The 100-yard fly

So the other day, I went out to fire some test loads and just play around with my trusty FAL and an old #1Mk3 Enfield.

The FAL has just undergone a refinishing so that it's finally all the same color, and I replaced the sights, which required a re-zeroing.Since I was trying to zero the sights, I was shooting the rifle with the aid of a bipod. Consequently, I was able to put the rounds into a pretty tight group, especially since I was only firing at 100 yards. Every hole was visible as a little black dot through my spotting scope so I could tell exactly where I was hitting.

However, upon firing my sixth shot, I looked through the spotting scope and saw one black dot on the target way out on the rim at 2 o'clock, several inches away from the rest of the holes. What the...? Usually I can tell when I'm going to have a flyer of some sort, but that last shot felt perfect.

Then I counted the holes. Six in the group, and the little dot on the rim made seven...or did it?

I took my eye away from the scope for a second, to recount my empty brass, and when I looked back, the seventh "hole" had moved from 2 o'clock down to the bottom of the target. It was just some stupid flying insect on the target.

Sounds silly, but I've seen that exact same thing cost two really good shooters that I know some points in slow-fire matches. They shoot, check the target, mistake a bug for the last impact point, and correct for it, putting the next shot way off into the cornfield on the other side of the target.

At least in my case, I wasn't shooting for score. No harm, no foul.

And the FAL is now 10-ring zeroed at 100 and 200 yards using a .308 load that I originally worked up for the Browning MMG.


As for the Enfield...

Thanks to a neighbor who swapped me a considerable quantity of .303 brass in exchange for a couple cans of .40 that I didn't want, I'm now working up a great load for my .303 rifles.

The test rifle today is my oldest Enfield, and the one with the most interesting history. This one was made by Birmingham Small Arms in Britain in 1916. I'm sure that they put it to good use during the First World War, and at some time in it's service life, this rifle made it's way to Australia, where numerous Australian military stamps were applied to the gun in addition to the British proofs. The gun was re-stocked in 1939, per a date on the buttstock, and judging by the overall look of this gun, it saw some hard use, conceivably in both world wars.But even 94 years after it was first built, it still holds a six inch orange target disc at 100 yards, off-hand from a bench. How can I ask for anything more than that? As I recall, it cost me $59.00 back in the pre-Clinton days when guns were cheap and plentiful.

And with the possibility of an Obama Presidency looming over America like a plague, every shooter who enjoys the sport and remembers what happened the last time we had an anti-gun President and a Democratic Congress should be seriously looking to pick up any guns and ammo that they've been putting off.