A Day at the Range
 

As some of you may know, I like to entertain myself with a bit of shooting every now and then. Last Sunday was no different, so I set forth to my local club range with a couple of favorite rifles in tow.

When I arrived, there was no shortage of shooters in attendance. I thought for a moment I had stumbled into a benchrest match... everyone had adjustable rifle rests, plastic stocks, and scopes rivaling the Hubble itself. So I set up with my Ruger #1 in .375 H&H, looking to zero a newly mounted Skinner peep sight. Waiting in the rack for its turn was my trusty '74 Sharps in .45-2.6, awaiting its trial with a couple of new bullets.

At the next ceasefire, while walking to the target stands to staple up our targets, one of the younger benchresters started making the usual small talk:

"Watcha shootin'?"
"Ruger #1 in .375 H&H."
"Whazzat?"
"The rifle or the caliber?"
"Both - I never heard of either. Some kind of antique get-up?"
"Well, uh, no - it's a modern single shot, and the .375 is the father of all belted mags, and still one of the very best if you are at all concerned about the reaction of what you're shooting at."
"What's a 'belted mag'? How come it doesn't have a scope?"

Anyway, you get the gist - he had no idea what I had, had never heard of any of it. It got even better when I showed him the Sharps and tried to explain black powder and cast bullets. He quite honestly had no idea what I was talking about.

He was shooting an off-the-shelf Remington 700 heavy barreled .308 varmint rifle with some Miopta 30+ power scope. He was shooting well under .25 MOA groups - 10 shot groups, not these pansy 3 or 5 shot groups. Good shooter, really nice guy, who knew what was going on in his game, but had absolutely no idea about anything I had. I guess I found that a bit remarkable. I had never run into that before.

It's our job Jeff to educate these young shooters. Thank you for being patient and sharing with him you treasured rifles and experience.

I get the same occasionally when I sight in my old Winchesters with peep sights. I take the time with them for self serving reasons. I want them to grow up collecting our old guns and keeping their values up. I'd like to avoid a world where every range is filled with Glock 23s and misc ARs.

Sounds like you had a fun day!

As you know, every person is a novice about every thing at least once.















Except tabs.

I went out this past Wednesday and it was the same with all the youngsters and their Christmas presents. I am working at 300 yards now with my 45 caliber home made muzzle loading slug gun and finally figured out it wants pure lead for bullets. I also wanted to try my home made "Shoot n See" type targets and when the 90 grains of Goex FFG lit off the grandmother shooting next to me with her grandson's new AR nearly jumped out of her skin! There was no wind so the cloud of smoke hung around for a minute or two and then I spent the next 15 minutes explaining what I was doing.

The home made targets work great and 8.5 x 11 is a good size bulls eye for sighting at longer ranges and they are about 7 cents each to make. I used bright yellow paper, wide clear shipping tape and flat black spray paint (2 coats) with a white center. Lowes had some no name brand of spray paint for 99 cents a can so I bought all they had, 16 cans of black which should give me a year or two of targets. Here is a video of how I did mine:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gg-l2KWG1Yw

It is funny sometimes to talk to young-uns. They are so cute.

I have no idea what you're talking about. < smile >

At least I am not boring!

You're seriously surprised the average younger shooter doesn't know about some obscure 100-years-too-late falling block? I hate to break it to you but the group interested in that sort of thing is growing older and dwindling in number.

You should take a Cessna Bobcat down to a flight school and see how many people know what it is.
Don't forget to explain it was one of the most prolific and best light twins from about 1940 to 1955, at which point the few examples that hadn't rotted away were greatly outclassed by those goddamn all-metal planes from Cessna, Piper and Beechcraft.

To be fair, those are definitely more towards the obscure end of the spectrum. I would have also not known much about the specific rifle or round in question, but would have been happy to learn.

That's me SmileWavy

52 and been a fisherman all my life...only experience with firearms was plinking cans at my grandparents farm w/ a .22 when I was little, never had any interest in hunting.

In '08 I thought it might be a good idea to start climbing that learning curve. I'm (relatively) competent with my hardware but woefully ignorant about anything else. I can see that it could be an addictive hobby :).

A Day at the Range
 

I'm ignorant in the other direction. Modern calibers, firearms, optics, etc. my eyes glaze over. I can't afford it anyways. My good friends start talking "uppers" "lowers". 6.5 creed mores.

Chit, I have some catching up to do.

Someday. Either way. Life would be crappy boring if we all liked the same thing.

I want to build a forward scope mounted scout rifle. :). Prob .308. Boring


Sent via Jedi mind trick.

I was at the range next to some kids shooting black rifles of some sort. I switched from my to .30-06 to my TC .50 Hawken. I loaded it up pretty hot for the first shot and set it off. It was quite a display when it went off. One of the kids said, "Holy schiat, what was that?! That was loud." They came over and had a look. They asked a few questions. Who knows, maybe some day they'll branch out. It seems like there are more and more shooters who have no connection to hunting, so their reference points are quite different.

I see more and more AR platforms out in the hunting fields.


Sent via Jedi mind trick.

Sheesh. I suspect those youngsters could teach the old folks a few things too. Then post about their knowledge and superiority on some gaming bbs.

I think a few of you might have missed the point. This was no novice shooter - like I said he knew his game and knew it well. He was certainly shooting competitive groups for the production rifle benchrest class. Had no trouble discussing the finer points of hand loading, either - one simply cannot compete in that game with factory ammo. He was really "into it", as we say.

If he were in fact a novice or very inexperienced shooter it would not have struck me as being so odd. We all start somewhere at everything we do... but he was well past that.

I wonder if this has anything to do with this modern "tactical" craze. More and more gun magazines cover the "tactical" scene to the exclusion of everything else. The only calibers ever mentioned are the 5.56 and 7.62 NATO, the 7.62x39, the .338 Lapua, and the .50 BMG. Seems until recently that the gun mags were much more broadly based. They included big game rifles, small game rifles, water fowling guns, upland guns, target rifles and handguns, hunting handguns, etc. You couldn't help but pick up on what the "other guys" were up to, even if you weren't interested yourself.

Oh, and he was certainly happy to learn, even if he was just being polite to some crazy old fart with weird guns. I stopped his lesson short of letting him shoot the .375, though - that would have been mean. Maybe next time, if he's still interested...

I must be outside the norm, then--I happily shoot everything from a suppressed AR-15 SBR in .300 BLK to a custom-built single shot in .45-70.

Or maybe I just have ADD.

I've been going to the gun shows for years, Great Western at the fairgrounds and others in So Cal. Have been to the last 2 Ventura shows and they will probably be my last. Nothing but black rifles, uppers, scopes and other crap. Maybe 3 vendors out of a hundred had any vintage/ collector stuff. Too bad. Bakersfield still has a few guys who sell the older stuff.

The Ruger model 1 are nice rifles. My Uncle has one in every caliber they make, lots of rifles. I was hunting with him when he was using a .458 win mag for deer and got one. That was a huge hole.

Now that I think about it, the younger shooters (mid 30s and younger) I know who actually go out and shoot a lot really aren't all that into equipment. This one guy who's about 20 y/o on my team is a top notch trap and skeet shooter. He describes his shotgun as "an old benelli" that his grandpa gave him. Several other guys have acquired new (and very unappealing) Beretta A300s because they needed something and they sure as hell don't care about a walnut stock or a reciever that isn't painted. And yeah, I felt a little anxious standing around in the rain the other day with my polished bluing and oiled walnut getting soaked while these guys had no reason to worry.

Another thing, a lot of younger shooters have little to no interest in hunting. If guns were mostly about hunting and traditional target shooting how would the industry look today? How many ranges/gun shops would have closed or never opened? How many of these magazines would have folded if they couldn't talk about modern guns/calibers, defense, new types of competition and new accessories?

You must have really hated it when .30 WCF came out

I have seen a mosin nagant in 45-70. :D