Savage MkII, Weaver Bases and Rings, Bushnell Sportsmans Scope

Tiffany with her Savage

I was content, however, sighting in and shooting my Savage that I traded my SKS for about a month or so ago. The scope, as I believe I mentioned before, was junk, so I put a Redfield Revolution 3-9×40 on it. The scope mount on that gun was designed years ago when scopes did not have the larger mechanisms near the adjustment pots as they do now, so I had to grind out a bunch of aluminum on Dad’s bench grinder (Thanks Dad). That took quite a while, but I think the end result turned out well.

Savage Model 340 Series E, Redfield Revolution 3-9x40

The bolt still rubs the eyepiece of the scope, but that can’t really be helped I guess. I like this rifle quite a bit, but ultimately I think it will probably get traded for something else a bit more modern. I love the 223 caliber, though so that much will likely stay the same.

At the range and on the bench

Both guns sighted very quickly, however. It took less than one 10 round clip in Tiff’s gun to get it hitting dead center groups at 50 yards, and I think my gun was hitting good 100 yard groups within 12 shots or so. I need to get some 200 yard targets and see if I can shoot it out that far. I think it should be good for it…the 223 doesn’t drop all that much by 200 yards as it travels so fast (about 3200 feet per second). I guess Tiff didn’t get a picture of me shooting this gun….she was too busy playing with her 22

Tiff did let me shoot her gun a little bit

Tiff and I both had pretty good days of shooting on the benchrest line. There were more targets shot than these, but this is what we ended the day (there) with.

These are most of my shots with Tiff's 22LR (non center shots are from sighting in)

Tiff's target with her new gun. Also the squirrels above her arm

After getting our fill of benchrest shooting, we ran over to the skeet field and I shot some skeet with some people there. Tiffany was a sweet wife and “pulled” for us. (“Pulling” is launching the clay, done by pressing a button that activates an auto-loading electric thrower in little concrete houses to protect the launchers from the elements). I didn’t shoot very well, so I decided to call it quits at 2 rounds today. I then realized we hadn’t been to the plinking range yet to do “fun” shooting. I had brought a couple of gallons of water in old jugs, along with Tiff’s orange juice bottle from breakfast this morning, and a coke bottle that was from our trip home from IL Thankfully we got there just as it was emptying out, so we had it to ourselves for the most part.

Precursor to the carnage

I think Tiffany enjoyed this the most as she found she really enjoyed the precise target shooting required to hit the 12ga shotgun shells I stood up out there (Look to my left about knee level…you can just barely see 3 of them in a line). Hitting the gallon jugs was a lot of fun as well. I used my Mossberg 500 with 00 buckshot to blow holes in the far right jug. The aftermath of that was quite fun as the jug essentially exploded with the hundreds pounds of force that blast put through the jug and water. Sadly though, it only lasted for about 3 shots before it was just shredded and no water was left in it.

Mossy 500

I really don’t get to use that gun enough…it mostly sits under the bed with 5 shells of buckshot for a potential home defense situation. One of those things you hope you’ll never need, but you’re kinda screwed if you need it and don’t have it. It’s quite a fun gun though. It looks great; I love the matte black finish with the barrel heat guard. Shucking the action makes such a gloriously intimidating sound followed by the ear-shattering blast as it dispatches 2oz of lead out the end of the barrel.

Lined up for decimation

After that bit of fun, we entertained ourselves shooting the 22’s (I borrowed Emmett’s Marlin 60 again) for probably about an hour at various plastic jugs, cardboard boxes, and aluminum cans. “Plinking” is somewhat more entertaining than target shooting because all of the lightweight targets you shoot at react: falling over, popping up in the air, spinning in circles.

Tiff and her new gun again. She tried standing for some shots

Once we were done here, we went and did a few other things in Knoxville. Had Firehouse Subs for lunch… mmmm

Some of the results of the 22's

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.

I ended up shooting 4 rounds of skeet and 1 round of trap. Trap at ORSA is fairly hard. The clays are launched over a ridge that seems to channel the breeze in such a way as it can toss those clay targets in some wild paths. Very, very challenging, but very, very fun. The lowest skeet field (Skeet 1) actually suffers from the same problem to an extent; The high house usually flies the same path, but I saw elevation differences on the low house of ~15-20 feet at the center stake due to the breeze coming off the ridge. Regardless, I’m still more consistent at the low house than high as I keep forgetting to make sure my cheek weld stays consistent on those left-to-right swings. Practice, practice, practice.

Sadly I’ve let my shotgun ammunition stash dwindle. I used to try to buy 100-200 rounds a week to at least keep up with what I was shooting, and hopefully build the stash a bit. Over the winter though I ended up shooting a lot, and not buying much and was down to 50 rounds left after yesterday’s shooting. I thought I was going to go again today with a friend from church, but then forgot that the “Polar Bear League” shoots on Sundays (today was the last week of the league though), so we had to postpone. Regardless, before I remembered that, I bought 200 rounds of cheapo Winchester ammo so I had something to shoot I am being fickle about my reloading plans. I really need to seriously save towards that equipment as it will cut my ammunition cost/box in half. Reloading metallic rounds for my rifle(s) is even cheaper to get into equipment-wise, AND has a higher percentage of savings (about 75-85% cheaper to reload than buying retail).

Meant to shoot the Savage 340, but the benchrest range was pretty full, so I took a bunch of 22 ammo over to the plinking range and ran about 100 rounds through the Marlin 60, shooting some old bottles and other such random targets as people had left out there. I’m impressed with the accuracy of that little gun. Even with just regular open sites, it was trivial to hit a 20oz coke bottle at about 30-35 yards. Made for a fun hour of nailing it, popping it up in the air, then finding it again where it came to rest to do it again… Reactive targets are so much more fun. I think that’s why I like clays so much!

Our small arsenal of guns is about to grow again. I ordered a Savage MkII 22LR Bolt-Action target rifle for Tiffany. She loved target shooting with my SKS even though the 7.62×39 round had a lot of kick. She has not shot my Savage 223Rem at all yet, but she’d probably like it. That said, 223Rem is still pretty pricey ammo to “plink” with at about $8/box of 20 rounds… also ORSA does not allow center-fire rifle cartridges on the plinking range, only benchrest/competition/high power ranges. So the 22LR is much more versatile. And cheaper. And it hardly kicks at all. The Savage is a nice high-quality rifle and the MkII line has the adjustable AccuTrigger for a nice light, crisp trigger pull. Hopefully with a nice scope it will be a tack-driver.

I still haven’t decided what scope to put on it. I just put a Redfield on my Savage 340.

Redfield 3-9x40 on Savage Model 340 Series E 223 Remington

The elevation and windage adjustment “box” on the scope was too large for the original Weaver sidemount, so I had to put a “hi-mount” set of rings on the gun. The problem is (found out after buying the new rings and putting them on….) is that they offset the scope from the centerline of the barrel, so it’s going to be interesting getting it sighted in I think. We’ll see how it does, but my current thought is I might either put the Redfield on the 22LR (overkill) and put a cheaper “thin” scope on the 340, or just accept the non-ideal mount for the time being and maybe trade the 340 for a different bolt-action down the road that allows for normal Picatinny rail mounts for the scope. We’ll see. I haven’t had a chance to do anything more than bore-sight the Redfield on the 340 so far. It’s an absolutely beautiful scope for the money though. It’s definitely going to stick with me no matter what guns get traded/sold/acquired.

One final “project” for the weekend…. I made myself some sandbags for benchrest shooting today. My friend/mentor, Bob Hedrick, from church gave me some empty lead shot bags this morning and I filled them with sand and “sewed”‘ them shut Ruined one of Tiff’s needles in the process… oops. Here’s the result of my $3.64 of sand…

5 "new" sandbags for benchrest shooting

It’s something you take for granted at “commercial” ranges, as they tend to loan them out when you’re there, but being a non-profit club, I’m finding all these little things I’m having to bring for myself. Thankfully none of it is really expensive… like these bags….there’s not $5 in them, and they should last quite a while.

More later when the new Savage comes in

Here’s a few more pics to keep you occupied…

Savage Model 340 Series E

Savage Model 340 Series E

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.

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.

In the shotgun department though, I’ve shot a couple more rounds of skeet at John Sevier HEC since I went to Chilhowee and did my first round I wrote about previously. I’ve registered for the required Hunter Safety Course that is a prerequisite to getting a hunting license if you were born after 1969. That is 4 evenings in late December. I am not exactly sure what, or even IF, I really want to hunt, but I’d like to, at the very least, try. Be a good excuse to bolster the arsenal down the road

ANYHOW, now that you’re caught up, here’s what my wife’s cousin’s husband (is there a term for that relationship???) Kevin, and my father-in-law, Rich, did Saturday after Thanksgiving. Neither of them had ever tried clay games before and I brought my guns with me on our visit to Ohio in hopes that I could find some time to go shooting, so we loaded up the guns and manual trap launcher and a couple boxes of clays and went to Deer Creek.

CZ @ Deer Creek. Kevin got a bird in the picture!!!

Deer Creek has an outdoor rifle range and an “unsupervised” shotgun range. It really is little more than a big grass field with a bunch of warning signs that people use guns there This is the first time I’ve shot at such a location, every other time being at some kind of club that had range officers, waivers, and fees. I do have to say that it’s nice to just yell “pull” and see the bird go up, rather than having to load each clay manually into the launcher, though.

That said, it was a really enjoyable time. There was one other big “family” group there that had maybe 15 people and 3 guns, so they were all taking turns pulling for each other and shooting. We had 3 guns (CZ, Mossberg, and Winchester Model 1300) and 3 people, so one pulled, one shot, and one took pictures and watched. But all that to say, it really wasn’t crowded, and the informal “field” setting with all manual equipment was kinda nice.

Rich and the CZ. Kevin pulling

Since Kevin and Rich had never used shotguns before, I gave them a brief overview on how the two pump guns operated, and the CZ’s over/under action. All 3 of us rotated through all the guns and it was actually a really enlightening time for me as well as I got to shoot 3 fairly different guns back to back and start to get a feel for the finer differences between how each of them handled. If you’re paying attention to the pictures though, my CZ got LOTS of use. I am pretty sure it got picked up more than either of the pumps, although I found myself picking up my Mossberg quite a bit as well. I love how light that gun is, and even with the more significant recoil, it just is a fun fun gun. The fixed cyl. bore choke definitely hurt though if i let the bird get too far out into the field.

Kevin and the CZ. Rich pulling

Each of us would take between 5 and 10 shots and rotate to the next person. Kevin and I started getting creative and started playing a game where we would see who could break the bird first. Rich pulled singles for us and we tried to line up on the clay as fast as possible. I think we ended up tied, or at least very close. A few of them we fired exactly at the same time and it was really hard to say who got the score. But you know, it was more about the fun than the actual score

In the end I think we launched about 150-175 clays (we started with a partial box, so I’m not sure exactly how many we ended up with), and close to the same amount of ammo. I actually am kind of irritated as I keep a log of the shots I put through the CZ, but with each of us swapping guns all afternoon, I lost track of how much we shot through it. I’m going to log 100 I think, which is probably a little over, but “close enough”

Brendan spent the morning cleaning his guns with my dad’s gun-cleaning kit.

Brendan with shotgun brush

Rich spent the morning reading the paper.

Dad

Mom and Rich showed me some Heritage Love:

go mountaineers!

Brendan also played with an electric knife. He was in charge of carving the delicious turkey.

who keeps giving him weapons?

After dinner and dessert, we played Scrabble Slam (a Scrabble card game). We walked over to Tania and Kevin’s in the chilly air. It was nice seeing the Christmas lights on our walk (can’t wait for the Zoo lights on Saturday.

Tania and Kevin came over to our house and we had seconds on dessert!

Kevin and Brendan are bosom-friends:

Kevin and Brendan

Jeanette will probably have a better post. I’m still not very good about using my camera all the time. :}

Tomorrow, we get to see the Sullivan family! Both families in one weekend.

I’m thankful for my family.

Love, Tiff

1) I need to learn how to track targets RIGHT out of the trap house. Those doubles are impossible to hit if you sleep on the first one

2) I have strongly left-eye dominant vision. This is problematic as I have heard from a few people that I should be shooting “two-eye” to increase my depth perception. That might help except for the fact I completely lose my tracking of the end of the barrel with both eyes open. Need to find a way around this. Am going to try left hand shooting (dreading this), and taping a dot on my glasses to prevent my left eye from being able to focus on the barrel.

3) Force myself to become right-eye dominant. I’ve heard that this is possible, but I’ve heard from MORE people that it isn’t…so we’ll see.

Regardless, Tomorrow I think is going to be a day off from shooting clays. I might just not shoot at all, but I’ve been kinda wanting to shoot my SKS, so maybe I’ll do that.

I will post more of a review next time after I get more experience there, but I did the skeet shooting at Chilhowee Sportsman’s Club where they also have a massive FOURTEEN stand trap range. The people there were friendly as I’ve found most of the people I’ve met at shooting clubs to be. It really has been overall a great experience getting into shooting clay games. Chilhowee Sportsman’s Club is conveniently located a few miles south of Maryville, just off 129 heading towards the dragon. If you’re in the area, they’re definitely worth trying out. Just make sure you stop by the clubhouse first as they do make you sign a waiver…a first for me for a shotgun range.

Upper range at Gatlinburg Sportsman's Club

This isn’t really a formal review for a couple of reasons. 1) I’m new to shotguns in general and couldn’t express the intricacies of any particular gun like a seasoned sportsman could, and 2) I don’t feel like writing that much today . I just wanted to make sure my new gun shot well and the barrels were regulated correctly, and after firing a couple of rounds at the pattern target, I joined in with another bunch of guys who were shooting trap. Shot 30 rounds of double-trap and 20 rounds of handicap singles. It was amazingly fun. I definitely need to get used to this new gun as it shoots vastly different from my Mossberg, but it is much much better for shooting at clays as well. The extra barrel length and interchangeable chokes made it easier to hit the far clays. Scored 24/50… not great, but I don’t think too bad considering my inexperience both in the sport and the gun.

Shooting handicap singles with the new CZ Canvasback

Mossberg will still definitely see use here and there, but for now it’s relegated to Home Defense use, which is what it was really built for anyhow I am quite happy to have two shotguns though as it will be more fun to go shooting with friends having the extra gun.

The CZ though…It’s a beautiful gun. I love the classic look of the double-barrel shotguns, and while side-by-sides are the “real” classic of double-barrel guns I guess, I think the Over/Under looks better. I feel like I should be walking out the door to go hunt some pheasant with it Even with only having 50 rounds in it so far, my initial impressions are that I am going to keep this gun around a LONG time. It fits me well and seems quite well made. The reported firing pin problems have been reported to be only on older runs of these guns, and the new ones are supposedly quite reliable.

Shooting double traps. Can't see the gun though

All I can say for now is that I like the gun’s balance. It kicks WAY less than my Mossberg, and seems pretty accurate. Both barrels fire perfectly, no misfires yet, and I’ve hit clays from both barrels, so if it is off, it’s not noticeable to a novice shooter like myself. Also, considering the relatively small price difference between this and the Stoeger I was considering initially, this is the better gun by far. Selective trigger and beefy ejectors, plus a nicer finish and better wood. I think I still could deal with a slightly longer Length of Pull, but that is easily rectified with a Limbsaver, though I hate to cover up the wood. We’ll see.

Will post more as I get used to the gun.

Fast forward about a month and I’ve learned quite a bit, having gone shooting at least once a weekend since I got the Mossberg. One of the most obvious lessons was that a 20″ barrel with an open choke just does not have near enough range and pattern density to hit clays with any kind of predictability. So I started looking at Over/Under shotguns to use at the range, and keep my Mossberg for HD and “spare gun” use. Problem was nice Over/Unders (O/Us) can cost more than a brand new car. I’ve seen O/Us that list for $25,000!!! And there are a whole slew of people who say a good O/U can’t be had for under $1000.

Tiff and I had agreed we could afford to spend about $350 on a gun, and she wanted to buy it for me for Christmas. I at first was looking at longer pump guns, and a couple of auto-loaders. Then I found a couple O/Us that looked interesting, the Stoeger Condor (also sold under the Benelli name) and the Remington SPR310. Both can be found for ~$350 at stores like Bass Pro Shops or Dick’s Sporting Goods. I handled a couple of these in the stores and thought the Stoeger felt nicer than people were giving it credit for. For what it’s worth, the Remington SPR310 felt like junk. If that had been my only choice, I’d have walked out without a shotgun. Quality on it, especially the fit and finish on the wood stock, was downright horrible. Maybe I’d have taken it for $100. But it didn’t even remotely feel worth $350.

We ended up going to Gander Mountain and I was about to buy the Stoeger when I saw the CZ Canvasback in a 12g/28″ configuration with clearance tags on it. Jackpot It was a little more than we wanted to spend, but I’ve been selling some stuff on craigslist recently so we figured we could swing it. It was something of an impulse buy as I hadn’t done much research on CZ shotguns (actually made by Huglu). But when we got home I poked around and it seems that not only is it a pretty good little gun, but I got a smokin’ deal on it. Cheapest I can find online is $640, and I will be able to buy a few months worth of ammo with what I saved over that.

Did the paperwork, paid for it, and brought home my new target gun. I will post pictures tomorrow when we go to the range to test it’s pattern. I want to make sure the barrels are regulated well as can supposedly be a problem on “cheaper” double-barrel shotguns.

I really enjoy the tactical “can-survive-anything” feel of my Mossberg, but this CZ is such a joy to hold. It is a more refined gun, for a more refined purpose. It is far from the most beautiful and best machined gun available, but for the price, the aesthetics can’t be beat. Hopefully that will go for the shooting performance as well. Find out tomorrow

Thanks Tiff. Best Christmas present ever

(I’m kind of writing this next part as an entry for “what I did today”, and partially as a “review” in case someone looking for a place to shoot around the Pigeon Forge area finds this and wants to know more)

Thankfully people in TN must like to shoot a lot because there are no less than 3 other ranges within a “convenient” driving distance of us. Emmett and I decided to try a new range we’d never been to before that is between Pigeon Forge and  Gatlinburg. Gatlinburg Sportman’s Club is normally a members-only range, however, on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday afternoons, the clay, trap, skeet, and sporting clay ranges are open to the public. No “range fee”, but their sporting clay prices are close to double the affordable $5/25 targets at JSHEC at $20/50 or $35/100 for sporting clays and just a dollar more for trap at $6/25 targets.

Getting to GSC is pretty straightforward. It is located on King Branch Road which is directly off of the Scenic Parkway (441) between Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge. King Branch is well marked, and following that road for about a mile, Gatlinburg Sportsman’s Club is well marked with a large green sign on the left.

Note: Do NOT take a lowered  sports car or something with bald tires. The gravel drive is quite smooth and any sedan well make it up just fine, but the grade is very steep in some areas and my essentially brand new Goodyear Eagle GT’s on my Kia were having trouble getting up a few areas.

After going through the gate, there are a couple of splits, just follow the gravel drive up the hill watching for signs for the Clay/Shotgun range. There is somewhat limited parking, I am not sure if they have “overflow” somewhere or not.

GSC has a some really great features. They have 3 fields they can setup for trap or sporting clays, and their “main” field has two nice trap houses for skeet. There seemed to be some younger people doing some training on the skeet field when we got there, so Emmett and I went to the lower field where they were shooting sporting clays and we ran through a 50 round set followed by 25 traps.

The sporting clay trajectories are significantly more challenging than the sporting clay field at JSHEC, and I did quite poorly, but it was still lots of fun to practice. I think a longer gun with a modified or full choke would help a lot. My 20″ open choke barrel is just WAY too open to hit the clay pigeons at the GSC range. JSHEC’s is much closer in, and can be handled with a short gun like mine much more easily. Also practice. Even given a longer gun, I still think I would have been below 50% on the sporting clays. I’m used to a nice stationary circle target with my rifle. It’s hard to mentally put together a shot while having to compensate for a high speed moving target.

Lastly, but almost most important, the staff at the range is really great. They’re helpful, and willing to take as much time as you need to explain anything you’d want to know. I’ve never really seen an Over/Under up close so he picked up one of their rental guns and explained how they worked, what you could change on them for a better fit, etc. I think next time I’m there I might rent one of the O/U guns to see if I like it. The balance felt a lot better than my Mossberg for that kind of shooting. Felt steadier with the long barrel. *shrug*

Anyhow, once again, no really big lesson learned with today’s shooting. Just found another nice place to shoot, and got some more practice in. And still wanting another shotgun more than ever now.