I never should have left the house! But no, I had to go to the range.
I missed a couple of woodchucks with my .17 HRM Contender carbine that I should have nailed the other day during one of my much too infrequent safaries. So, I decided to re-sight in the Contender as well as shoot a couple of other rifles. I plan on taking the .17 HRM and my Encore with the .223 barrel on a birthday safari this Saturday.
The first thing that went wrong was that I left my range box at home with my rest, spotting scope and stapler (I thought it was in the car) in it. I could have returned home to get them but didn't want to waste 10 minutes and reinforce my wife's feeling that I would forget my head if it wasn't attached.
I got to the range and just caught the tail end of the weekly 5 stand shotgun shoot. This is bad since there were now witnesses!
Of course I didn't have the stapler and so had to ask the club president if he had one in his car. The guys got a chuckle out of that. It turns out that he did and graciously loaned it to me. Of course I didn't ask if it was loaded and didn't think to check myself. I soon found out that it had 6 staples in it, way to few for what I had in mind. He chuckled when I came back with it and stated that he figured that it must be getting a little short on staples. He did not have any more staples. The guys got another chuckle.
So, now I am finally shooting with a makeshift rest and find out that I can't see the holes at 100 yd. So I walk out and see that I am shooting to the left. I walk back and shot again after making scope adjustments. I walk out again to check, and now I am shooting to the right. I walk back, make adjustments, and notice the crosshairs are dancing from all the excercise I am getting. I figure that they must be dancing for joy for me since this is the most excercise I have got in a while.
I quickly tire of this routine and start shooting at the 50 yard target to establish proper windage since I can see the holes at that range. Back to the 100 yard to verify windage. Of course, I have to hike again. This is getting really old!
About this time I notice that my glasses are missing and I scour the range looking for them. Having no luck, I secure their help for a search team. Just as they get to the bench, one asks me if I was at the other end of the bench. I wonder why he asked that, and turned toward the other end of the bench (along with everybody else) and found myself looking at my glasses. I didn't put them there, really I didn't. More chuckles!
Enough of the .17! I break out the .223 Encore to check point of impact. I grab the ammo out of my range bag... Wait a minute, I swear that the .223 ammo was in there. Hmmm, no .223, but there is a similar box of .243. I quickly put the rifle and mis-matched ammo away before the guys see what hapened.
OK, out comes the Handi rifle to check my newly self-fitted .45-70 barrel. A few full power loads prove that it doesn't pop open. My barrel fitting was a success! Now to try some low-power round ball loads. 11 gr. of Unique seem to work, but shoot very high. The guys ask what I am shooting, and I lift the rifle to show them. Suddenly I see a woodchuck about 5 yards from me behind the old trap house. The guys all yell at me to shoot it, so I take careful aim for this very important shot that will prove to the guys what a great shot I am. I squeeze the trigger and........ the gun goes "pop" along with an impressive show of sparks, and the chuck dives into the brush! I told them that I was using reduced loads, but this is ridiculous.
They were very polite this time and there were no chuckles. Belly laughs, yes, but no chuckles!
The bullet did clear the bore, and I continued with some loads with 4.0 gr. of Red Dot which shot lower and should be good for 25 yd. shots.
I am now afraid to go back to the range on Thursdays. I shoulda stayed home!
