Brrrr: A Range Report

Friend Jenny, daughter Sam and I went to the Wet Bunny Range this morning. It was 29 degrees - warm, for us - upon arrival, but the temp dropped slowly the whole time. Snow on undisturbed areas was at least a foot deep. There was an icy breeze off the mountains blowing in our left ears the whole time, threatening to induce frostbite. I think it's the first time I've used shooting earmuffs as a warming device.

I'll let you in on a secret: while Alaskans are acclimated to colder weather than most other folks, we don't deal with wind chill very well here in Anchorage. Since the city is surrounded by mountains, we don't get a lot of wind. When it does blow, it goes right through us.

AccuHunch was threatening us with two to five more inches of snow today (apparently wrong, at least so far, since the sun just came out), so we decided to stick with .22 caliber firearms. That turned out to be a good decision.

A footstep in 12" of snow

Snow on the firing line at the .22 range was untouched, so we spent the first 10 minutes clearing off the benches, seats, tables, etc, and arranging various pieces of equipment on which to lay the rifles & pistols, to avoid an icy build-up.

For 20 minutes, the shooting went quite well; I discovered that my rifle was shooting about 4" high at 20 yards, but that was quickly remedied. After adjusting the simplistic rear sight, it was hitting about 3/4" above point-of-aim at that same distance. Given the fairly coarse factory sights, that was acceptable.

The silvery button on the front blade neatly obscured the 2" shoot-n-see dots at the distance we were shooting, so I was happy to see those yellow spots appearing in the black, and especially when I realized I was achieving 1" to 1.5" groups with that technique.

Sam's target, after switching to the rifle. The pistol doesn't like the "golden bullets" that work okay in the rifles.

Sam was using her sister's pistol and rifle. We still don't know where the pistol is shooting (except "all over", with that Golden Bullet stuff), and that will need some attention in the near future. I could see that she was getting frustrated, and suggested that she put the pistol away, using the rifle instead. After a quick adjustment to her rear sight (just like mine), she then proceeded to shoot the center out of the target. :)

Friend Jenny discovered that the guy on the line next to hers was a fellow Appleseed graduate (from last month's course), and they chatted happily about things learned, and things still to learn. I'll let her continue that story at her own blog, if she chooses.

After an hour in that wind, we couldn't feel our trigger fingers, and the sight picture had gotten blurry for Sam and me, so we wrapped it up and went off in search of hot coffee. That was a good idea, too.

a snowy day on the firing line

Trudging out to the target line, one more time

A good morning, although a brief one. But any time spent shooting with my daughter and friend is a very good time. I'm a blessed man.