Yesterday I had cleaned up the new baby and moved the Weaver 4x off of the 308 Ultra on to the new 357. I retorqued the scope base plate/rings with blue Loctite. A few of the base plate screws had no loctite on them!
I found three old bags of 38 special gunshow reloads that I bought many years ago and decided that the 125gr JSP were coming with sister Handi. I remember reading here on GB that it takes a few hundred rounds to smooth out some of the Handi barrels.
So today came and after packing up a few needed items in the rolling range cart, I was off.
I arrived to find a full house at the public pistol / rifle range. I could see 4-5 people on some of the benches with only one gun.
It was a zoo and in my discust for my mistake in waiting till mid day, I went over to the range club house and had a hot dog and a soda. I finished and went on my way towards home and stopped to refill the propane bottle up. I thought to myself that I'll go back and see if the crowd had thinned. When I got back it had not and still full up. I went on over to the multi purpose range for members of the club thats not available to the public. I found a small bore silhoutte match that they were warming up for with some practice shots. I deceided I'd go in and say hi and watch something I know nothing about. One of the guys asks if I was there to shoot in the match. I gave him my sad range tale and he asked I wanted to shoot small bore. I told him all I had was my new 357 Handi with a scope that was not zero'ed yet. I did the tape on the garage wall and matched looking down the pipe and set the scope for that. He laughed and said to get it on the line and we could zero it with the gongs. Less than 5 shots and the Handi was doing it's thing like a frozen rope. A scope is not allowed in the matchs, but a few guys wanted to see what my Handi would do so I played along and was just happy to take a test drive.
I can tell you that dropping the iron targets is a lot of fun and sure beats paper targets. I dropped 10chickens 10pigs 7turkeys 8rams.
Had the aid of a scope and was just shooting for myself and not score. The guys didn't believe that I never fired it before and they all wanted to see it at the end of the match. I have not had that much fun with my clothes on in years.
All I can say is that I can't wait to finish off the other hunderd rounds of 38's and move on to 357's. The 357 Handi is such a fun, sweet shooting Handi and I can't say enough about it. Thanks guys for talking me into getting one with all of the previous positive reports. I can see a 30-30 and 45-70 on the horizon.
-gary
