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.