Meditations on Range Time...

As the weather gets nicer (not that this winter was terribly brutal, but still...), I find myself hitting the range a little more frequently. Now, I'm still getting out maybe twice a month - I'd really like to increase that to at least once a week - and the vast majority of my trips to the range have been to shoot T&E guns (I know, I know, it's a tough life...). I haven't shot a .22LR in ages (note to self: work on Mossberg to get one of their 464 Tactical Lever Action rifles for review...).

Polymer range day

Lately it's been all tactical firearms - polymer handguns, polymer carbines, even a polymer revolver (look for the Ruger LCR review next week). I need to take one trip a month where I bring a bunch of .22s and a couple revolvers and just have fun at the range: steel targets, orange clays on the berm, maybe even contact my pal Doubletrouble and hit the sooper seekrit range to blow up some water jugs...

(Side note: The KRISS Super V Vector is a crowd pleaser at the range. I've brought it to my gun club a couple of times, and both times I've been mobbed by other shooters wanting to know what it was, how it shot, etc. This is definitely not a gun for introverts...)

Now, I know, this isn't exactly the most pitiable of laments. "Oh poor me. I have all these guns I just have to shoot" - and it's not that getting to the range even with a bunch of polymer guns isn't fun; it still is. It's just that when you have a deadline, even a self-imposed deadline, having to do *anything* "under the gun" becomes less of a fun thing and more of a chore to get finished. I find myself thinking not "oh boy! I get to go to the range" but "oh hell, I have got to get to the range this weekend to finish up the review on the Blastomatic5000".

That aside, one of the great things about getting new firearms to test is that it makes me go to the range more often. My biggest shooting issue is the flinch - it's patently obvious when I haven't been to the range in a while, because all of my shots wind up at six o'clock in the outer ring. When I'm making trips regularly, this becomes much less of an issue - and having three or four guns to test means that I'm making regular range trips.

Any day at the range is a good day; anything that gets you to the range more often is a good thing...

A bad day at the range beats a good day of pretty much anything else, IMHO. Even when shooting under a deadline, the restorative effects of recoil therapy are quite evident - I have never left a range feeling tense. Even when I'm scribbling notes furiously and taking random pictures of targets and noting how many rounds of what manufacture I've put through a certain gun, I'm still having a heck of a lot of fun - and that's what it's all about...

Now, if I could just find an ammunition manufacturer who'd like to sponsor me...

That is all.