Yesterday was another range day for me. I decided to make it a .45acp range day taking only handguns so chambered up with me.
I took four different handguns with me, three pistols and one revolver. They were:
1. Ruger Black Hawk Convertible .45acp/.45 Colt
2. Walther PPQ M2
3. Springfield XDm 5.25
4. S&W M&P
First gun up to be shot was the Ruger BH. I bought this gun because I had loaded up over a thousand rounds of ammo using 185 grain plated FN bullets from HSM and somehow managed to load all of them with too short an overall length to feed in the pistols.
I loaded it up with 6 rounds of that ammo and lined up on target. BUT the sight picture was all wrong. At first I was puzzled, then I realized that the right hand half of the rear sight blade was missing. Yup, don't ask me how cuz I have no clue but the right had half of the rear sight blade is sheared off right in the middle of the notch, everything to the right is just gone.
I finishing shooting that cylinder of ammo at a paper target at 25 yards cuz I was planning to sight this gun in with this load and leave it that way until I finish shooting up the 1014 rounds of it I loaded.
Surprisingly I turned in a fairly decent group to have only a half a rear sight to use. But it was bad low and bad to the right. Still a quite decent 3" or so group, far better than I had a right to expect from half a sight.
Today I called Ruger and told them what happened and they were as surprised as me and like me had no clue how half a rear sight blade can shear off and fall away. But one is on the way so I'll get back to this gun once it arrives.
Next I shot the Walther PPQ M2. Last time I was out I had opened a 50 round box of hardball ammo and so I began with that to see if the Walther shot it close to POA or not. I shot my 8" falling plates and found that yes hardball does shoot pretty much to POA in this gun. I also shot some reloads with 200 grain plated HPs and some factory reloaded 185 JHPs and all of them were hitting close enough to POA to hit the 8" falling plates and also my rabbit and 12" steel plate targets. All shooting was done at 25 yards from the bench with wrists rested on sand bags. I'd guess today I hit about 75% to 80%, not as good as last time out but for a shaky old fart who no longer can clearly see the sights, not too shabby.
Next up I broke out the Springfield XDm 5.25. I've had this pistol quite a few years tho I've never really shot it extensively. It has prolly been a couple years since I last shot it. I finished up the last of that box of hardball and then moved to the 200 grain plated HPs.
I loaded up 10 rounds of the 200 HPs and settled in to shoot. First round hit steel and then the next just snapped. I ejected it and saw a good dent in the primer but it failed to fire. Of the next 6 rounds four failed to fire but had good dents in the primer. I'm thinking an ammo problem even tho all the rest I've shot of this ammo worked fine.
I finished off the 10 rounds with only four of them failing to fire. Just for grins I loaded those 4 in the Ruger with a half of a rear sight and pointed the gun at the back stop and fired all four rounds with no issues. So it wasn't an ammo problem with another gun issue.
I'm guessing this one just needs to be taken down and given a good cleaning and lube. As I said I've had it several years and haven't fired it in likely a couple years at least. I figure it's pretty dry and perhaps dirty as well.
Next up should have been the S&W M&P but by this time I was kinda worn out from walking back and forth resetting the falling plates so I shot the Walther one last time and packed all my stuff up and put it away.
I guess I shot close to 75 rounds, I didn't count. I found almost all the cases I fired but was with shooting splattermatics ya never find them all.
I came away from this shooting session with a few insights. One is that shooting isn't nearly as much fun for me these days as it used to be when I was younger and when I had a shooting partner. Two, I really don't like recoil that much anymore. My old arthritic hands don't deal with as well as they used to.
Used to be shooting hundreds of rounds of .44 magnum in a day was easy and I've also shot up to a couple hundred rounds of .454 Casull and .480 Ruger a day when doing the reviews on the two Raging Bulls and FA83 in those calibers.
My next shooting session will be with .22LR guns.