Rail Installed

I’m sitting here doing my gun thing.

My Picatinny rail arrived, and I stuck it on the new rifle. I attached the night scope to it. It looks fine, but the eye relief is a bit excessive. I expect to have to lean forward a bit to shoot. It’s not good to have tension anywhere in your body when you shoot, but I believe this is the best I’ll be able to do without some kind of custom rail or adaptor.

The word “Picatinny” is capitalized. A place called the Picatinny Arsenal was important to its adoption. The arsenal is in New Jersey. Things could be worse. It could have been the Piscataway rail. New Jersey place names are awful. They sound like diseases that make you vomit.

I’ve been thinking about my long-range options. I can’t believe how lucky blessed I am to have this property. I should be able to shoot 400 yards with no problems at all. I could go longer if I had another berm.

“But why not go to a range? You live in gun country. There must be long-distance ranges all around you.”

No.

This is why I count myself even more blessed than I used to.

I assumed there would be all sorts of shooting options up here, because northern Florida is about as red as Wyoming. I have discovered that this is not the case. I can only find three outdoor ranges in this county, and they’re pretty sad. The options in Miami are actually better.

One is a private club that only goes to 100 yards, and it has 150-member cap. There’s a waiting list. You can’t join until someone dies.

Which probably happens a lot. I think I have the only car in the county without a handicapped permit and a mobility scooter rack.

I might have to wait as long as a week.

There’s another private club which has lanes up to 50 yards long. That’s all you get. What good is that? I’ve seen people shoot pistols that far.

The final option is the public range operated by the Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission. “Operated” is a very loose way of describing it. It’s unsupervised.

How would you like to go to an unsupervised gun range? No range officers. No one using a P.A. system to tell people the line is hot. No one to shout at idiots walking around with their rifles pointed at other visitors. You just get out of your pickup and start blasting. Presumably, there is no prohibition on drinking beer.

Cherry on the sundae: the limit is 100 yards.

I’ll resummarize my own situation: 400 yards. Berm. No other shooters. Handguns allowed. Rifles allowed. Hours unrestricted.

It’s phenomenal.

Someone recommended I try a Project Appleseed event. I know little about Project Appleseed, but it’s an organization that claims to teach marksmanship. I get the feeling there is some paranoia associated with it. I don’t mean my healthy Christian paranoia, which contemplates the necessity of shooting hordes of entitlement junkies who will one day descend on rural America but does not contemplate shooting federal agents. When I read up on Project Appleseed, a little voice in the back of my head whispers “Ruby Ridge.” But even if they’re extreme, they are probably people I can get along with, and they might be able to help me shoot better.

I read that they teach history at the events and talk about taking back America.

There will be an event less than 40 miles from here this month. I might give it a shot. It’s hard to get away from my dad for a two-day event that involves a hotel stay, but if it’s less than an hour away, I should be able to make the commute from my house and return here at night.

I’m very glad God put me on an unusual property where I can shoot pretty freely. When I’m even farther in the sticks, on a larger property with some hills, I’ll be unrestrained. I’ll shoot a howitzer if I want.

Maybe tomorrow I’ll finally try the .204 Ruger. Should be a blast. Then eventually I’ll get to work on the .308 and a 6.5 Swedish.