I joined the Oakdale Gun Club a couple of weeks ago and I took Dave there on Sunday for some shooting.
It was my first trip since joining the club.
We got there around 12:00 or so on a beautiful sunny day. There were a few other cars in the lot but not too many.
We started out at the 25 yard pistol range. There were 4 or 5 people already shooting there, and they had moved the benches up so they were about 7 yards from the targets.
Benches moved up the line.
I brought my new Uberti Hombre in .45 Colt, my Pietta 1858 Remington replica in .44 caliber and my RIA 1911 Tactical in .45 ACP.
Dave brought his Sig Saur P-6 and Berreta 90-Two, both in 9mm.
We had attended the local gun show yesterday and I picked up a box of MagTech .45 Colt Cowboy load for $27.50 – best price I could find there. .45 Colt is spendy stuff, so I’ll be reloading that for sure.
I proceeded to run 40 rounds through the Hombre. It seems pretty accurate and hits close to point of aim – but I didn’t test it on a rest. The recoil from the MagTech ammo was stout, but not really bad. It’s not loaded really hot. I let Dave run 10 rounds though it too.
The grips seem small. My pinky finger was hanging off the bottom. I think I need to experiment with my grip some more. Dave didn’t like the grips either.
Then I loaded up and shot 18 rounds through the 1858. It’s always fun (but slow) to make smoke with the Holy Black. And that 1858 is surprisingly accurate with 25 grains of powder. I let Dave launch 6 rounds down range with it also. No fouling related issues in 24 rounds.
Loading up the Remington 1858.
Dave in his best dueling pose.
Finally I tested some .45 ACP hand loads. When I started reloading I bought a box of 185gn LSWC bullets from Missouri Bullet. But I had feeding issues with them and stopped loading them up. The other day I made a couple of dummy rounds with them and they seemed to feed pretty well, so I loaded up a box of 50 with various charges of Unique.
They all fed and fired just fine. The loads were batches of 10 starting at 5.0 grains and going up to 5.8 grains by 0.2 increments.
The 5.0 grain loads were real powder puffs. They cycled the action and the bullet hit the target at point of aim, but the recoil was really mild and the brass pretty much fell out of the port at my feet.
Each increment added a little more recoil and the brass flew a little further until it got to the 5.8 grain load. That was a bit more stout, but still shot fine.
I think I’ll load up some 5.5 grain rounds and call it good.
Dave also let me put 17 rounds through his Beretta, but I don’t want to talk about where they hit the paper.
Then we moved over to the 100 yard rifle range. It was a mud pit, but we hung targets and shot at them anyway.
I brought my Remington 740 .30-06 with 25 rounds and my Savage .22. Dave had his M4 in .223. Dave had bought a new red dot scope for his M4 at the gun show and wanted to sight it in.
I out of my 25 rounds I had for my .30-06 I had 3 stove pipes and one FTF. I rechambered the FTF round three times with no go. The round didn’t even have a primer strike, so it’s possible that I pushed the shoulder back a little too far when I resized the brass.
The last time I took the .30-06 out it refused to fire most of the rounds and had light primer strikes. I replaced the hammer spring and that seems to have helped.
On the other hand, all the rounds that did fire managed to hit the paper and I rezeroed the scope a little. I really do need a new scope for that rifle…
The .22 rifle just plinked away, although the scope seems to be a little off also.
By the time we left a little after 2:00 it was getting packed.
All in all a fun couple of hours at the range.
Lessons learned:
- I don’t think I’ll take FIVE guns the next time. It was a hassle carting all that stuff around.
- I need another range bag of some sort. It will make carting the stuff around much nicer.
- .45 Colt is spendy. Reloading is required. But it is fun to shoot.
