes and telling us about her own love of guns, her annual pass to the same shooting range, and calibres and gun models I couldn’t possibly keep track of. That was just funny.
I think I’ll be going back. I’m still not a gun fan, really, and I don’t see myself learning firearm models and history and whatnot. But I am definitely a shooting fan, if that makes sense.
And zombies? Beware! Apparently I’m a better shot the farther away you are, possibly. Beware!
It was a fun day, wasn’t it? Sure, people gave a strange look when I showed up with a 2-liter hydration pack on my back, but those turned to looks of envy pretty quickly. 😀
A few things:
It is a Mosin-Nagant, not Nagan.
I find it funny you said the scope for the Mosin was better than for the Savage, because the former had only a x7 magnification while the latter went up to a x9. I think the biggest difference is that Izzy’s scope is long eye relief whereas Rev’s is not, which makes me wonder if his scope was too close to your eye and therefore screwing up the sight picture. Were you experiencing any artifacting?
Oh, and the scope rings were sliding forward, which was causing some of the feed problems. That would also screw up a sight picture.
Finally, the completist in me would like to state that the rifle the nice fellow next to me let me shoot — his name was Russell, and we had a lovely conversation about ammunition at closing time — was a PSL, a Romanian variant of the Russian Dragunov sniper rifle.
Man, that was a fun gun to shoot. Same cartridge as Izzy — 7362x54R — but semiautomatic, so much, much less recoil. WANT!
It’s always a pleasant surprise to see a shooty day post on a non-gunnie blog that I follow. Glad you had a great time. Hope you enjoy your next session of recoil therapy. Careful, it’s addictive.
Blargh. I of course meant 7.62x54R.