Friday range time

I went to the Fort Bliss Rod & Gun Club this time, since I do have a membership and all. It’s too busy most times I’m free to shoot, but noon on a Friday is a good time to get a small range to myself.

The reloads (230 grain Hornady XTPs over 6.2 grains of Universal with CCI primers) worked very well. I had one almost-FTF, where I had to hit the rear of the slide to get it to lock. I’m not sure why, but my guess is either a poor crimp or a bad case. They felt a bit stout compared to factory loadings, but there were no signs of high pressure on the cases, and velocity is what I want with a defensive hollowpoint round anyway.

The XTPs put nice clean holes through the cardboard. At ten yards it looked like they were hole-punched. I’m hitting a bit right of center, but that might be me flinching rather than the fault of the cartridge. This group was shot quickly at ten yards, just getting a sight picture and going for a compressed surprise break trigger pull:

The two right fliers were my fault; I jerked the trigger and felt it. The two rounds over the group were from a (poor) walking double tap, and the two head shots were also obviously not part of the group, just aimed shots.

I’m happy with this load; it’s definitely more accurate than I am. We’ll never know just how accurate because I don’t have the patience to stand there and spend thirty seconds on each shot and make a nice tight group, let alone EVER shoot off the bench. I prefer shooting fast and dirty and doing movement and multiple target stuff.

Since I only brought 40 rounds of 45 ACP, I spent most of the time with my 9mm and 1911 22LR conversion. The STI is an awesomely accurate pistol: I’ve regularly shot used 12 gauge hulls off the tops of my targets at 10 yards with it. Not to say I center punch them… but basically, if I do my part, the target is going to get hit. Of course, that’s not always easy.

I figured I should do a comparison target with my 9mm to see how well it shoots next to the 45 ACP loads I used. This is not an entirely fair test, as I was using military surplus ammo (Federal 115gr FMJ +P I believe), and I’m certain 9mm handloads would be a better comparison. Anyway, this was the result:

I shot this group the exact same way: fast sight picture, compressed surprise break, 10 yards. It looks to be about the same size as the other group, just more on target.

During 22 practice, I tried to do a sort-of El Presidente drill, which was hard because I only had two targets and no holster to draw from since I was wearing my regular carry gun already and didn’t bring any other leather anyway. So it was a flop. My best time from drawing out of my freakin pocket was 9.45 seconds. Not awesome. I’m slow at reloading out of my hoodie front pocket… clearly I need to work out a better plan before I get to the range. Winging it doesn’t work.

Of course I did lots of double taps, mozambiques, etc. I even got some free malfunction practice with my 22 conversion because it was getting gummed up from the wax on the bullets and along with fail to feeds, I even got a double feed! That happened during one of my El Presidente drills. It bumped my time up to like 13 seconds.

The newest thing I tried was starting back at about twenty yards, hitting the shot timer (random start .5 to 6 seconds) and walking slowly toward a target with 9mm in my right hand, held loosely. On the buzzer I had to put two rounds on target. If I was past about seven yards before it buzzed, I took two shots on each target (one yard apart). I think it was a useful drill. Oh, and I couldn’t stop moving. That meant the time I got hit with a buzzer at 18 yards, it took three shots because I put one below the piece of printer paper I was using as my ‘kill zone’.

I would like to start shooting matches again. I’m not that good right now, but how else do I get better?