This Will Learn me to Shoot

The shooting went well today. In fact, it went too well. With both guns, at 7 yards, I shot bullet after bullet through the same big holes. And I eventually realized I was getting no information at all. When you shoot, you need to know where the bullets are landing so you can tell how well you’re doing. So from now on I’ll be shooting at 50 feet.

Here are 50 rounds from the .45. Better than usual.

Here are 50 from the .38 Super, which felt great but were not quite as good as the .45s.

At 50 feet, things opened up. It seems like the core of the group is good, but there is something I do wrong to drive things off to the side. I only managed to get 48 rounds to work. Sizing issues, I think.

The .38 Super gave me real problems with cycling. The first 50 rounds were okay, and 49 of them were nickel cases. The second 50 were all brass, and I had maybe 10 that wouldn’t chamber. Maybe I’m not bringing the sizing die down far enough. I’ll have to check. But it shot okay. I fooled around with my grip, and while I think Massad Ayoob is right about a tight grip being a good thing, I dont think it has to be as murderously tight as he suggests. The thing that sent the most bullets through the center of the group was a careful trigger pull. That seems to be what I need to work on most.

Now that I can tell where I’m shooting, I hope to see some improvement. I thought I should keep shooting at 7 yards until I was doing considerably better than I am, but now I believe that the lack of feedback from 7-yard targets held me back.

In other news, I backed over my highly tactical shooting box. I was tired, and I put it in the driveway so I would have a shorter roll to the garage, and then I got in the car and backed into it, shoving it a foot or two. No real damage, although it looks meaner now.

Mike has a gun dealer telling him to buy a Springfield Loaded instead of an SW1911. I question that advice. The big selling point of the SW1911 is the large number of high-end parts you get for a mid-range price, plus some of the assembly is done by S&W Performance Shop people. This guy says the Loaded is a better gun for the money. I don’t see how both of those things can be true.

Chris Byrne contradicts my charitable assessment of the Hornady Lock-N-Load AP’s flimsy mounting system, saying it’s a design flaw. He knows more than I do. I better go out to the garage and think up a way to fix it.

Aced my dental checkup today, by the grace of God. I was afraid kosher-for-Passover Coke would do me in, but it looks like I am in the clear for another six months.