Range Day!

Proud Hillbilly's Daughter and Son-in-Law D. are in town with their newish baby. PH decided to get D. out of the house today so she dropped him off at my place this morning and demanded that I take him shooting.

Gee. Twist my arm.

We started out wish some South African action, courtesy of my Uzi.

Then something a bit more sedate: pistols. D. had a sweet 1911A1 custom job that he uses for PPC matches. Just put the sights on the target and think the word "pull" and it sends rounds downrange quite consistently. Shame on me, but I didn't get a picture of that fine, fine pistol.

I just brought out these old Smith and Wessons.

Top: Model 19, .357 Magnum. Bottom: Model 10 heavy barrel .38 Special.
They shot flawlessly. Me, not so much. I put pretty much every round on my paper plates at 25 yards, but the grouping was nothing to brag about. More practice needed!

Then it was rifle time. The 100-yard line was occupied so we went down to the 400 yard line and set up. I let D. run the targets down while I watched the rifles.

The top rifle is a World War Two-dated Springfield Armory M1 Garand with a new 11-64-dated barrel.

This rifle was rebuilt in the 1960's and appears to have been put right into storage. It probably didn't see the light of day again until I got it from the CMP in the late 1990s.
Little to no wear at all in here:

Nice Dept. of Defense cartouche on the stock:

The bottom one is another WW2 vet--this one a British #4Mk1 Enfield made by Savage Arms Co. in Mass., USA. Since at the time, we were barred by our own silly laws and Isolationist policies from arming any country fighting a war, the fiction of "Lend Lease" was created. Under this scheme, we could "loan" surplus American equipment to other countries, so these British-pattern rifles were stamped "US Property" and "loaned" to Britain for the duration.

The "S" denotes Savage manufacture.

MOst of these rifles had really nice adjustable aperture rear sights, but this one just has a rather crude flip sight, with peeps for 300 and 600 yards meters.

We shot the Garand at 400 yards first. Both of us did fairly well, hitting high but on with the first clips, then after a target check and sight adjustment, we both were on target. Neither of us really distinguished ourselves, but had the targets been actual bad guys, they'd have at east been stopped.

Then we shot the Enfield. The sights and trigger were a bit cruder than the Garand's was, and as it turned out, we both put our rounds low but right on windage-wise. We were using the 300M aperture, and I suspect that the 600M peep would have put the rounds right on. I'll take it out again next time to see.

Rounds dispensed with, we adjourned to PH's house for lunch and beer.

Yep. That's our Proud Hillbilly.

And don't forget, shooters--Charity blogshoot here on Saturday, Sept. 14th. Lots of regulars will be there, including Proud Hillbilly, Keads, Aaron of The Shekel, and many others. Bring your favorite firearms, because we'll have a range all to ourselves this time out to 100 yards.