The End of Cheap Target Practice?

I took my new Colt Woodsman pistol to the range today, which means I walked out of my house and fired it while the cows stared at me. It was a strange experience, and not just for the cows.

First strange thing…the gun has a 9-round magazine. That’s supposed to be an impossibility. The Colt Woodsman has always held 10 rounds. When I tried to load it for the first time, I thought maybe the magazine spring was stiff because it hadn’t been used much, but no, the magazine was full at 9 rounds. Bummer.

I looked at the magazine to see if it was some kind of Chinese fake. It looks like the real thing, and it has “Colt” stamped on it.

Oh, well.

I have a small variety of .22 shells. Some time ago, I bought a bucket of Remington Golden Bullets. They’re cheap. I figured they could not possibly be bad enough to affect my accuracy at 7 yards. I also have some CCI Mini-mag hollow points, and until today, I had 40-grain Mini-mag CPRN’s. The Woodsman is so nice, I don’t want to shoot Remingtons in it. They cover everything with black residue. I decided to stick with CCI.

When I tried to shoot Mini-mag HP’s, they did not eject. This was disturbing. I was picturing myself trying to find a new extractor for a 70-year-old gun. On top of this, the accuracy was not good. I was around 8 yards back, and I was getting about 2″ for 9 rounds, which is not good by my standards.

I stuck some CPRN’s in the gun, and lo and behold, they cycled perfectly. Problem: I kept missing the target entirely. Or so I thought. It turned out 7 rounds went through one hole. When I got close enough to look at the target, I saw that I had two flyers plus a hole big enough to stick your finger through. So…pretty accurate. Startlingly so.

In this photo, the surprising shots are in the top left bullseye. Those bullseyes are 4″ across, so the lines are 1/2″ apart.

I was disturbed. I’m out of practice, and I know I’m not able to shoot as well as I have in the past, but here I was, shooting .22’s into a single hole. I had to start thinking about things.

1. Am I a much better shot than I understood? If so, proceed to next question.

2. Have I been screwing up my shooting results by using cheap ammo? Maybe what I’ve been attributing to lack of skill and talent has actually been the result of using inexpensive ammunition.

3. Do I need to start buying or making better ammunition and working on my guns to make sure they’re functioning as well as they can?

Another question: what am I supposed to do with all my cheap ammo? I just ordered thousands of CCI Mini-mag CHOOT ‘EM HP’s. I can’t return them.

The Colt shot like a laser with the CCI CPRN’s, and the trigger felt the way the triggers in heaven feel. I was overwhelmed by the lightness of the pull and the total lack of creep. I’ve been dreaming of a trigger like this one. I was awed.

I was out of CPRN’s at this point because I only had a few on hand, so I drove around trying to find new ones. None of the local places had them. I found some lead CCI Select rounds that were pretty similar, and I bought a 100-round box. I also picked up some Aguila Super Extra, which is incredibly inexpensive yet gets very good reviews.

I got home, hosed the gun with Hornady One Shot, Boresnaked it, grabbed my Smith & Wesson Victory pistol for comparison, and went back to the pasture. The cows were happy to see me, as were their three new calves.

I shot some of the new CCI’s with the Colt, and again, I got fantastic results. I put up another 4-bullseye target. I shot the upper two bullseyes with the Colt, using CCI on one and Aguila on the other. I repeated the process on the lower bullseyes with the SW22.

I didn’t get the same fantastic results this time. Maybe I was tired, or maybe it was because the blazing sun was directly behind me, making the target harder to see. Both brands of ammo cycled perfectly, although I had a couple of FTF’s with the Aguila. I didn’t see a difference in accuracy.

Before I quit, I shot some Mini-mag HP’s at a metal target, and they cycled. I guess the cycling issue was caused by dried-up gunk in the Colt’s breech. Well and good. I was not going to have to pay a smith to fix it.

Until today, I loved my SW22, but now I’m souring on it a little. The trigger is utterly inferior to the Colt’s. Not in the same league; not in the same universe. I didn’t realize how bad it was until I shot the SW22 after the Woodsman. Now I feel like I have to get a new trigger.

I’m also unhappy with the SW22’s fiber optic sights. They’re hard to describe without photos, but you will see what they’re like if you Google. The black bits reflect a lot of sunlight, and the sight picture just seems loose. With the Cold, you know where you’re aiming. You may not know where your bullet will land, but you’ll know where it was supposed to land. With the SW22, the cone of uncertainty is somewhat larger. That’s okay for people who shoot 12″ groups, but I’m not one of those people.

Here’s my new take on the SW22. For what I paid–which was $319, if I recall–it’s a wonderful gun. If you want it to be a good gun compared to a more expensive .22 pistol, you’ll need to spend some money on it. You’ll want a $50 Tandemkross trigger (which I haven’t tried), Tandemkross Hive grips, and target sights.

Smith & Wesson now makes an SW22 with target sights. I emailed them to find out if I could put them on my gun. Hope so.

The Colt is unbelievable. It’s perfect. That’s all there is to it. All it needs are new magazines.

Now that I suspect I may be a better shot than I knew, I am going to have to start taking some measures. I’ll have to start using a grip exerciser, because if your hands aren’t in shape, they will shake a tiny bit after a few dozen shots. I’ll have to wear different shoes or work harder to get a stable stance, because wobbling around on work boot soles can open groups up; people argue with me about this, but I don’t think they know what they’re talking about, because they can’t shoot well enough to see the effect. I’ll need to compare types of ammunition and be willing to spend on whatever works. I’ll have to stop shooting when the sun is directly behind me. I’ll even have to clean my guns once in a while.

I’ll have to stop going 8 months without shooting.

If I do all or most of these things, and I don’t get consistent 1″ groups at 7-8 yards, I can quit and go back to junk ammo.

I’ve been thinking about getting a High-Standard pistol to replace the one that was stolen from my grandmother’s estate. I learned a lot about the High Standard line over the last few days. I’m pretty sure my grandfather had a Sport King, which is a cheap model. High Standard made top-notch target pistols that competed with Hammerli, so when you shoot a Sport King, you haven’t really had the High Standard experience.

I would like to get a Sport King or something very similar, simply because that’s what I shot with my grandfather on his farms, but I’m tempted to get something a little better. They’re not expensive. You can get a really nice High Standard target pistol for $800.

I’m considering getting a Field King, which is somewhat better than the Sport King, plus a Citation, which is a very accurate target gun. If I have a Citation, I should be able to shoot with complete confidence that nearly all of the variation in my groups is my fault. Once you take your gun’s failings out of the equation, you can see what you’re doing wrong, and you can work on it. If your gun shoots all over the place, you may try to correct technique problems you don’t actually have, making your shooting worse.

It’s good that I shot well. It’s good to know I may have more potential than I realized. It’s good to know my SW22 needs work. But now I have new work to do. Until today, I was content to let things go the way they were going. Now I may have to exert myself slightly.

Yesterday I saw some guys competing in an Olympic-style event. They used expensive semiauto pistols to fire at 4″ bullseyes about 80 feet away, and to win, they had to hit them most of the time. They were shooting with one hand, and they had to shoot 5 rounds in 4 seconds. That tells me the .22 can do some amazing things if you do your part and use the right equipment.

I don’t want to spend $20 for a box of .22 ammo, but maybe I can find something that will shoot into 1/4″ at 7 yards. That ought to be good enough. If I can put 20 rounds into 1/2″, I will probably be satisfied.

I’ll shoot again in better light and see what happens.