Our Tri State Shooters Club held it's annual Sight in Day / Fun Shoot yesterday. We do this down on one of the club member's pastures on the north side of Lake Traverse. Yesterday was a rare day in South Dakota, it was absolutely beautiful, temps in the mid 70's and NO WIND with brilliant sunshine.
We set up target holders at 25, 100 & 200 yards. My neighbor saves me gallon plastic milk jugs, so I filled 36 of them with water (these were placed at 200 yards. I also cleaned out my basement of empty Hodgdon Powder Jugs (26) and filled them with water also and placed them at 100 yards.
Our club has 1 Chicken Silhouette, 1 Pig Silhouette, 1 Turkey Silhouette and 1 Ram Silhouette. These are regulation size but we hang them from a pivot point rather than setting them on the ground. This way we don't have to constantly stand them back up. For some reason we could only find the Turkey and the Ram Silhouettes so we placed the Turkey at 200 yards and the Ram at 300 yards (the maximum distance we could get in this location).
We had 9 adults and 3 children show up. When we started this shoot several years ago we decided to have it a few weeks prior to the Opener of the Youth Deer Season and hoped to get some kids out shooting before Deer Season. Well we had 3 yesterday and I think they had a good time.
The highlight of my day was introducing 5 shooters to the fine art of shooting Contender Handguns. Some of these shooters had never seen a Contender Handgun before much less shot one. My 14" .223 & 14" 7-30 Waters Contender Barrels got quite a work out yesterday. The more rounds I get through the 7-30 Waters the better it seems to shoot (and it has shot good from the get go). The .223 Contender Barrel held up it's reputation and was shooting great.
One lady showed up and she is an avid hunter, but had never shot a Scoped Handgun much less a Contender. Lisa sat at the Bench. I had a Bipod on the 7-30 Waters, but no sandbag for under the grip. I instructed Lisa on where to hold (how the Contender would shoot at those distances) and she proceded to shoot both the Turkey and Ram Silhouettes with every shot. Lisa's husband John was watching and had to try it also. John to never missed either Silhouette or any of the Water Jugs he shot at.
Another guy (Joe) was looking strangely at my Contenders so I asked him if he wanted a go with them. Joe also never missed a shot with the 7-30 Waters Contender.
A few other guys (one of which is generally our top rimfire handgun shooter at our club) also had to have a go with the two Contenders. I think Curt was quite impressed. A fellow officer that is a Coyote Hunting Fanatic had heard me talk of my Contender Handguns but had never seen or shot one. He started shooting my .223 Contender and I thought he was going to run me out of ammo.
One of our Club Members was there with his Ruger Redhawk .44 Magnum. This one has the dovetails cut in the barrel rib and he has a 2x Leupold mounted on it. He was shooting 300gr. Hornady XTP-HP's seated in the bottom crimping groove with 23.0grs. of W-296. I shot a couple cylinder fulls through his Redhawk at the 200 yard Turkey and hit it about 75% of the time. I did manage to smoke a 200 yard water jug with it also.
All in all a great day was had by all. Yes I did take my digital camera along, but like an idiot the last time I used it I left it on and the batteries were dead. Sorry, no photos, but I actually did remember the camera this time. Yeah I know, some day I will get all my ducks in a row.
Larry
