Range Report, 2/12/11

My daughter and I made it to the range, where it was only -3, with no wind. (Jenny & I got our wires crossed a bit, so I'll claim responsibility for that. I spoke with her afterward, and we'll be going back tomorrow.)

Melanie's pistol is a Smith & Wesson Model 442, chambered for .38 Spcl +P.  She has small hands, and the +P ammo which she will use for self-defense is a bit punishing to her after firing a number of rounds. And before anyone starts on the "girls don't have to shoot snub-nosed revolvers" meme, the purchase was a joint decision. The light weight & easy concealability were the deciding factors.

She chose to practice with standard loads today, which I applauded, especially since she hadn't practiced in about 18 months). Now that she's 21 and can carry concealed if she chooses, I wanted her to get a feel for the revolver, and to gain some confidence that she can put rounds where she wants them to go.

One thing I've found is that the masking tape which the range supplies for putting new targets on the stands doesn't really work well at sub-zero temps. We put up a target sheet for her, but I used three 3" orange dots on a target that was already shot to pieces.

We set her target at 15 feet. The first several rounds were completely off the 8.5" x 11" paper. But we talked about how she was holding the pistol, and used DeGrata's "Common shooting errors" page showing how shot placement at various points on the target is the result of jerking the trigger, recoil anticipation, and so on. (The page can be found here.)

She's still pulling to the right, as her target shows. But she kept checking to see what she was doing wrong, and you can see that she finally started grouping the shots closer together. However, due to the cold temps which were making her hand cramp, she stopped at 50 rounds.

I had taken about the same number of rounds but only used about half since I was checking on her progress for a good bit of the time. My shots wandered a bit at first, too. I hadn't been since September (amazing how time keeps getting by like that), but was doing okay by the last magazine or so, after a couple dozen shots to get my sight picture lined up correctly.

After an hour, we were both ready to go when her ammo was gone. A quick trip to Sportsman's Warehouse for replacement ammo & a padded case for her revolver, and then back home. It was a good outing.