Update on the Previous Post
I try to spend my Sunday’s around my family and that’s what I did this Sunday. Mostly. I did take some time to hit the range as I said I would in the previous post.
Not bad.
First off, the cadet wasn’t that bad of a pistol shot. Oh, he’s horrid, but he can at least drop them all in a target the size of a man’s chest a 7 yards with ease. It looks like a shotgun pattern but I’ve seen much, much worse.
Actually I’m being a bit hard on him. It doesn’t look like a shotgun pattern at all, the shots tend to pull in one direction or another fairly consistent. There would be a vertical string off the left of the bulls-eye on one mag, a spread-hand sized grouping around 5 o’clock on another one, a group way too low, etc.
He’s got a flinch. It happens. With a .22LR pistol he’s quite able to put them where he wants them.
Expected. Practice, provided that he keeps using the .22LR to get rid of that flinch, will solve the problem in the long run.
Not that I’m one to talk — I am by no means a crack shot with a pistol.
It was very interesting to watch a total novice today. He’d fire a full magazine consisting of 12 rounds of .40S&W out of his Springfield XD and then wonder why they’re all to the left and strung out like that.
Trigger control.
After some time I handed him my Smith & Wesson 1911 and let him give that a guy. First shot: Bulls-eye.
Why? He had no idea when the trigger was going to release. Any 1911 design has a pretty short trigger pull compared to most pistols but when you put it up against something like the XD or a Glock the difference is astounding.
Of course, the rest of the magazine he emptied was off target and showed evidence of flinching.
With enough practice he’ll get the hang of it.
He did bring along his SKS too. In my previous post I said he needed to get the cosmoline out of it but it was actually pretty clean already. Clean enough to shoot at least.
I did a couple checks to make sure that the firing pin wasn’t going to lock in place and cause a slam-fire. It was still floating around nicely so I wasn’t concerned with that. I then took it to a sunny part of the range and gave the bore and chamber a quick check. No blockage — good to go.
We played around for that a bit with it. Long enough to realise that it works and it shoots where you point it. We also played around with my Marlin 1984C in .357/.38 special and my Schmidt-Rubin K-31.
Good times.