A Monday Shoot

 

It's a beautiful balmy morning in Texas, so what do you do? Retrieve a couple of rimfires from the bottom of the lake and go to the range. Would they work, for that matter would I still know how to shoot?

Two excellent questions, but first up, stop at McDonald's for two cheeseburgers, it's a range tradition, and I was astonished to see they'd gone down in price by 50 cents per psuedo-burger. Jubilate, perhaps this was an omen.

A short drive through the North Central Texas Exclusion Zone (NCTEZ) and there it was, the range, pretty much unchanged after all these years and full of memories of kids, friends, guns and big fun under Texan skies. Reverie over, I set up at the shooting house bench and tested a Ruger American .22 LR.

Mirabile dictu (enough Latin, Ed.), it worked, snapping shotgun shells off a swinging plate frame, knocking back mini steel plates and punching holes in paper like a veritable, ahem, blunderbuss. So that was all good and a vindication of very minor smithery on my part.

You see, my ancient Ruger magazines had reached the point where they no longer fed consistently, so I took the wretched beasts apart, tightened their springs and hoped for the best. Lo and behold, they worked, as did the rifle and its cheap 4 power scope. Result.

Next up, a Marlin .22 WMR with an annoyingly stiff, heavy, branchlike trigger. How did that perform? Not well at all, in fact hardly on paper, which was annoying because the miserable offender had been right in the X Ring last time I shot it, an aeon ago.

Maybe this rubbish ChiCom scope's busted, I thought grimly to myself as I calculated inches off target and 1/4 MOA clicks. You see, a bad workman blames his tools, but the tools ended up proving their worth and within a few clicks the Marlin was on and slamming mighty .22 Mag rounds into mini steels and all was well with the world.

I tell you, what a fun round, go .22 WMR. Is it better than .17 HMR? I don't know, but I'd hazard a dam sight less blowy. And Marlin, please sort out the ridiculously heavy trigger your otherwise excellent weapon comes equipped with. And perhaps they have, my rifle's a bit old.

Guns on, mission accomplished, it was time to head back to the Compound and cook up a rack of ribs in celebration. They're in the oven now.

Shoot straight,

LSP