The Reckoning Approaches

This was written yesterday.

I was going to go out in the pasture and shoot my new .22 at 35 yards in order to zero the scope, but I have neglected my bench, so I had to lift it with the tractor, bring it in, sand and plane it a little, clean it up, seal the wood, pop the tires off, fill them with Slime, reinstall them, and move it back to the pasture.

I ended up shooting from a seated position on my back porch, using a wobbly plastic hunting tripod. It wasn’t a great rest, but it wasn’t the worst.

I used CCI standard velocity target rounds, rated at 1050 fps. This makes them subsonic, and subsonics are very quiet out of silencers. I used my freshly-cleaned silencer today.

The nice scope I ordered will not be here for a while, so I slapped a Vortex Diamondback 4-12×42 on the gun. I knew this was not an expensive scope, but until today, I didn’t realize how lacking it was. I felt like I was looking through glass someone had touched with their oily hair. On top of that, I could not get everything to look sharp at 35 yards, so I had to guess a little.

The scope has no illumination. Once you’ve had an illuminated reticle, you’ll be really spoiled. I could have used one today. It was starting to get dark when I sat down to shoot, and I only got about 35 rounds out before I quit.

I think the scope would be fine for deer or some other large game in good light, but shooting into an inch at 35 yards is not what it was made for.

The gun’s trigger is wonderful. I adjusted it for a very low pull. For some reason, I get used to triggers very fast, so even if a trigger is light, I start to feel like I’m trying to lift a bowling ball. It’s very strange how quickly I adapt, and I don’t know whether it’s a good thing or a bad thing. In any case, the trigger feels sort of like the trigger on my Colt Woodsman. Like breaking a little glass rod, as they say.

Hearing protection was not even a consideration. I did some research, and I’m confident I can shoot high velocity rounds with my silencer without protection. Using subsonics, the sound was sort of like a loud click. Like a strong air rifle.

I’ll post the targets I used. I started out on the target to the right. I was WAY off when I fired the first shots, so I had to crank the turrets over and over. When I finished, I shot the group by the left bullseye. I still need to bring the shots up slightly.

I definitely pulled the two worst shots (lower right), so I am confident this gun would have shot into around half an inch if I had done things correctly. Half an inch with a poor rest and bad light at 35 yards, with unimpressive ammo, suggests I could stay somewhere close to half an inch at 50 under better circumstances.

I am going to have to improve my steadiness if I want to kill squirrels. You can’t always shoot from a prone position using a nice bipod and bag. You have to do what you can, where you are. I think shooting unsupported would be hopeless at over 20 yards.

I hope to shoot again tomorrow, using a proper bench. I should be able to dial this scope in perfectly, and I could also try a couple of other types of ammunition. I don’t have a big variety here.

With squirrels, I suppose accuracy is the big thing. If a round with great terminal performance isn’t highly accurate, you will miss squirrels entirely, and if you can hit squirrels squarely, you don’t need fantastic terminal performance. Maybe I should hunt with the most accurate ammo I can find and forget about expansion and fragmentation.

I’m not sure about all this, but I’m gathering info.

The thing that scares me is that I might set up my bench and shoot the Tikka next to my Marlin Model 60 and Savage A22 and find out they’re just as accurate.

There are worse problems to have.