Cat & Vacation Blogging

I spent a good party of yesterday at a rifle range with two nephews of a good friend. The two boys are ages 20 and 16. Neither had ever shot a rifle before.

I started them off with a Savage Mk II in .22lr. (Mine has open sights, though.)



This was to go through the basics of shooting. (The range was benchrest-only.)

Then it was on to the M-1. Both of the boys have played "Call of Duty" a lot. They were surprised at both the weight of the rifle and the recoil.



They also shot this rifle, which is my "frankenrifle". It is a .30-06 made up of an Interarms Mk-X long Mauser action and stock, with a FN surplus Mauser .30-06 barrel and a Weaver K-4.



Ammo used was CCI minimags and some surplus M2 ball that I had purchased many years ago. One of the surplus rounds blew out its primer pocket, locking up the M-1's action. A little force on the operating rod handle and the action popped open, ejecting the offending case.

I lost track of the number of .30-06 rounds we went through, but it was a lot. I kept telling one of the boys to snug the rifles into his shoulder, which he wasn't too good at doing, so he should have a bit of bruising by now. He also wasn't operating the bolt on the Mauser anywhere near as firmly as he should have; I kept telling him "don't baby it, it's steel-on-steel, you're not going to break it." He kept having to manually clear the action. The oldest was soon operating the bolts on the rifles like a pro. He shot very well for a noob.

I was impressed with their sense, as both of them switched back and forth between the centerfire and rimfire rifles. Neither seemed to be letting testosterone rule things. I only shot the Savage a few times at the start to demonstrate proper positioning. They did the rest of the shooting and I just kept a close eye on them. Good kids and we had a good time.

I didn't make them suffer through the joys of field-stripping and cleaning, that's for the next time.

So I'm staying at a friend's house. I have the cats with me, there are five total in the house. The other night, she saw a ball in her bedroom and kicked it over for one of her cats, who ran off. She then picked it up and discovered that it was a turd that George had dropped. She was outraged and, as she told me what had happened, I had a devil of a time not laughing. Today, she finally admitted that it was funny.

The first night was rough, with Gracie running back and forth on the bed and growling at all of the other cats. But she settled down soon enough.