Range Day

I had two rifles to zero and time to spend with my wife. It was a wonderful day!

We took seven guns to the range and shot 4 of them, never noticing we didn’t have a chance to shoot the pistols.

We took two fun guns as well as my serious rifles for zeroing.

Wife brought Mrs. Pink, her AR-15. Yes, it has all pink furniture. It is most definitely hers. We set her up with a half size torso target at 50 yards. Truth, we don’t think she put a single round from her AR on paper.

On the other hand, she had a blast! She was using a single 20-round GI magazine from the 60s. What she got was manual of arms training. She learned how to load magazines, rather than having me hand her loaded mags.

She knew how to operate the rifle, but she didn’t have it down to the point she could just do it. So she got to practice charging the rifle, dropping the bolt after inserting a new magazine, removing and inserting magazines.

She was at a bench with a bench separating us. She did it all on her own. After getting her going, the next time she interacted with me was when she told me that Mrs. Pink was out of food. That was 100 rounds downrange. 3 of which were mine.

From there she moved to a Henry Big Boy in beautiful brass. This one is chambered in .22LR. She went through a couple of 100 round boxes, just beaming from ear to ear. She loved how smooth it was and how nice it was to shoot. She declared that she liked it better than Mrs. Pink.

At my bench, things were not going as well. My primary goal was to get the AR-10 zeroed. I have a new LVPO 1-8 by Vortex. Beautiful scope.

I had no real issues with the scope, except for having difficulty spotting where rounds were hitting the target. I never did get that figured out because after about 5 or 10 rounds I started to get failure to feed.

After I got back home, I did a bit of research, and AR-10s are known to be picky. They need 50 to 200 rounds before they are worked in, and they need lots of lube to begin with.

For me it was a single shot rifle with painful ergonomics to charge the next round. AR-10 buffer springs are much stronger than AR-15 buffer springs. I was there with 40 rounds in two mags. I think I sent 20 or so rounds downrange.

She’s been cleaned, lubed, and put away. I require some more range time. I require her to feed flawlessly every time.

On to the beauty of the day, my CZ 600 in 30-06.

This rifle has a trigger that makes my 1911s feel like Glock triggers (Yes, that is an insult to the Glock fanboys). It is a light trigger with zero take up. You put your finger on the trigger, think about pressing the trigger and the round is on its way downrange.

It has a vertical safety. It is likely a “crossbolt” style, but instead of the left to right arrangement I’ve seen for crossbolt safeties, this is vertical. The engage button is just behind the trigger guard. The disengage button is just behind the bolt. You just press down with your thumb to take the safety off.

I didn’t test the magazine feed; it comes with a 5-round magazine, but I feed each round individually.

With just boresighting, my first 3-round group was about 0.5 inches at 50 yards. It was also 4 inches left and a bit high from where my point of aim was. It took around 20 rounds before the point of aim and point of impact were nearly the same.

I don’t think I’ve shot a rifle as accurate as this before. I brag about punching primers with the 7.62×51 NATO Remington 700. This was easily 50 fold better than that Remington.

With the overkill of the scope, I could actually see point of impact. I could see my breathing modifying point of aim. I also found myself aiming for the corner of the 1″ square bullseye because that was more consistent than “somewhere” in the 1 in^2 red blotch.

For fun, I just put the crosshairs on the center of the 1/2 steel target at 100 yards. That rang true. So did aiming for the head of the steel.

It was just a little to crude to have any idea where on the steel I was getting impacts.

I’m still smiling from range day. Oh, it was warm today, with the temperature just above freezing and no real wind.