Hill Country Blogfest Range Report
'Cause Nothing Helps A Hangover Like Shooting Guns!
For the final outing of the Hill Country Blogfest last weekend, the various attendees still able to move under their own power drove out to the Dietz Gun Range outside of New Braunfels.
It's not a bad range. I've certainly seen worse. The free-ranging cows certainly added to the atmosphere.
After dodging all the cow-flop and getting situated under the mercifully large covered shooting area (HOT sun that day!), we commenced to break out the hardware. I brought a bunch of stuff, and ended up only shooting about half of it. The two Marlin .22 autoloaders never got fired (which means I don't have to clean them! Yay!), and two other boomsticks suffered some breakdowns.
I'd bought a whole lot of 7.62x39 ammo to run through the SKS, but the SKS just wasn't having any of it. The receiver cover scope mount and the red dot sight obstructed the stripper-clip slot, and that damned aftermarket 30 round mag firmly resisted any efforts at single-loading rounds. It kept seating them too far back, or too far forward, jamming up the action either way. Trying to hold the bolt back and stuff in rounds one at a time is problematic at best, and with the red dot sight in the way, was damn near impossible. I gave up after 9 rounds, so that's all that got shot out of it that day. Needless to say, after dismounting the red dot sight so the SKS would fit in the hardshell travel case with that enormous banana mag hanging off the bottom, the zero was off by at least an hour-of-angle. Scrub one gun. I'm going back to the factory 10-round mag, and either a gas-tube scope mount or plain iron sights. Screw all that "tactical" nonsense.
Second disappointment was the S&W 2214. Now I understand why it had a $109 price tag on it. Every other round failed to eject properly. After playing the *POP* "DAMN!" shake rattle yank-slide game for a few rounds, one spent round got jammed in the chamber after a live round pushed in behind it, and I had to put it back in the case until I got home to some decent tools. It may not have been the ejector, but the older standard-velocity ammo I was shooting. Those Smith .22's seem to like a hotter round. My buddy Zibig's S&W 422 is the same way.
I'll need to clean it and properly lube the slide rails (which were a bit dry & gritty), then try with some zippier ammo to see if the problem persists. A new extractor, pin and spring aren't but $15 or so from Numrich, and will make a fun weekend project. Scrub TWO guns!
Fortunately, the 1911, the Vaquero and the Blackhawk all performed with their usual reliability, as did the latest addition to the rifle collection, the 8mm BRNO VZ-24. I didn't have any surplus 8mm, only a box of Federal Premium ammo for the Mauser-clone, so I winced at the dollar-a-shot tariff. I put through 5 rounds just to see how it printed on paper (acceptably, considering the iron sights), then let Denita try it out. Other than taking the skin off her thumb knuckle by dragging the bolt across it while reloading cross-handed, she did great! The recoil came as a bit of a surprise, I'm sure! Still, it's not nearly as bad as a KAR-98 with that sharp-edged skullcrusher buttplate. This one you can actually shoot a lot before the bruises start sprouting.
I wish I got more range time for myself, but I was dashing all over trying to get people to burn off all this ammo I'd bought for the BlogShoot. I think most folks there got a chance to put some .45 Long Colt rounds through a gen-you-wine cowboy sixshooter, and pretty much everyone got at least a mag or two through the 1911. LC Beth really liked the Hogue Monogrip for the Ruger Blackhawk .357. That thing does tame the recoil!
Zip's neighbor Ray brought out a collection of scoped smallbores to shoot, and most folks got a chance to do some 100 yard plinking. Denita and I chatted with a guy sporting the IMAO Celebrate Diversity T-shirt, and found out that you run across blog readers in the most out-of-the-way places!
If it was 20 degrees cooler, and I had hardware that wasn't buggered, it would have been perfect, but all in all, everyone seemed to enjoy themselves. We decided that the BlogShoot needed to be a permanent fixture of these BlogMeets, which means sooner or later, we'll actually get Zippo out to one, clogged sink or not!
For the final outing of the Hill Country Blogfest last weekend, the various attendees still able to move under their own power drove out to the Dietz Gun Range outside of New Braunfels.
It's not a bad range. I've certainly seen worse. The free-ranging cows certainly added to the atmosphere.
After dodging all the cow-flop and getting situated under the mercifully large covered shooting area (HOT sun that day!), we commenced to break out the hardware. I brought a bunch of stuff, and ended up only shooting about half of it. The two Marlin .22 autoloaders never got fired (which means I don't have to clean them! Yay!), and two other boomsticks suffered some breakdowns.
I'd bought a whole lot of 7.62x39 ammo to run through the SKS, but the SKS just wasn't having any of it. The receiver cover scope mount and the red dot sight obstructed the stripper-clip slot, and that damned aftermarket 30 round mag firmly resisted any efforts at single-loading rounds. It kept seating them too far back, or too far forward, jamming up the action either way. Trying to hold the bolt back and stuff in rounds one at a time is problematic at best, and with the red dot sight in the way, was damn near impossible. I gave up after 9 rounds, so that's all that got shot out of it that day. Needless to say, after dismounting the red dot sight so the SKS would fit in the hardshell travel case with that enormous banana mag hanging off the bottom, the zero was off by at least an hour-of-angle. Scrub one gun. I'm going back to the factory 10-round mag, and either a gas-tube scope mount or plain iron sights. Screw all that "tactical" nonsense.
Second disappointment was the S&W 2214. Now I understand why it had a $109 price tag on it. Every other round failed to eject properly. After playing the *POP* "DAMN!" shake rattle yank-slide game for a few rounds, one spent round got jammed in the chamber after a live round pushed in behind it, and I had to put it back in the case until I got home to some decent tools. It may not have been the ejector, but the older standard-velocity ammo I was shooting. Those Smith .22's seem to like a hotter round. My buddy Zibig's S&W 422 is the same way.
I'll need to clean it and properly lube the slide rails (which were a bit dry & gritty), then try with some zippier ammo to see if the problem persists. A new extractor, pin and spring aren't but $15 or so from Numrich, and will make a fun weekend project. Scrub TWO guns!
Fortunately, the 1911, the Vaquero and the Blackhawk all performed with their usual reliability, as did the latest addition to the rifle collection, the 8mm BRNO VZ-24. I didn't have any surplus 8mm, only a box of Federal Premium ammo for the Mauser-clone, so I winced at the dollar-a-shot tariff. I put through 5 rounds just to see how it printed on paper (acceptably, considering the iron sights), then let Denita try it out. Other than taking the skin off her thumb knuckle by dragging the bolt across it while reloading cross-handed, she did great! The recoil came as a bit of a surprise, I'm sure! Still, it's not nearly as bad as a KAR-98 with that sharp-edged skullcrusher buttplate. This one you can actually shoot a lot before the bruises start sprouting.
I wish I got more range time for myself, but I was dashing all over trying to get people to burn off all this ammo I'd bought for the BlogShoot. I think most folks there got a chance to put some .45 Long Colt rounds through a gen-you-wine cowboy sixshooter, and pretty much everyone got at least a mag or two through the 1911. LC Beth really liked the Hogue Monogrip for the Ruger Blackhawk .357. That thing does tame the recoil!
Zip's neighbor Ray brought out a collection of scoped smallbores to shoot, and most folks got a chance to do some 100 yard plinking. Denita and I chatted with a guy sporting the IMAO Celebrate Diversity T-shirt, and found out that you run across blog readers in the most out-of-the-way places!
If it was 20 degrees cooler, and I had hardware that wasn't buggered, it would have been perfect, but all in all, everyone seemed to enjoy themselves. We decided that the BlogShoot needed to be a permanent fixture of these BlogMeets, which means sooner or later, we'll actually get Zippo out to one, clogged sink or not!
posted by El Capitan | 11:26 AM
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