A few weeks back a helped a buddy of mine pick out an AK variant at a gun show. He was intent on getting a folder of some kind and settled for a piece built up from an M70 Yugo parts kit. I’m honestly not even sure who the builder was.

Anyway, we took it out today along with my Egyptian MAADI and my AR-15. Not much exciting happened unless you want to count me not even hitting the target with either AK at 50 and 100 yards. It’s been about two years since I’ve gotten behind a rifle and it shows. Funny thing is I was fine with the AR. And by “fine” I mean I managed to keep everything in an 8″ circle at 100 yards. That’s about what I’d expect out of me. Seriously, for a gun nut, I’m a pretty crappy shot.

But couldn’t hit anything with either AK. Go figure.

About 5-6 years ago I got a slight itch for .22LR rifles and for some reason also happened to have a hankering for lever guns. This resulted in me picking up a budget Henry lever gun in .22LR from a pawn shop on a whim and Marlin 56 Levermatic without knowing what it was off a guy at a gun show for $120.

I still have no idea if I got a good deal on the Levermatic. What I do know is it came without a magazine and that’s why I’ve never shot it.

I’m not sure what brought this to my mind today but I hit up Numrich and found a replacement mag. I’m hoping to finally take it to the range in a couple of weeks.

I took my coach gun (Baikal 12 gauge SxS w/ 20″ tubes) out today to test point of aim vs. point of impact with a couple brands of rifled slugs at 25 yards.

Yeah, bad idea. I had two brands of 1oz slugs rated at 1600fps at the muzzle. I couldn’t hit worth a damn at 25 yards which made the entire exercise pointless. After 6 rounds (4 from brand A, 2 from brand B) I packed it up.

I might look into rolling my own at a more pedestrian 1200fps. It really is kind of stupid for me to be buying slugs at $0.75 – $1.00 a pop when I’ve got all the gear to do it myself.

The family is headed out for a camping trip in the not so distant future up in the UP of Michigan. You know, where all the bears are. That always makes me a tiny bit nervous and the news about a bear attack in Yellowstone isn’t helping.

I know they’re not likely to interfere with humans. I get that. I really do.

But I’m still going to pattern some 1oz rifled slugs at 25 yards out of my coach gun this weekend.

Ed Friedman has some info on its development

For the record I’ll admit that I never thought the design would be approved by the ATF, not even after they initially approved it. Obviously I was wrong and I’ll own up to it. This thing really looks like it’s going to hit the market sometime soon and that makes me happy.

I hit Chick-Owa Sportsman’s Club tonight for another “action pistol” shoot. My recap on the last shoot can be found here.

This one was a single stage that we ran through a few times each. Two “good” hits required on 3 different cardboard silhouettes with a steel spinner obscured by a hostage at the end was the whole stage. Shoot well and it’s only 7 rounds.

I cleared my first run with 24 shots. Had a little trouble with that steel spinner at the end there. Total time: 73 seconds. My 3rd run was down to 19 seconds which was about par for the course. The winner came through in just over 11 seconds but he “cheated” a bit — no use of concealment, firing on the move the whole time. Nothing wrong with that though. Just a different way of solving the problem at hand.

On my 4th run I had a couple of malfunctions with my Glock 23C. Basically it’s due for a cleaning. I’ve been letting it slide on purpose, opting to carry my 1911 while I let the Glock get gunked up. I’m not sure if it was a premature slide lock or if the feed ramp is getting too dirty for those flat-nosed .40S&W rounds to glide up it. What made me happy there is I cleared the first malfunction with a mag change without thinking about it and the 2nd one, where I had no more mags and could see brass, did a quick tap-rack-bang without any thought. That was a bit comforting but I should have just done a tap-rack-bang on the first one. That was a mistake.

But, in the end after doing two of these shoots I’ve learned that I mostly need to work on:

• My accuracy (sight picture and trigger control are lacking under any stress)
• My reloads
• My presentation
• My speed

Yeah, about the only thing I really feel up to snuff on is safe handling. And I’m OK with that, for now.

Oh, and I will admit that I was the only one to put any holes into a “no shoot” target. Shooting the course “as designed” had you putting holes into a bad guy about 15 yards away with a “no shoot” just to the right of that halfway down range. I pulled two shots to the right and winged the “no shoot” guy. My bad. I think he’d have lived though.

Some shotgun steel plate shoots are coming up in my area and I’m hoping to improve my performance at these compared to the one I attended last year.

In an attempt to do that I’ve gone and, possibly, upgraded my 870 Wingmaster a bit. I slapped a TacStar 6 shot side saddle onto it. Last year I was fishing shells out of the same pouch I use to hold shells for trap, skeet, and sporting clays. Not exactly high speed.

Installation was easy. Just drift out the two pins holding in the trigger guard and replace them with the screws and washers provided in the package:

The flip side:

Note: The slide is pulled completely to the rear here and I’ve got plenty of clearance. That was nice because heaven forbid I’d have to take some sandpaper to that pristine foregrip you see in the picture, eh?

Here’s how the whole thing looks:

The barrel you see on it is a Mossberg made clearance special that I found for about $90, 20 inches long, cylinder bore, with rifle sights. The rear leaf folds down and I just use the front post much like one would a bead, though it is a bit high. Works well enough for 15 yards and under.

Of course, it’s not the hardware that makes a good home defense shotgun. It’s the software. I’ve run thousands of shells through this gun in the old configuration. Now I’m going to have to start drilling reloads off the side saddle before it becomes of any practical use.

This evening I did my first “action shoot” over at the Chick-Owa Sportsman’s Club in Zeeland. I was expecting an IDPA-lite match but that wasn’t what the organizer had in store for us.

We shot the Federal Air Marshal Qualification Course instead and it was pretty darned fun! And eye opening as far as just how damned slow I really am with a pistol.

Drawing from concealment (under a polo shirt) and getting a round on target was happening in 2.1-2.2 seconds for me. Not horrible but not good. Magazine changes were painfully slow. Part of that was taking a good 0.2 seconds to get the gun back into running order after slamming the fresh mag home but mostly it was because I was fishing the fresh mag out of my front jeans pocket.

Yep, I don’t own a single mag carrier. I think it’s time to change that. Not just for pistol games like this but for when I carry too.

And my accuracy sucks. The only event I was really happy with was the 6 shots in 3 seconds from low ready. I came in at 3.01 on that event and the group was the size of my hand. On nearly everything else I was concentrating too much on going fast to get good hits at my skill level.

But, it was fun, and I’m going to keep working on my pistol skills during the weekends. Next shoot is a month away and I hope to see some improvement.

I hit the range today for a quick workout with a pistol trying to get a better handle on my sight picture before an informal “action pistol” match this Wednesday. I’m really looking forward to it.

I started to pack up when another shooter came to the pistol range. I watched him fire a five shot string semi-one-handed. He was using a common hold, but one I’ve never seen taught anywhere, where you grip the pistol with the strong hand and hold the weak around your wrist. First shot is 3″ low and 3″ left of the target. The next shot is right near it. And the other three drifted further to the left and ever lower ending up about 6″ down and left.

Pretty much textbook poor trigger control with a case of the flinches. Been there, done that, and I’m sure I’ll do it again. But not with that goofy hold. Where does that come from!?

As I got into the car I observed him to be, at least from my vantage point, tinkering with the location of the rear sight on his pistol. I presume to drift it to the right. And that reminded me of Tam’s post on acquiring a pistol with a high rear sight that had been drifted all the way right. To quote her:

Looks like someone was seeking a hardware solution for a software problem.

And I’m pretty sure that’s what I saw today.

I set the DVR to record Top Shot on the History Channel tonight and picked it up after it aired.

So far I’m OK with it. It doesn’t appear to be as big on the drama factor like other reality shows are and they don’t spend any time dumbing down the gun stuff for non-gunnies. They just breeze on past it and if you get it you do, if you don’t you don’t. I like that.

The worst example of dumbing it down has to be R. Lee Ermey’s Lock and Load show. Holy Hell. They stop every 4 minutes for a stupid info-graphic that trots out for bits of info that takes 2 seconds to cover and they draw it out to 15 seconds with stupid graphics. And half the time the shit is wrong, or misleading, with regards to range. But I digress.

So, I like the format of the show. It balances nicely with my inner gun nut and it wasn’t intolerable for my wife even though I pointed out a couple of time that I kinda-sorta know that one guy on the show.

But, now, let’s talk about the actual show that aired tonight. If you haven’t watched it yet consider this my SPOILER ALERT.

I don’t know squat about the shooters, aside from Caleb, except for what they’re showing on the show. I’m only going off what I see on the screen, and I may write poorly of them based on that when it might not be justified. With that out of the way:

Nevermind. I’m scrubbing what I originally wrote. I still have no idea how the first man eliminated managed to miss what looked like an 8″ target at 100 yards after 30 shots, but given that he’s a known high-power shooter he obviously knows what he’s doing. Bad day? Bad rifle? Bad ammo? No idea.