Todays trip to the range was a bit more crowded than normal for the wife and I.
It was a saterday afternoon, we usually either go on monday mornings or fridays around noon.
We stayed at the short yardage range today.
Things that go boom that we brought today...
1911 officers compact .45 ACP... The wifes daily carry
1911 full size .45 ACP... My daily carry
Taurus M455 .44 special snubby... my daily back up
Mosin Nagant M44... Crusty old WW II german boom stick
Savage Mako Mk II .22LR... the fun plinker
Benelli 121 M1 12 ga... My wifes bedside companion
Mossberg M500 12 ga... Scoped deer sniper
TTN 12 ga coach gun... My bedside companion
There were 3 groups of people at the short range today... all younger guys... and a group of older guys showed up as we were leaving.
The group to our left were shooting a Marlin model 60 .22, a 22 derringer, a springfield armory 1911 V10 Ultra Compact.
The group to our right were shooting an H&K USP compact, kimber 1911 with .22 and .45 ACP top ends, and a Ruger 10/22.
The other group that showed up and show while we were there had a EAA Witness .45 acp and a Springfield XD 9mm.
The V10 ultra and Kimber almost made me ashamed to own 1911s. Neither one made it thru a magazine without malfunctioning at least once.
The Witness and XD ran like clockwork.
We had 1 malfunction while we were there, but it was my fault.
I over loaded the Benelli. It holds 7 in the magazine, one in the pipe. I loaded it with 7 in the mag, 1 on deck... shell in the lifter... and 1 in the pipe, for a total of 9 rounds. The benelli uses inertia to shuck a round from the magazine onto the loader. With the loader already holding a shell, it tried to load a second one on it. Totally my fault.
All the .22 rifles ran beautifully, the .22 kimber ran like crap.
I let one of the guys shoot the Mosin and another shoot the .44. Both had huge grins on their faces afterwards.
We were there for a couple of hours, not sure how many rounds we fired... but it took about 10 minutes to clean up afterwards.
Good to see younger guys at the range, saw to see them with pricey equipment with bad reliability.
I was talking to the guy with the V10 and he was telling me about its issues... and I told him "At least you didnt buy a Kimber".
the guy with the kimber wasnt too happy about that. Told me that kimber was the choice of LAPD SWAT. I replied that maybe they had the custom shop build them guns that didnt jam.
Good times were had.
People looked at us strange hauling 3 long gun cases, a double barrel shotgun, a spear that goes bang, and a range bag.
I just looked back and smiled.
Jim
