High today was in the 60's, but it was still in the mid-50's midmorning. The northern sky was so blue it was purple. When I'd gotten up to pee earlier, there was a blazing orange sunrise over Priest's Point while knee-deep fog cloaked the lake and crept ashore. Later, the lake looked like crinkled blue foil giftwrap. Tawk about post cold front! Fuggedabout fishin', fish have lockjaw after a front like that. The previous three days had been windy. I've never seen such sustained wind. 35 mph gusting to Gustav, all day and all night for
3 days. Windows not closed tightly whistled. Lumpy lake. Today it was calm. RANGE DAY! This time I brought .243 and .223 rifles, left the .22-250 home pending arrival of new scope rings. Also brought a Ruger .22 pistol, a .357 and a 9mm. We stopped at Willie's Supermarket in Morris, picked up some deli sandwiches for a tailgate picnic lunch at the range. (Mary had brought drinks) Very pleasant! The range is small (4 firing points) in a pastoral setting in the Glacial Ridge country of MN. Not yer typical military range, not at all. A very pleasant venue for a picnic. I'd swapped scopes on the .243 so first order of bidness was to get the scope zeroed at 100. That didn't take long, maybe half a dozen rounds. I'd brought a selection of ammo, various recipes, all carefully arranged in boxes with little maps showing what was what. I had my chronograph (bullet speed meter), spiral-bound notebook and pencil like a good little scientist. Ahhh, but having fun is job 1... I'd also brought a selection of plastic bottles filled with water, and I'd picked up a bottle of red food dye at the supermarket. Two of the bottles were 1 qt lemonade bottles, sorta square in shape and made of markedly more substantial material than the water bottles. I dyed the water in the lemonade targets and a few 0.5 liter waterbottle targets. Set the first lot up at 100 yd. Gave Mar the bottle-watchin' binocs. She'd been reading her book with earmuffs on whilst I was zeroing the .243. Hitting a water bottle with a .22-250 is a pretty good show. A lemonade jug filled with red water and hit with a 70-grain .243 ballistic-tip bullet cookin' along quickly (mach 3+) is an even better show. Think pink mist. The shredded carcass flew up 10 feet and laterally a good 30 feet. Mary said, "OH! I blinked. The report startled me, do another one." But of course, my dear ... POW. "OHHHH! COOOL!!!" While the rifle barrel cooled a bit we shot the handguns at the little spinning gopher gizmo. Dang, that thing is fun! Burned a fair bunch of ammo, we did. Mary then retired to the shade to continue reading (with muffs) while I fired the .223 a bit. I've really fired very few rounds thru that little rifle, and it is a sweetie. It definitely blows up a lemonade target at 100 yd though not nearly the show the .243 presented. Can't tell much different with the 0.5 liter water bottles; they blow up very nicely with the .223. A .223 has so little recoil that I get to see the show too. I didn't fire any noteworthy groups today -- but I never missed a bottle shot. My entry holes in the lemonade targets were about dead center, he said modestly. The drama comes from what happens after that: the sides become flaps and the exit hole is what used to be the back as the quart of red water becomes a pink cloud. Can't find any holes in what's left of the 0.5 liter water bottles but there was certainly no doubt that they were well and truely hit.I seem to do quite noticably better with reactive targets than with paper, both with handgun and rifle. Go figure. I didn't get many notes or chronograph readings. My research was spotty, my technique questionable and my scientific discipline deplorable. However, my focus on primary mission was bullseye: HAVING FUN IS JOB 1. Another guy showed up about 16:00. Old guy, maybe my age. Ex-marine as it turns out, retired letter carrier from Morris. He said they were gonna have M-1 training today about 18:00, I'd be welcome to join. I was expert with M-1 and M-14 in the Army, but that was a while ago and I would love to shoot one again. But I declined. I've no qualms about shooting what I own but I think I'll want a full six months of breastbone (sternum) mending before I fire something like that. The M-1 is a .30-06, no boomer by any means but a bit more bang than anything starting with a 2. Rifles beginning with 2 quite suffice for me. Still, it would be a fun trip down memory lane. I'll revisit next year.
I did not know until today that the Marines did not get M-14's. No big deal, the essential difference was magazine-fed vs clip-fed. The M-16 and other 5.56mm (.223) variants were a significant departure to a caliber that suffices for coyotes and offers low recoil compatible with spraygun automatic fire with minimal training, but.... He'd been watching me shoot bottles. He said there will be a varmint competition next weekend, 100 to 400 yards, perhaps I'd like to enter? I don't care to shoot competitively as sport and gently said so. He seemed to grok that OK. He then noted that I'd missed a bottle. I did? He said yeah as in forgot to shoot, there's one left downrange. Oh! So there was! I asked if he had hearing protection on (he did), asked if he'd mind if I opened fire (he wouldn't), so I exploded it with my first shot as I had all of the others. 0.5 liter bottles are smaller than most varmints. He grinnned. I opened the action, declared the range cold, Mary and I went downrange to collect our trash and that of probably several others while we were at it. The guy seemed to like that. Dinosaurs dancing in Minnesota on a nice day.