Saturday Range Trip

Well, it seems that it was a weekend for shooting, as my friends at Lagniappes Lair and The Shekel were out as well.

My trip was experimental in nature.  My kids and I shot a match (the Glassen) at my club last Tuesday, and my 15-year-old was using the club AR that she has been issued, which I equipped with a .22LR conversion kit, since all of her shooting this summer was to be .22.  This worked well all summer, until we went to the Appleseed shoot a couple of weekends ago, where it suddenly began to pattern like a shotgun, and keyholing.  At 25 meters.  To the point of having to borrow a rifle for her to continue to participate.  A closer inspection in the evening showed extreme leading in the barrel and in the conversion unit.  I cleaned it thoroughly the night before the match, but I had no idea how it was going to perform.  Well, to her great and tearful disappointment, the cleaning helped not a bit.  The match is 4 targets, 5 shots each target, in 30 minutes, with 10 sighters, at 50 yards.  Her sighters were fine, but after that she was all over the place, completely missing two of the targets.  She didn't even have her targets scored, she was so upset.

Well, this rifle has run like a top ever since she has had it, so didn't think there was anything wrong with the rifle, but I wanted to make sure, so since I had a trip to Williamston planned for Saturday morning, I packed the rifle up and took it with me so I could pop over to the club after my meeting.  I wanted to fire some .223 through it also, as they recommend doing that once in a while to blow the crud out of the gas tube that can accumulate when firing .22LR.  Of course, I forgot the .223 bolt, so that didn't happen.

I had 3 different kinds of .22 ammo with me:  Winchester M-22, which is a 40-grain "black copper" plated round, Winchester Wildcat, a 40-grain lead round, and some Federal plated stuff in the red 550 round bulk pack - this was a 36-grain hollow point. 

I loaded up the M-22 first to see what would happen.  This was the ammo she used at the Appleseed and at the Glassen.  I shot at 25 yards just to see how it was printing, and because the MRPA was having a match at the 50 and 100 yd lines. Well, I saw the same performance she did - shots all over the place, and a couple of keyholes.  This surprised me as my Ruger 10/22 really likes this ammo.  So I switched over to the Wildcat and got the same thing.  I pulled the conversion unit out and took a look at it, and I did see some flecks of lead on it (likely from the Wildcat), so I cleaned it up a bit and put it back in.  Then I loaded up the Federals.  Wow!  All of a sudden, it was grouping consistently, and with no keyholes!  I put another 20 or 30 rounds of that downrange just to make sure, then I put up a new target and shot a 10 round string from the sitting position with a sling, like they taught us at Appleseed.  My score was 100, 5X.

When I showed her this target later at home, she started yelling "no way!".  I told her this target should be an encouragement to her, because it told her that she didn't shoot badly, but that the gun didn't like the ammo I gave her to use.  I hope that helped her to put her experiences of the past week behind her and look forward to shooting again, because she is really good and I would like her to see how far she can go with this.  It might even help her get some scholarship money for college!

I also shot my Glock 17 while I was there.  I think I want to lighten the trigger on that thing a little bit - I don't know if it's stacking or if it has one of those NY triggers that are over 9 pounds, but it's really stiff just before it breaks.