A Wonderful Saturday

My older daughter & I went to the range down the road, and had a perfectly good time putting the first 100 rounds through my new pistol. She shot about 45 rounds, and seemed to enjoy herself.

The pistol is a Taurus PT 1911B, just for the record - a pretty nice 1911 clone.

I discovered a few things:

a) I probably shouldn't have had three cups of coffee before shooting, 'cause it made my hands shake a bit for the first 20 minutes.
b) It has been nearly six years since I fired a handgun, and I found myself flinching each time I started to squeeze the trigger.
c) After about 30 rounds, I settled down and started really concentrating on making the holes appear where I thought I was aiming.

My last handgun was a very large revolver (16" long, 4 1/2 pounds, .44 caliber). This .45 auto is about half the length, half the weight, and generally half the size. It took some getting used to. I have big hands, and discovered that even on this large-frame pistol, the trigger was a lot closer to my palm than I'm used to.

I realized I was trying to "lollipop" the bulls-eye, 'cause that's what my wheelgun did. This new gun works best with the front sight directly on, just obscuring the target.

With the last couple of magazines, I started getting all the shots within the center ring, including two that clipped the bulls-eye, and one shot just above dead center.

I like this new pistol a lot, and can now be confident once again that I can hit what I'm aiming at. Of course, I also need to keep practicing, to gain consistency.

It shoots just fine - like most everyone says - and we had no problems whatsoever with it - like most everyone says. I read several comments on-line from people who talked about how inferior the Taurus is, or how they broke something right away, or ... well, whatever. Mine works fine; I'm sorry they're having trouble with theirs.

Anyway, the weather - which was supposed to be pretty awful today - has been clear & sunny, with reasonably mild temperatures. It has been holding pretty steady at 41 degrees, despite a forecast for mid-30s, windy, and a rain/snow mix. At 1 p.m., we still have mostly clear and sunny. I'm sure the deteriorating conditions will get here any time now; Accu-Hunch insists that it will.

In fact, they now say we'll get a couple of inches of wet snow tonight, and another couple tomorrow the snow has been taken out of the forecast, and they're talking about rain. Whatever. A lot of the existing snow has left during this "heat wave" - we've set a record for the warmest January day ever, yesterday, at 50 - and now we have some major flooding from snow-melt going on in low spots in town. There are intersections under water, because we don't have any storm drains to speak of.

That's about all for now - enjoy your weekend, and be safe.