Friendly Rimfire Competition

[practice-more]

Got together with a few buddies at a cabin yesterday afternoon and shot our .22s. It wasn't anything official, or even really that competitive, but it was FUN.

Games included:

Gongs and clay pigeons out to 115 yards (from the bench). One of the guys brought a a few homemade gongs. We painted them up and set them at distances form 30 to 110 yards. I also had a rack of clays, but they only seem to break if you shoot them near the edge, challenge +. Shooting gongs is new to be, but the instant feedback is fun. Several of the guys there had never shot a 22 past 50 yards. They all got a chance to shoot the Marlin 880 that I've been working on, and all made regular hits on the 5" 115 yard gong. Another guy, who I have been shooting with quite a bit has a Ruger American that is set up and shoots well at those distances. We also helped one of the guys get his 22 on target at that range. Free ballistic software for a smart phone is awesome.

11x17 printed hostage targets (standing offhand from 30 yards). For the guys that thought bipods and rear bags from bench, combined with finger adjustable scopes was "cheating" we shot a couple sets of 5 rounds at some free hostage targets I downloaded and printed. It is harder than it sounds, even though we were relatively close. Lets just say there was at least a little collateral damage. In his defense, one shooter did state that he thought the hostage was in on the gig and had it coming.

Heads up water bottles. We made a "T" stand with pulleys so that we could hang two water bottles on opposite ends of a rope. Starting with evenly hung bottles full of water, the idea is to get your bottle drained faster than your opponent so that his bottle goes down and pulls your up. (hope that makes sense). We shot this unsupported from the picnic bench at 50 yards. This was a popular duel for the afternoon with quite a few bottles re-recycled.

I had honest intentions of getting a few photos, but completely forgot.

In addition to the two guns noted above, there were a couple Ruger 10/22's (one being silenced - AWESOME), one other auto I didn't get a good look at, and a couple handguns.

A good time was had by all and we will definitely be doing it again. I'm brainstorming more ideas for targets. Maybe tic-tac-toe, different shape gongs, add other shooting positions, etc. I've been watching some PRS shooting and like the scenarios they build.

Mitch

[Fitter]

Sounds like a ton of fun.

My best friends' dad use to own a sporting goods shop. Spoiled us rotten with all kinds of targets, decoys, calls, and crates of ammo. Literally. He use to send us off to camp with crates of ammo that he was replacing and the guns needed to shoot the ammo.

We had this one metal target. Very thick and heavy. Not a gong but it made a distinctive ping/ringing noise with each shot.

It also had a small hole drilled right in the center of the bullseye. We never really knew the purpose. But it was a perfect fit for a live 22 round. We use to stay at camp and plink away at that bullseye with open sight 22's for an entire afternoon before ever hitting that live round. But it made this really deep cool sound when someone connected.

They had all kinds of targets and that made it a lot more fun than shooting paper.

[practice-more]

.22's are not as inexpensive as they used to be, but still relatively cheap entertainment and good trigger time practice.

A live round inset in the center sounds like a neat idea.