Just for fun, I posted the rectangles over IDPA practice targets.

I Shot it twice each on blue (first) and pink (second) rectangles, scoring after each ten shots with binoculars.

First target for score, cold, no sighters, was 4/10,

and 4/10 for second 5/10 on third and 6/10 on the fourth.



Then posted blue targets again, and tried it twice with the red dot sighted carbine.
Both were 9/10, not surprisingly, better than with my iron sighted compact carry pistol.

S&W M&P Compact 357 Sig with Big Dot sights.
Zenith MKE with C-More and Octane can.

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Nicely done. I'm still in time crunch mode on our property, so I can't justify the time to try this drill. Maybe next weekend. I'll see how much I accomplish today.

I can't guess how well I'd shoot the pistol portion, but your carbine results are about what I expect.

*****
The sad part about your drill is that very few people on this website will even try it, let alone show their targets. Here we have a practical example of a real-life civilian use of defensive firearms. This site is rife with talk of how gun owners prepare their firearms for use, how they prepare themselves for firearms use. Lots of talk, not so much walk.

Nice work Richard! We left the campground to hit up an art show in the big city for my wife...she gets to look at art, I get to check sigforum, win win! Looks like a good one...I'm looking forward to giving it a try when I get home!

Well I’ll start out by saying that this one was harder than anticipated. It did play right into a question I’d been asking myself since the recent threads about long-range engagements and the benefits of carrying a carbine to address those types of threats.

I don’t see myself packing a long gun around on a regular basis off-duty…it’s just not practical. But I have considered the benefit of a CCWing a pistol equipped with an optic as a means of enhancing my long-range abilities should such a situation arise. This course of fire was a good means of testing that.

For my “carry” guns, I opted to use what I took on vacation this past week…my 9mm P250 Compact and my S&W 360J scandium airweight in .38 Special. I was doing a lot of kyaking and hiking around and in water, and I figured the P250 would be the easiest thing to clean should it get dunked, while still providing the safety of a long DA pull for non-traditional carry techniques like chest or pocket carry. The 360 was just because I was on vacation, and wanted something light to throw in the pocket while I was just lounging around the campground.

“Official” scores for the purpose of the match will be the cold runs with the P250. The rest are just for fun/science. We shot the course twice with each gun…hits from the first attempts are marked, second attempts are unmarked. I wish I’d brought some clean cardboard to use as backers to show the misses, but I forgot and we were stuck using the shot-up stuff that was lying around the range.

My first and official score with the P250 cold was 5/10. Second run I got 7/10.



Noah didn’t much like the P250. His first run netted him 2/10. Second was 3/10.





Next up was the P320 with the RMR. My first run was not great, only 6/10, but I realized I was holding too high and not taking advantage of the entire target. Second run I aimed lower at the center of the two pages like I should have been doing the whole time, and made 9/10, and I was shooting fast…as soon as the dot re-appeared after recoil, I was breaking the next shot. Yes, the trigger on the P320 is a lot easier to manage than the P250 trigger, but I think the optic had a lot to do with the final outcome.



Noah did better with the P320, too, scoring 7/10 both times. It’s getting hard to argue against the idea of a red-dot equipped handgun gun acting as a force-multiplier at distance.





I was pleasantly surprised by the J-Frame. I’ll admit that I was slower than the prescribed 1-second cadence…it takes a bit longer to align those black trench sights with that short sight radius to make sure you’re making hits. I was probably closer to 2 seconds between shots. But just a belly-gun it is not! I scored 5/10 and 8/10 in single-action, and had 10 rounds left over when we finished so I shot it again in double-action and scored 5/10. Going into it I wasn’t sure I’d hit anything, so I was pretty happy with that.

I did my reloads with a Zeta-Six J-Clip, and I will say that was no fun with the full-wadcutter ammo that I was using. A speedloader needs a pointed bullet to guide the rounds into the chamber…trying to stuff those flat-faced .38s in there is not something I’d like to undertake under fire.

Here’s my 2 runs in single-action, and then one run in double-action below:




Noah pulled off 3/10 and 4/10, which I didn’t think was half bad for a 2” snubby at that range.





Finally, the AR9. I got stupid and went way too fast on my first run for 7/10. I slowed down on the second and put them all in easily.




Noah went 9/10 and 10/10. Can’t argue that a rifle trumps a handgun, even if the caliber is the same. Unfortunately, it’s not so practical to tote around everywhere you go…





Here’s the stuff we shot it with:



The jury is still out on P250. I like the modularity and shared grip angle with the P320, which I’m stuck with for work. I also feel more comfortable carrying it in certain configurations than I do the P320 with its light striker-fired action. But I can’t deny that the P320 is easier to shoot, both for accuracy and speed. At least for belt-carry applications, the P320 with the RMR may need to come out of the night stand and get more off-duty carry time.

Thanks for the great match idea, Richard…it was fun to shoot, practical, and thought provoking!

Nice work, Noah and 92fstech!

I was (also) thinking of trying again with extremes, like a J-frame and a yuuuuge service pistol.

Here's the 35 yard position. I shot by bracing against the left side of the near-vertical pine trunk. The sight picture is pretty realistic in this photo, as I shot just over the small group of green needles.


For score, 1st time, no warmup -- call it 7.5 out of 10. Barely clipped the target's edge on the left. Shot with my Sig P6. 1st round DA, the rest were SA.


For grins, tried it a second time with the P6. 9 out of 10. As with the first time, DA on the first shot.


On to the Wilson AR9G. Scope was set at 1.2x, which was where I left it last time. Shooting pace was fairly fast, maybe 1 second between rounds. 10 for 10.

Weed patrol at our ranch is finally over -- at least for a few weeks. My feet are not happy with all the walking. Pastures were dry, crispy, and over grazed. Rain over the past couple of weeks has been a godsend. But it probably means a second wave of weed growth in 2-3 weeks.

Following this week's 35-yard match, I tried the earlier B8 target challenge, starting at 5 yards and moving back.
I again used the Sig P6, drawing from a holster, DA for every shot. Good thing our time allowance increased as distances increased. I was bumping up against the time limits on many shots. DA takes a lot of concentration for trigger pull that doesn't disturb the sight picture.

I did only one go. Today's rain came pretty early, just as I was preparing the second target. 12 hits, made it to 16 yards. The miss occurred at 17 yards.

Nice shooting, Fritz, workin' some magic with that P6!

quote:

DA takes a lot of concentration for trigger pull that doesn't disturb the sight picture.

That's an understatement with a P6. I've used mine for dry fire drills before, and that DA pull will wear your finger out in short order...it's like picking up a 5 gallon bucket full of water with one finger!

Very nice groups, fritz!

Well Fritz, what do you have for us next?

quote:

Originally posted by 92fstech:
Well Fritz, what do you have for us next?

I must put the choice back into your hands. We just had 2 pretty heavy days of rain -- some flooding, with areas of fast moving water. Our ranch neighbors sent me short videos of washouts and erosion on their pasture and ravines. I can't get out there until the weekend to assess the damage. But I suspect shooting will take a back seat for awhile.

Dammit, we need the rain, but it doesn't have to come all at once.

That's what they said in Kentucky.

A close friend told me that FEMA and other .gov agencies have bigger fish to fry than helping Americans in KY.

Sorry guys....I haven't forgotten about this, and I actually have an idea in mind, I'm just struggling to find a target that will work with it. I've worked almost 30 hours in the past two days, so there hasn't been time for much else. I'm off tomorrow, so I should be able to get something posted.

Ok, cowboy games this week. 5 shots from 7 yards slow fire, with a wheelgun of your choice (single-action preferred, but not required). If you don't have a revolver, then shoot it with a semi-auto.

Shooter with the best poker hand wins. If your shot cuts the line of the edge of the card, it counts, but if you hit two different cards with a single shot, neither card counts (so do that once and you'd only have a total of 4 cards to score in your hand).

Here's the target....right-click, download, and print selecting "fit picture to frame". When I did this in the Windows photo viewer, it printed just the cards and left off the header and footer. Hopefully that works for everybody.

May have to crop/resize.

What is the measured height and width of each card on your printed out copy?

As printed mine measure .825"x1.150". Flikr seems to be broken at the moment or I'd post a pic of what it looks like printed out.

Interesting card shoot. I assume the target should print on normal 8.5" x 11" paper. Uncertain if I can give it a run.

****
Per the rain gauge (assuming minimal evaporation between Tuesday and Saturday) in the center of our ranch, we received 1.7" of rain -- evidently in 20-25 minutes. The central, southern, northern, and eastern portions of the land fared well. Minimal road erosion occurred. The ravines that I filled with wood and chopped yucca plants also had minimal erosion. Pastures are green again.

Different story to our west. The neighbor's pastures drain into ours, and their land just couldn't hold the water. I also suspect 50 to 60 acres received a lot more than 2" of rain. The main seasonal creek appears to have run like a small river, at least for awhile. The largest contributory erosion ravine -- which feeds into the upper part of the creek -- appears to have run at a depth of 2-3 feet in places. Maybe deeper. The logs and branches I built up in the lower half of the ravine got swept into the main creekbed like toy boats. A few months of work now must be re-done. And I now realize a lot more of the logs must be placed in the start of the ravine -- in order to slow down the water from the start. In reality, the entire 300+ yards of this ravine must be plugged up with everything heavy that we can find.

I was in no mood this weekend to work on all the crap that got washed downstream. I continued to work on trees damaged from the March 2019 storms -- in areas that I hadn't yet touched.

Sometimes it just feels like sisyphus

Hercules simply diverted two rivers to clean the Augean stables.

Things didn't work out to shoot this weekend; hope to try again.

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Well, I printed them again on a different computer so I could get them in color, and it resized the whole image, so the cards are even smaller (0.7"x0.955"). I hung the target and the first thought that went though my head was "maybe we should have done this at 5 yards, or 3!" lol.

We shot this one with my unconverted 3-screw Blackhawk in .357 (loaded with .38 Wadcutters). I got to teach Noah the old load-one, skip-one, load-four, and had a talk about why we keep an empty chamber under the hammer when there's no transfer bar or hammer block in the gun design. Being 5 shots, this drill facilitated that nicely.

Noah's is on the left, a pair of Aces. I got 3 Aces and a 9 (got the Ace of Spades, too, but managed to clip three other cards with that shot, so it doesn't count). There was some strategy here. Obviously it would be ideal to go for the royal flush, but I didn't think I could shoot it clean and the Aces seemed like a safer bet. The door is definitely still wide open!

Nice hands, there, Maverick!

Shot it today. .38 Specials wadcutters from Colt Officers Match.

6 of Hearts.



'You got to know when to hold 'em,
Know when to fold 'em,
Know when to walk away,
And know when to run.'

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