Winter Wonderland
Brrrr
...is a cold range.
Went to the gun club this weekend, a mere three days after SNOWMAGEDDON II, to try out my surprise new gun (which will be unveiled on Friday!) and to shoot a couple quick videos for an upcoming article. Was pleasantly surprised to find that the pistol range had been plowed out (the rifle range had not), but was dismayed (but not surprised) to find only a slim path carved one one intrepid shooter in the past three days. Spent about an hour with SCI-FI on the outdoor range freezing our extremities off, then went inside to the warmth of the clubhouse and indoor range for some more comfortable shooting.
Learned that Old NFO is exactly right in his view about powered optics - they will fail in extreme temperatures. Don't rely on lasers or red dots if you're shooting in the Arctic Circle, that's the take-home lesson for today kids, Now, granted, this is a laser sight that has been in use for over a year now and has seen significant time both at the range and at home for dry-fire practice, so this is absolutely not a condemnation of the sight itself. It's merely an observation that you should absolutely not rely on something that runs on electricity for a defensive arm - having it as a back-up or additional measure is fine; having it as your only means is a bad idea. Train with iron sights - they don't run out of juice or freeze up.
Shootin' stuff is fun, but shooting in 5ºF weather in two feet of snow gets old fast...
That is all.
11 comments:
I bet tracking down the brass is a pain lol
Forget the powered optics, in that kind of weather this Florida boy would find himself inoperable. I may not have been born here, but 20 years down here has made me very vulnerable when the temp drops below 70.
Drop something and you won't see it till the melt. Dropped a scope adjustment cap the other day and it flat out disappeared.
My club's ranges were fairly busy yesterday, considering the snow and cold. My club doesn't have an indoor range to retire to, but it does have an indoor BAR (with darts and pool table and no drinks over $2.50) which works quite nicely to warm ya up. :)
Jay, you should have brought your flamethrower to keep warm and de-ice the range ;)
On those rare occasions when I go shooting outdoors in the winter, I always think of those guys from Chosin, Stalingrad, or the Bulge, who actually had to fight in those conditions or worse, and who had no place to go to warm up.
Yep, battery usability is directly proportional to temperature. We used to keep our flashlights inside our parkas 'cause otherwise their batteries had a life expectancy of about five minutes.
Looks familiar... I came to the conclusion after my last range trip that next time I'm strapping on the snowshoes.
Jay, you did the right thing, since bad guys will not always pick nice sunny, warm days to attack... Trigger time in extremes give you a much better idea of how you function in those conditions... and how supporting systems don't...
Y'know, the funny part was that I didn't shoot too bad in the cold. I did shoot better indoors, though - one of the cool things about the indoor range is that the shooting area is *right* next to the furnace!
The battery issue is a real concern. I went with the Leupold Prismatic sight for that reason.
http://www.yankeegunnuts.com/2011/01/09/scopes-red-dot-design-flaw-fixed/
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