Recoil Therapy

I needed a break from the mess that has been computers and Alma this week. So after work I traded satchel for range bag and headed out to make holes in paper.

It went better than I had feared.

To my mild surprise, there was almost a line at the check-in and pay area. Three older folks were paying for their time. One lady admitted that this was her first time shooting a pistol, but she’d been on a rifle team when she was in the Army. The young black couple ahead of me waited patiently. The lady had not shot before, but looked forward to trying it out. I’m almost a regular after this summer, so when things started to look like it would be slow, “Alex” waved me over, asked which target style I wanted, and shooed me to the pistol range. “Settle up when you leave.”

I opted for a silhouette target for once. I warmed up at four yards, then ran the target out to ten yards, just to see how I did. I’d never shot this particular pistol at that distance. Well, for starters the target gets smaller when you do that. Sort of like putting it through the dryer on “high” or something. The results were odd, so I might do more “end-of-the-range” work next week to see if it is me or the sights. I suspect it was me.

Once I saw the results, and that all of the shots had stayed on the paper, and had stayed on my paper, I reeled the target in to 5 yards and worked on smoothness and accuracy at speed. I did a lot better than I used to – using the smaller targets paid off, as has just sending lead down range and getting much more comfortable with the revolver.

It was half an hour well spent. All I thought about was the target, my firearm, the occasional errant brass from the semi-auto in the next bay, and shooting.

As they say in the society pages, “a fine time was had by all.”