Range etiquette or lack of

[joem]

Some years ago at the local range a young guy and his girl friend show up, he gets out of the car with targets and without asking for a cold range, hits the light and calls cold range. Everyone is surprised and quit shooting. He sets his targets and comes back to the firing line and calls the range hot and everyone goes BLAM almost at the same time. Of course he had no ear protection on at this time. I think he learned a good lession.

[Fred]

While stationed at Ft. Irwin, CA something kinda funny happened once. I can't remember which tank I was on that day, my M-60 Pass Risive with it's M-85 50 cal. (a Ma Duce in the cupala configuration) firing live ammo or one of our VISMOD Sherritan's with the mounted M-2's firing blanks, but one day, my gunner, who was just below and in front of my position in the TC's hatch, screamed bloody murder as hot .50 caliber cases rained down over his shoulders and down his loose shirt collar. Hoooweeee! We had a good laugh about that.

[John Sukey]

I do remember my time on the range with an M1. There was a reason they told us to button the collar on our fatigues.

However ear protectors at that time were NOT an issue item. Not helped by working on the flight line years later with the grey aircrew earphones instead of decent protection and half a dozen or more blow jets running at the same time.

[joem]

My time on the range was with M16. No ear protection and a solid week of helping battalion qualify about 1500 men before deployment.. Heard gun fire in my sleep and I'm half deaf now.

[RayBrandes]

No, I've never shot a high power competition, but it's on my to do list. I need to shoot better first.....-Jeff L

Jeff,
I hear you about the richard crainum with the 10/22. With a scope. they plink from the bench at 25 or 50 yards and then think to themselves what a great shot they are. Actually just too lazy to shoot irons at 200 to 1000 yards.

Regarding shooting better first, what Murray said.

Start shooting high power matches and then you will start shooting better. Much better because you will be learning what to do and not to do and you will get a grade on your progress. Don't fuss over a low score. No one but will pay any attention to your scores, that is until you are bumping them out of the money! And I hope that will come soon.

Regards, Ray

[mdoerner]

Ditto what everyone has said. I stink at High Power. My last score was a 355-1x. My best score is a 395-0x. My 1st match shot around 1999 was like a 208-3x (how I did that, I dunno). Anyways, I'm still lookin' to break 400, but I am still in the throes of making sure my position, breathing, trigger pull, etc. all click together. Granted, a minor breakthrough occurred Sunday, I got an 88-0x on my rapid-fire prone stage of the match. But if you don't try, you don't get results. Identify the issues you have with your shooting, ask questions, practice dry-firing in position......rinse, lather, repeat.

Good luck and feel free to look thru my earlier posts of, "What am I doing wrong???" and you'll see that we all ain't 500-50x'ers here....

Mike Doerner