Fantastic day of shooting yesterday

[Wedge]

My buddy and I went down to my family's land and had a great day yesterday. Blackhawk in .45 ACP for me and a Ruger Mark II for him.

Most of the time when we go shooting it is just shooting at milk jugs, and cans and stuff like that we never spend any time trying to get better at shooting. So that is what we did yesterday.

They say you gotta learn to crawl before you can walk so we set up the target at a whopping 10 feet. 50 shots each later (and about an hour later too) we had gotten to shooting 1" groups pretty consistantly. We then moved back to 15 feet and finally 21 feet. Group size changed as expected to about 2" at 7 yards. I know that we haven't reached our guns potential yet but both of us plan to continue some dedicated practice like this to really improve our shooting.

Eventually punching paper was no longer very much fun so we starting shooting the soda cans that we had brought down with us. Another fun thing we did was set up a large (3' x 4') piece of paper and marked 2 bulls on them. Then we dumped the magazine from the Mark II as fast as possible from 4 yards. Mesaured our groups around 5".

Can't wait to go out again!

 

[hillbilly]

Uh, just one point.

Shooting at cans and water bottles DOES make you a better shooter.

Field shooting and target shooting are both shooting, but very different disciplines.

Some of the skills---sight picture, trigger squeeze, follow-through, etc, do carry over, but they are not the same type of shooting.

I've known some outstanding field shooters who couldn't put a good group on a bullseye target if their very lives depended on it.

I've known some great competition rifle shooters who couldn't, for $1000 cash, hit that water-filled milk jug someone tossed out there a little more than 75 yards, but not quite 100 yards away.

All shooting makes you a better shooter.

The great joy is, of course, to be an all around better shooter, you really need to do all sorts of shooting with all sorts of firearms.

You really need to learn how to shoot everything from handguns to shotguns to rifles, and how to create every kind of hit from tiny groups on paper at a known distance to hits on 3-D objects at unknown ranges.

The whole point is to do some sort of shooting, as long as you are safe and really trying to hit what you are aiming at.

hillbilly

 

[Wedge]

Good point hillbilly!

Plinking is fun, and so is target shooting. The grouping aspect is part of a personal goal to eventually be able to keep everything in a 5.5" circle at 25 yards (and then the goal will get smaller and smaller). But I gotta start somewhere and it has been my experience that plinking doesn't translate exactly to shooting tight groups as you said.

Handguns are the firearm of choice now, I just have the most fun with them!

 

[cerberus]

Would really

like to be able to shoot at cans in the nice fresh air. Many years ago I could just head out near the river and shoot as long as Ammo. held out. Thats history now can't find anyplace close that will allow a shot to be fired. Nice that you can still find a place to do this type of shooting.

 

[Wedge]

cerberus, I don't even know where I would go if it wasn't for the fact that we own property out in the middle of nowhere!