Boomity

I bought a Mosin-Nagant two years ago. It was a de-snipered PEM. I finally got around to taking it a range last fall, it shot OK, but well high and to the right.

The windage was easily brought back into the ballpark by drifting the sight a tad to the right. Fixing the elevation would require a higher front sight and then filing it down to regulate the elevation.

Screw that noise, that sounded too much like work. I bought a Mojo rear sight and installed it. That was fun, as I had to use a c-clamp to push the sight down against the rear sight retaining spring. My hope was that I would be able to lower the sight enough to not have to muck with the front sight.

Hope springing eternal, I also bought some Wolf Gold 180 grain hunting ammunition.

I took the rifle to a range yesterday and first used some Czech light ball to do the gross sighting in for a 25 yard zero. I would get two holes touching and a third that was an inch away. Part of that may have been my technique, as the benches there are a little low and when I use my sandbag rest, I have to kneel on the concrete floor (not fun with the ground barely unfrozen).

I saw that the rangemaster had a much higher rest, so I borrowed it. I also switched over to the civilian ammunition. And that made all of the difference; the rifle shot right to point of aim with tight groups.

Works for me.

But damn, I am getting to the point that I hate black rifles. Damn near every rifle on the range was black, even the bolt-actions. What is so wrong with a nice hardwood stock? The only rifles I saw at the range with wooden stocks was an elderly .30-30 and some Mosins. There were at least four other Mosins at the range.

So there were guys rapidly popping off rounds from ARs and AKs. And then you'd hear the much louder report from one of the Mosins, grandpaw coming to life.

I saw one guy with a detachable magazine-fed shotgun. He was firing slugs at a Dirty Bird silhouette target 25 yards away, shooting rapid fire. I was waiting for a firing point to open up; I was standing behind the covered area and two guys were by me. We all watched the shotgun shooter. When the shooter emptied his magazine, one of the guys said: "Wow." I shrugged and said: "Yeah, but he didn't hit anything."

And he didn't. Most of the slugs he fired missed the silhouette completely and blew holes in the cardboard backing. He hit the target on the right side once and grazed it a second time. All of the other rounds were Maggie's drawers.

I saw and heard a lot of that yesterday. Lots of guys were popping off full magazines as fast as they could work the triggers.* Seems to me like a huge waste of ammunition, but I am of the older school that "the idea is to hit the frakking target, not to make a bunch of noise." They might as well have been playing with firecrackers.

As Wyatt Earp supposedly said: "Fast is fine, but accuracy is everything."

A very long time ago, I read a book that had first-hand stories from the Old West. One of the stories was told by a man who was an itinerant tailor. He was waiting for a train at a station in a town. The station was nothing more than a tin roof on poles, shelter from the sun and rain was all. There were two other men there, both armed. They saw a deputy sheriff come out of a building and look at them. The deputy was maybe 75 yards away. One of the two men drew fast and shot at the deputy. The deputy drew his sidearm, took a two-handed grip and calmly returned fire.

The outlaw emptied his revolver. One shot grazed the deputy's leg, one shot killed a draft horse and one shot hit the tailor's suitcase, which was filled with his trade goods.

The deputy fired three shots, all of which hit the outlaw in the torso. The outlaw fell down on the third impact and died. The outlaw was fast, all right, and it didn't do him a damn bit of good.
_________________________________________________
* There was one guy there who was wearing a t-shirt that said "chicks dig guys with big guns." I took that to mean that he probably hasn't had sex with another person for the last decade.