On Thanksgiving weekend, Brendan brought the .22s to the Sullivans’ house. The boys set up a target on the burn pile and shot from the back deck.
- Dad, Brendan, and Tristan
Archive for the ‘Guns’ Category
Plinking
18
Apr
I wonder if we’re going to the plinking range a little too often.
750 mL bottle
We may need to scale back on the .22 usage. 
Love,
Tiff
Spring Break: Illinois – Part Deux
04
Apr
This is a bit on the late side, but Tiff has been bugging me to write a little something about the rest of our trip to IL. So, here’s some pictures, because each one is supposedly worth 1000 words 
Tristan on his dirt bike
Good Friday Plinking
02
Apr
Brendan and I spent this morning at the plinking range. I had a ton of fun shooting about 160 rounds with my .22LR.
me and my new toy
More shooting
20
Mar
This is going to be mostly pictures as I type enough during the week and I’ve got a few other posts to write. Tiff finally got to shoot the Savage MkII I bought for her. There’s a problem, though, she actually loves it! After I sighted in the scope and gave it to her, I almost had to pry it out of her hands to get a chance to shoot it again
Savage MkII, Weaver Bases and Rings, Bushnell Sportsmans Scope
The wonderful smell of gunpowder in the morning
07
Mar
I will not be posting about every trip to the range in time It really isn’t that exciting for most people, but aside from working, that’s about all I do anymore; I shoot lead in one form or another out the end of a gun of one type or another. With the variety of shooting disciplines available at ORSA, it is very easy to spend many hours on a Saturday there as I did this week.
Tiff and I woke up Saturday morning to the expectation of a full day of fun for both of us. Tiff had her sewing day with her friends from school, and I planned to go to ORSA and shoot as many rounds of clays as I could take, then do some benchrest with my Savage 340, and I had Emmett’s Marlin 60 22LR to play with on the plinking range. Read the rest of this entry »
Finally got my gun club membership
28
Feb
Well, as of February 25th, I am FINALLY a member of the Oak Ridge Sportsman’s Association. Tiff and I went to the orientation meeting @ 6:30pm and that wonderfully entertaining presentation lasted about 2 hours. Honestly it wasn’t that bad for me, but I’m sorry I dragged Tiff with me. It was mostly technical stuff, don’t do this, range is open these hours, don’t be a retard with a gun, blah blah, etc etc.
Entrance to ORSA
Sunday afternoon Tiffany and I went to the benchrest range and shot the rifles a bit. I borrowed a 22LR from Emmett so Tiff could shoot with me. I shot my “new” Savage 223Rem. The scope on that gun is horrible….the gun hits about 8 inches high at 50 yards and I can’t get the scope to adjust out. It’s just a cheapo Blaser 4×32, so it’s no huge loss.
Me Shooting the Savage 223
Tiff shot the 22LR (an older Marlin 60) that Emmett let me borrow so she’d have something to shoot. When we stopped at Gander Mountain to buy targets, they had packs of squirrel paper targets (for legitimate target practice for squirrel seasons) and bought those for her to shoot at. I got a pack of the fluorescent yellow targets so I could try to sight in the gun (which was sadly not too successful as you read above). Tiff was hampered by only having open sites on the 22, but she still did pretty well shooting her squirrels at 50 yards.
Tiff's squirrels
No shotgunning today as there is a league that reserves all the clay fields for use on Sundays. I normally shoot on Saturday though, so that shouldn’t normally be a problem. I have a lot of guys telling me to reload the 223 so I’m saving my brass. Metallic reloading is significantly easier to get into than shotshell…less equipment and I usually only end up shooting about 20 rounds per trip, so it’s not nearly as high volume as what I’ll need to do for the shotguns.
Anyhow, I’m excited to finally have my membership active and can shoot just about any shooting discipline there. I’m looking at getting some small rimfire rifle for Tiffany next. I really want a 17HMR, but the ammo is a little pricey for the gun’s intended purpose of higher volume target practice and plinking. 17HM2 is an option, but it hasn’t caught on and all ammo/guns would have to be mail ordered. Sooo, all that said, I’ll likely end up getting a Savage MKII in 22LR with a heavy barrel and put a decent 4x or 6x scope on it. I think I’ve decided on a Bushnell 2-7×50 for my 223. We’ll see.
More next weekend I’m sure, though I’m about out of target ammo for the shotguns. I need to build up my stock of ammo again.
Chilhowee Sportsmans Club Sporting Clays
03
Jan
As I mentioned in my previous post, I recently went to Chilhowee Sportsman’s Club for the second time. This trip was planned at the last minute after having a conversation with one of the member’s named Curly on the ShotgunWorld.com forums. He and I were discussing the components needed for reloading on Friday night and he invited me out to shoot with his group on Saturday. I went out there about 11 and we sat in the clubhouse drinking coffee and getting to know each other. I actually did not realize that we were going to be shooting Sporting Clays at first. I’ve been so caught up shooting skeet the past few weeks, I just assumed that’s what we were going to do. But after getting one of the carts, we headed on up the hill and started one of the most interesting afternoons of shooting I’ve had yet.
I learned today that Sporting Clays and “5-stand” are not the same game. They have similarities, but are vastly different in terms of scale. In 5-stand there is one shooting platform with 5 positions, and in the field there are 6 or 7 different clay presentations and you shoot a combination of those presentations at each station.
Sporting Clays has (at least at Chilhowee), 14 stands that are scattered around the woods above the club, and each station has it’s own two throwers. All stations are thrown as either report or true pairs, and can be very challenging. All of them are difficult to some degree, and learning how to lead a target that’s dropping down a hillside is quite a challenge, as well as a test of patience as some of the incoming birds come towards the stand from far away…much too far to try to hit with the imp. cyl. and mod chokes I was shooting today. I can see the advantage of extended, knurled chokes in this game….one stand might have two very close crossing targets similar to skeet where a cyl and imp. cyl choke would work perfectly, and then the next stand would have two LONG range targets launched as a true pair where I was wondering if even a full choke would put enough shot out there to hit them. One of the guys I was shooting with proved it was possible though 
It was astounding seeing him break both targets well past where I would have guessed the shotgun would be useful.
All in all though, I really enjoyed the 14 stand circuit at Chilhowee. The flight paths are extremely varied, and you have to take trees into account as some paths cross between groves of trees so you must time your shots well and do not always have continuous picture of the bird. Even without that fact, the staff at Chilhowee uses the mountainous terrain there to great effect, aiming some birds along ridges, or rising out of a gully. One of my favorite presentations was two birds launched as a true pair, coming up the valley from about 11 o’clock and behind trees almost the entire way. There was a very small window about 20 feet wide where you had to hit the targets between a few trees, otherwise they were in the ground just past the next tree.
If you are in the Knoxville, TN area and enjoy clay sports, you should definitely try out Chilhowee. They are a bit on the expensive side for non-members, but the experience is worth the slightly higher cost compared to most other fields I’ve been do. Check them out at http://www.chilhoweesportsmansclub.com
One of the main purposes of this trip as I mentioned before was to meet these guys who all reload their own shells and were willing to help me find some hulls that were good for reloading as well as showing me some of the benefits of doing so. The light 3/4 ounce loads that Curly uses were amazing. Very light recoil, almost no gun movement, and still capable of breaking every target out there. Even ignoring the cost effectiveness of reloading, merely the wonderfully light, shoulder-sensitive loads you can create makes it worth it. The 1-1/8oz factory loads I have been shooting feel like monsters in comparison. I am definitely looking into the equipment and components I need to start loading my own hulls as soon as reasonably possible. Problem is you kinda have to buy in bulk to make it cost effective….i.e. large chunks of money out the door at once rather than the current method of buying smaller amounts of ammo, but at a greater cost over time. So we’ll see. I’d like to get started soon, but I’m not sure it’s financially that wise/possible.
Shooting Catch-up
02
Jan
Wow, it’s been a long time since I’ve written much here. Been kinda busy I guess. And at the end of any given day, the last thing I really want to do is sit down and type a lot
I’ve been shooting a lot of skeet though recently. I’ve lost track of how many rounds I’ve done… maybe 15 or so. I started out horribly. My first round ever I hit 4. It was really disappointing, and the next couple rounds were about the same. A couple weekends ago I went Saturday and Sunday and something finally clicked. I told myself when I headed out Saturday, “I’ll be happy if I hit 10.” That’ll be 2 better than my previous best.
Unfortunately, when I got there, it seems a bunch of kids were shooting with their parents…and taking FOREVER about it. Also, one of the mothers should not have been holding a gun. She would consistently shoot, then swing the muzzle down, turn and face the group of people and start blabbing about how she missed/hit/chipped a target….all while pointing the gun at them…. Range Officer kept yelling at her about it, and she kept doing it. I’m quite glad I was not on the field with her. So while I waited for them to be finished, a couple other guys and I sat in the range officers office and chatted.
Finally it was our turn. We had a group of 6, but were all fairly efficient about getting through our stations. At the end, I totaled up my scores and had hit a 13! Whoa, maybe I’m starting to get the hang of this We went back inside to warm up (it was about 35 degrees out), and then went and shot one more round before it got dark. This one went even better with a personal score of 17! I started feeling a lot better about the game at this point, but it was dark and it was not one of the nights they turn on the field lights so we could shoot into the evening.
The next day (Sunday), one of the members of the gun club I am going to be joining invited me to go out shooting at that club. Drove up there and shot 3 rounds of skeet, all of them in the mid-teens. I think they were 14,17,16 if I recall correctly.
About a week and a half later I went back to the ORSA club again with Bob Hedrick from church and we shot 4 rounds and I didn’t really keep track of my scores, just focused on improving my form and learning what I could from the other much more experienced shooters.
Now we’re somewhere around Christmas… Jeanette wrote something about our days of shooting on her blog. Won’t touch on that too much right now. Maybe I’ll write another post.
Today (Jan 2nd), I was invited by yet another person I’ve met locally to go with him and a few of his friends to Chilhowee Sportsman’s Club to shoot Sporting Clays. That field has a large Sporting Clays field consisting of 14 stands, with various presentations and either report pairs, or true pairs. A single round is 100 shots, although there is some way to do a 50-shot round, though I’m not sure how. Anyhow, it was a lot of fun and a great learning experience. Downside is it’s fairly expensive. Average cost for 100 rounds of skeet or trap is about $20… member prices at ORSA are $2.50/25 for a cost of $10/100 which is as cheap as I’ve ever seen clay rounds. The 100 round Sporting Clays at Chilhowee are a steep $37 for non-members, and $27 for members. This is somewhat understandable given that Chilhowee is run as a business, whereas JSHEC is funded by the TN Wildlife Resources Agency, and ORSA is a non-profit organization. Regardless, it’s about the only field like that I know of in the area, so it’s worth the extra cash to shoot such a unique collection of targets once in a while. I can’t see myself going more than a few times a year though at that rate.
Anyhow, I think I’m done with this post. It may not read very linearly as I’ve written it over about 2 weeks, forgetting about it over most of the Christmas break, but I tried to fix the time-sensitive wording to make more sense.