Large Caliber Entertainment!

Every once in a while, when it isn't to hot out in the desert mornings, a few of the "gang" go out shooting. I've blogged about it before last Fall. Seems a little weird, this mix of ultra-liberals and conservatives gathering to shoot guns, but hey - it's Arizona! Thursdays are generally the days they go out, preferred by one of the doctors, but interestingly, he never goes the Thursdays I can make it... Since Melinda's treatments are normally on Thursdays, we were only able to join in a couple weeks ago on her last chemo break.

Doc Chuck is sort of our motivator to get out, and is always looking for new ways to compete. In the previous post from last year, he had a "dueling tree" that swings around when you hit it. That way you can compete against another shooter and usually the best shot hitting the 4" targets is easily recognized. This time they had a paper target with zones worth various point totals. Six shots and your point total is recorded. Ironically, I volunteered to be first out of the gate with my little .380 and immediately scored a perfect 60! It has little recoil and I seemed to aim better than with my 45.   In the images here, Chuck and Sue take a look at the scatter in her shots, and at right, the collection of guns available for shooting is shown.

Chuck then got the idea from Detective Dan (retired police detective) to shoot as fast as possible, where you got a higher score for both accuracy and speed. Not unexpectedly, police-trained Dan did the best with this method. Chuck thinks he can get a timer from his brother that records the length of time from the first-to-last shot for more accurate timing one of these next sessions.


I happened to take some pictures of the guys shooting and discovered some interesting things. Far be it from me to criticize anyone's style, but the pictures don't lie! At left are a pair of images of Sue shooting her 9mm, one just before firing and the next just afterwards as the cartridge is being ejected. The two images are stacked in Photoshop, and demonstrates the effect of the recoil. Sue has an unusual "lean-back" posture, and also the recoil seems a huge 20 degrees or more. She had a large scatter in her shooting, and corrective action might be in order. Dan, in comparison at right, has the more conventional "lean-in" posture and suffers much less recoil with his .38.


Finally we put the target away and shot a few rounds on the "dueling tree" again. At left, Sue and Sam are shown firing away, and at left Sue and Dan are competing. I did pretty mediocre in this round, but was still glowing from my perfect score on the paper target!

With November comes nearly perfect Fall mornings, and Chuck has dates in mind already. I've warned him we're generally not available Thursdays, so will see if we get out anytime soon, but will look forward to the next trip out...