Bowling Pins Shoot

I wandered north to Mr. and Mrs. Curmudgeon's lair yesterday to get in on some head to head pin shooting. Here is Mr. Curmudgeon on the line:


It is always good to see them and as always much food and laughter was to be had. Hey, I know some of these people =) 

 

Not Exactly What I'm Used To!

Looks like fun though. I'll have to try it this Friday. 

Wish Me Luck!

If the weather is decent, I will participate in my first steel shoot competition this Saturday. My primary goal as always is not to be "That Guy". In other words don't embarrass myself. 

It is supposed to be a bit chilly in the morning. I DETEST cold weather, but as a friend noted, the bad people don't always show up when it is 78 degrees and sunny. 

Here is the course of fire:

20-30 Falling Steel Targets per Stage

4 Stages + Tie Breaker

Stages are shot using Par Time

Score is the number of steel targets that fall between the Start & Stop time

So, lets go get ready for this. 

Again, wish me luck as I know the equipment is better than I.

Oh Look!

We've secretly replaced Old NFO's ammo with laughing gas. Lets see if he notices the difference! 

Photo courtesy of The Shekel.  

 

There Will Be Coffee!

Or a weak facsimile of such this weekend. Labor intensive and not that great but it beats nothing! Want some? Just some Hydrogen gas venting and 6 or so minutes later, voila! Crappy coffee! 

Beats no coffee! 

Ah! So That Explains It!

For the last several months my trusty Peltor ear muffs on the range have well, hurt! Then we dig a bit deeper as I don't want to wear them all day next Saturday in the condition they are in. Nor do I want to throw out some more bucks for new ones! 

Guess what. The old foam ear cups are toast. I ordered some gel filled replacements and you an see the difference!

So, on the bottom we have the old foam muffs. On the headset itself, we have new spanking gel filled stuff. Supposedly, they fit ANY Peltor model. They feel wonderful! 

Take care of your range gear as well as the hardware! 
 

Greek Food!

So I'm talking to my friend tonight trying to stage properly for his Blogshoot next weekend. What does he do? Tell me about some 30-06 Greek ammo on some website. 

Dang enabler! I just scored this last week. 

Much like a dog running to the bell I ordered some. If you see me at the Blogshoot and I am eating MRE's or Ramen noodles, now you know why!
 .

Need some competition?

Well try this postal match being hosted by my friend Brigid and Partner this year.

Looks like fun and I hope to give it a try! Thanks to the host and hostess this year! 

Hey, I Know That Dude!

Its Mr. Curmudgeon in a group shot of a competitive shooting league! Good on ya for representing Old School with a Colt 1911 over the "plastic fantastic" and .22's! Well, Maybe a Colt M45 is not "old school" =)

Congrats on a respectable finish!

Video From the Fundraser!

Is here! (Vimeo)

If You Can Help!

I would truly appreciate it. I personally know several women that have been through this. Breast Cancer. Chemo.  Double Mastectomy. Reconstruction. 

The fund raising event is here. I don't ask for much here. When I do I ask for very little. If you can give 5 bucks I would really be grateful. The person that is running this is retired LEO and a fellow instructor. Yes, he is in direct competition with me for students, but he and I do not care when it comes to these matters. 

I will be there to be a gopher, admin, run around, anything needed. I owe the Women that I know that went through this at least this much. They are both special to me and both live far away from here. This is the least I can do for them as they both enrich my life now. They by any definition should be dead now yet they are not!

Thanks! 

Packing!

I am packing for an Appleseed event. Sean over at An NC Gun Blog organized the event. So tomorrow after work I will stuff this in to the car:

I will arrive in Ramsuer, NC sometime tomorrow after work. 

I freely admit I am not a long gun person. I teach Handguns. Oh, as a side note, I am NOT taking the Lionel train in the background with me! 

A good friend offered this rifle to me to take, and it is a "pimped out" Ruger 10/22 and is here now; I will not take it. Anyone knows that if I borrow a gun from them it will be in better condition and cleaner if possible than when I got it. The second thing? He occasionally brings stuff like this by.

Wish me luck and I look forward to meeting fellow gun bloggers and most importantly learn something! 


I hope everyone has a great weekend! Blogging will be off until next week.

Hey, It's Tactical!

Uh, OK. I guess so. Much like the Zombie meme for ammo.

So I am getting ready for Appleseed in two or so weeks. The range is good to 450 yards. If I read all the stuff about this weekend correctly the first day will be rimfire and the second centerfire. 

I thought I would take a simple (to me) .22LR for the rimfire portion.

REALLY? This is a .22 "Tactical" Rimfire magazine? Prey tell what makes it so? Yes it cost enough, that is a given for tactical stuff, but it's not even black. 

So how about this:

 











Really CCI? They are not even black! The box is cool and all that but can't you do better? 

I am going to run all of this stuff through this:

 











A Colt Walther M-4 in .22LR. The rifle was cheap enough. I would much rather have that rifle sitting in the mud or dirt or whatever as opposed to my first choice for this:

A Winchester Model 9422 in .22WMR. I love this rifle and it is one of the first I shot in my youth. I would hate for it now to get beat up. Interesting how what was once a meat gun and beater becomes a safe queen. 


So for the second day centerfire shooting it appears the M-1 will not be here and I would not take it without my friends approval and once over. 

I have hit up my Curmudgeon at large. I am not a long gun person. He offers a couple of .243 Winchesters. Here is one:

Can't wait to see what the other one is! More important than that is the fact that I know he wants these rifles to sound a loud report again. He wants to know that his rifles still work and wants to know if I am up to the challenge of running them well.

I am humbled and hope I am worthy of the challenge. 
 

Old Dog, meet new tricks!

So I went to northern Virginia to ToddG's "Aim Fast Hit Fast" class last weekend. I have very little experience with the "high speed low drag" crowd. In fact this was the forth Firearm class I have attended and NRA nor the NCDOJ CCH Instructor class was anything like this! 

Unpack (click to enbiggen as usual)!

ToddG is an excellent instructor. He does not chant "Tacticool" buzz phrases. He is a thinking persons instructor. He tells you WHY he does it this way and then demonstrates it. He is a consummate operator and more importantly to me instructor with a Handgun.   

Lord knows I must have burned up a lot of his patience! He was always there to offer tips, critiques, and "hey don't do that again, OK"?  He DOES want all of his students to do well and it showed. Range safety was paramount and the range facility rivaled USTC. 

I had zero practice at presentation from concealment at speed with a timer on me. I had plenty when I left!

Simply put if you want to be better with all aspects of running a Handgun, Todd's class is worth the time, effort and energy.  I was firmly pushed out of my comfort zone and that is what I need to continue to learn. I was so frustrated with my performance after the first day I thought briefly about not even showing up the next day. I'm not IDPA or IPSEC, everyone is younger than me, just pack it in and go home.

Instead of going to class dinner on the first night I went back to the room to practice the pressout and other techniques. It probably did not help my standing with other classmates to not attend. No matter. I did have words of encouragement that night from several people. That meant a lot. The most important came from B. I went back!

Sunday I was somewhat redeemed. When shooting the steel plates head to head with other students with three targets strong hand only and three weak hand I prevailed. Old dudes can keep up! 

After the end of class Todd asked if anyone wanted to stay and shoot more. I stayed. Even after class, he had competitions already devised to keep up shooting, still offering pointers to students. It is very obvious this man has a passion for what he does. I will show back up to vex him again like a moth to the flame. 

On another note the S&W M&P Pro Series with my reloads had no malfunctions. Good on me and good on S&W! We did have a Glock throw up on a reload during class but it was the reload, not the pistol.  

We shot until dark and again he asked if anyone wanted to go to dinner. I had to decline as I was headed to "Banjo Country" to meet someone the next day.

After a little ride I arrived in lagniappe's lair country. Hole up and meet Murphy's Law over breakfast. I jump in his ride for a trip to a gunsmith and the range. WARNING! If you are a victim passenger in a motor vehicle with him, use the "Oh Jesus" handrail on the passenger side. You will need it! We arrive at the range. I would not have been able to make it there in my ride. So we go at it. ML details the events from there here.  

So I am careening around Banjo Country.  I am out manned and out gunned. My Blackberry is going "wait, what?" trying to get location updates. This is the first Blogger I have met in meat space. NO banjo music in the background and the conversation is great. ML took a great deal of time and effort for us to go shoot. I relax. Here he is on his M-60:

ML is a class act all around. It was a pleasure to meet him and I will return to Lagniappe's lair as soon as I can. The "secret weapon" was covered in awesome sauce! The other hardware was just as impressive as the man owning it. I cannot say enough about ending my weekend with ML. IT was a perfect ending.  

UPDATE! Feature or Bug?

ZombieRush brought it. DUH! RTFM! Right there on page 16 it says it will do just this:

WARNING: DO NOT USE EXCESSIVE UPWARD FORCE
WHEN INSERTING A LOADED MAGAZINE INTO THE
PISTOL. EXCESSIVE UPWARD FORCE COULD CAUSE
THE SLIDE TO MOVE FORWARD, CHAMBERING A ROUND AND
MAKING THE PISTOL READY TO FIRE. 

Power is back on! So you decide. S&W M&P Pro Series. 9mm in slide lock. Attempting a reload (with dummy rounds of course!) Here is what we get. 

I DID NOT engage the slide stop lever. It does it all the time unless you carefully hit the magazine buttplate at a 90 degree angle or do not use as much force. This is the primary Firearm going with me next weekend. It DOES load a cartridge when this occurs. 

I will have my trusted M1911 as backup. So is it a bug or feature for timed competition?

Packing!

Blogging will be lighter than normal this week. I know some of you view that as unpossible, but I have things to do for the upcoming trip. 

1500 rounds of 9mm reloaded, 400 rounds of factory too for after class activities:

Oh, BTW can anyone tell me HOW to put the poncho:

Back into the pouch?

So for the first time in a while I cleaned this out:

And I do have this to load into the car for an excursion into "Banjo Country":

Oh, here is the IDPA "Concealment Garment". I hope everyone approves!

I will try to get back before I go! 

I will leave you with this little post from the wonderfully eclectic Frog Blog. I like it!

IDPA Concealment Garment?

So I'm going over the class information for next weekend (AFHF). For purposes of the class: "Concealment means either following IDPA rules for an open front garment (such as a vest) or using a closed front garment".

I really don't want to shell out the cash for a Woolrich or 5.11 vest. 

Any ideas?

Welcome a shooter!

John was a student last weekend for my concealed carry handgun class. He is documenting his work as a new shooter on shooting and competing in IDPA. I would appreciate it if you gave him a warm welcome. Ex-Navy, and carried himself about smartly during class last week. Blog is here! I cannot offer any advise on IDPA. Anyone out there that can I am sure it would be appreciated! 

Bowling pin shoot today after a day trip yesterday. Be back soon! 

One man media blitz!

Hey I'm on a roll! First local news and now a letter published in the USCCA magazine! Media blitz! You should check it out. It does have some very distinguished contributors. Tam, Oleg, and Kathy for starters! 

Ok, now to scare everyone going to Blogfest in Indy tomorrow. I shot this picture today (click to enbiggen):

Never fear! I will not be able to attend, Zombie Bowling Pin match tomorrow! I have to do that and I have private Handgun instruction before it. Sorry I am going to miss it! I hope y'all have fun up there! I DO have friends in Indiana. So you can actually have a tag that says that? Texas and Indiana are becoming two of my favorite states! 



FTC crap- payed for everything, thanks! 

Blast From the Past

LADIES RIFLE CLUB (aka RIFLE RANGE)

Click on the pic to go to the Pathe Newsreel Archives. Lot's of stuff over there!