[BattleRifleG3]

Figured I'd post this in the beginning shooter's forum since it involves learning experiences irrespective of prior shooting history.

Wolfhuntress (sings): Yesterday… all my troubles seemed so far away…

That’s right, we went shooting yesterday. Firing Enfield and Mauser and Mosin, Oh my! Now by the title you might think that the wise and experienced BattleRifleG3 took his lovely lady to the shooting range and bestowed to her masses of wonderful valuable gun knowledge.

He he, not fooling anyone, eh?

Indeed, I learned a lot about my guns and about myself shooting alongside her, from casting aside the haughty misconception that I’m trigger-insensitive (bone-stock 1917 trigger – UG) to continuing shooting beyond the limits of sanity (she knew when to call it a day.)

The lovely Wolfhuntress kept to her favorite three guns of mine – Yugo SKS M59/66, M91/30 Mosin Nagant, and her ultimate favorite, the Czech M98/22 Mauser. This time, we went to the game commission public range, where we had the benefit of real targets and known ranges. I brought pistol, open sited rifle, and scoped rifle intending to use them at 10?, 50, and 100yds respectively. As it turns out, we had plenty of shooting enjoyment at the 50yd range with open sited rifles, and the others stayed in the car. More on that later…

This being her first time at a formal range, she got a first hand experience in range rules, including violations thereof and the occasional inconsiderate dorx (sticking their trash under our shooting box.) Also got to shoot at some real honest to goodness targets at last from a real bench. She had a decent hit ratio between her three favorite mil-surps. I cheated and used our box as a benchrest, so I’m sure she would have kept up with me had the playing field been level. Taught her what to do about a misfire, even impressed her by recocking the bolt with my pocket knife without unlocking it. Ok, fine, I only impressed myself. I’d never done that before.

Must say I like the handling, recoiling, and sites of my 1917 30-06 Enfield, but danget that trigger is crap! I had many false shots from expecting the trigger to go when I apparently had to pull it a lot farther. And you thought an SKS was bad.

Now for the funny part – Not only am I allegedly trigger insensitive, I’m also recoil insensitive! I mean, I took a 458 Win Mag for more than one shot, and didn’t think it was so bad! Yeah, I was standing in a field and the target was a rectangular plate of aluminum. But wait, I have a light bolt gun in 300 Remington Ultra Magnum, sabot slugs from a 12ga 870 should be no problem, right?

Ha! For the second time, I found my thumb socking my face each time I fired one of those monsters. Tried holding firm, but dang it took a lot of compression against my shoulder to not hit my own face. I’m still considering getting a p-gripped buttstock just for that reason, funny cause I prefer the standard stock for anything remotely tactical. I wanted to once again compare sabot slugs from a rifled barrel to foster slugs from a smooth barrel with modified choke. And I brought my H&R single shot shotgun with the same length barrel as the 870 and fixed modified choke just to see how it compared. So after pulverizing my shoulder and about 3/5 sabot shots bashing my cheek as well, I switched to the foster slugs. Still painful, but not as bad. Finally, I decided to try my H&R single. Figure if I wanted to have the lightest gun possible for a long and arduous hunt, it would be ideal. Forgot to bring the buttpad. I think you can see where this is going. But it gets better. I had the crazy idea that I could spare my right shoulder by shooting it left handed. Wolfhuntress was watching, as she is now as I write up this post. I might contest that the bullet is gone from the barrel before recoil is felt, because I would swear my shoulder gave way before anything hit that target. “Shiiiiiiaaaa-“ was what was heard from me as I struggled to keep my muzzle in a safe direction and eject the shell of that wretched cartridge. I realized then that using my left shoulder was a particularly bad idea, because it was fully unaccustomed to abuse of that sort.

Wolfhuntress had previously finished up her shooting, and had been immensely kind enough to start cleanup by carrying the milsurps back to the car. (Please Lord, can I keep her?) She was back to witness my ultimate destruction and comfort me in my suffering. (Please Lord, can I keep her?) Finally, I decided to end the day on a better note than that. Mustering myself to stand, I shouldered my 870 one more time and leveled at a Bum Laden target. One grazed his beard as if to give him one last chance to say “What de heck?” before being ventilated by the other three in definite kill shots.

We returned happy campers and had a wonderful 7 month anniversary dinner. Please Lord, can I keep her?

Wolfhuntress: Dang, he likes to talk…doesn’t he? Please Lord, can I keep him?