Went Shooting

Yesterday I went shooting up at Bass Pro Shops with my dentist, who is also my friend, and two of his friends.

I've never shot at Bass Pro's ranges before despite going up there a couple of times a month. Now I suspect I'll go to shoot as often as I go to shop.

There are some hoops to jump through to get from the front door to the range but I can live with that for the convenience and location. They need to trigger lock and zip-tie the case, inventory your range bag (i.e. eyes, ears, ammo, targets, etc.) and then call back to the range to let them know you're coming. Once you get to the range you reverse the procedure and then they let you in to the locked lanes (pistol) or the locked rifle/shotgun tube.

We shot rifle and pistol yesterday although it took us 35 minutes to get everything in order to shoot through the rifle tube. We brought full metal jacket (FMJ) ammo because that's what we had. You can only shoot jacketed hollow point (JHP) in the tube because it's an indoor range and the FMJ would put excessive wear and tear on the backstop. You can, however, shoot any rifle caliber so long as you have non-FMJ rounds.

My first set was 20 shots with the rifle and I walked up and down the right side of the target trying to acquire the proper sight picture. I'm having a hard time seeing hits on my targets and will remember to bring some binoculars the next time. After making an adjustment three clicks counter-clockwise on my rear sight I then proceeded to hammer the bulls-eye.

There's still one round outside the bull but it's in the 9-ring. That's a hanging target at 55 yards using iron sights and 55 grain JHP bullets. Now that I've got it sighted in at 55 yards I'll be able to work more effectively at longer distances to get it re-sighted. I would've kept shooting yesterday but with two shooters sharing the tube for only 25 minutes we were a bit pressed for time plus we still wanted to shoot pistols before the range closed.

Now I'm not a rifle guy nor a pistol guy (yet) but I'm getting there. I shot around 100 rounds of .40 at 25 yards yesterday and had a few 10-ring shots but mostly I'm shooting low and right (left-handed shooter.) I found these wheel charts yesterday to help me diagnose the problems:

Left Hand Shooter
Right Hand Shooter

These are both PDFs so if you click the link it may take a minute to load.

If this chart is right then I've got to work on my trigger control and pay closer attention to my wrist and head position. Being only the second hundred rounds I've put through a pistol I know I'm going to encounter some problems. It took me thousands of rounds through my 870 to start hammering the sporting clays and 5-stand courses.

I'm going to see about going up there again this week to shoot some more and see if I can repeat the results from yesterday's trip (and improve my pistol accuracy.)

Thanks for reading,


B