Train Up Day 2

Monday I felt like U coyldnt have leaned against the broad side of a barn successfully. Tuesday I went back to the drawing board and pulled out the zero stop on my scope and re-zeroed – I was .2 mils high before but I thought I could work around that. The result was a fine zero – this is my last “just how clean a zero is it” shot:

After that we shot new steel in new spots. One of the instructors (named Greg) sat down with me and helped me call wind. Boy howdy was he good. REALLY good. By the time we were done I felt like maybe I might be able to hit some stuff and I had a much more solid take on my dope.

We did a pistol drill in the afternoon. The XDm .45 I brought seems to be shooting a wee low but that’s okay. Was mostly stuff I know and there was too much standing around but I needed the trigger time on the pistol and the instructor was good.

Today was a down day. I fabbed up an aluminium spacer to increase my LOP, drive to Caspar, went to the briefing and found out I’m in group 1 and I’m shooter 16. I got the last minute deliveries from Amazon (hooray for prime!) and the ammo I shipped.

Competition starts tomorrow.

Train Up Day 1

Sunday, heading to Douglas WY for two days of training before the Snipers Hide Cup:

We started the day with zeroing on paper – my first two shots were high, second three lower but still high. Next group of 5 made one big hole which made me happy. I’m number 4.

But we aren’t here to shoot paper, and what followed was an enormously frustrating (but fun) day of shooting steel in 15-25 MPH winds out to 1400 yards. I missed a lot of shots – the most frustrating of which might have been the shot of a butterfly on my rifle. This is the closest I got to that shot.

So a day of a lot of missing. But I’m learning, so it’s good.

Another Day Shooting

Took Friday late afternoon off to head up North and get some trigger time with a great Snipers Hide guy named Bigwheels, aka Jeff. He’s got a bunch of secret shooting spots staked out that go all the way out to 1950 yards (!).

I got out of town late and almost immediately ran into shitty Friday “gtfo of Seattle for the w’end” traffic. I was so late getting onto the logging roads that lead into the spots that we only got to stop and BS on the road as we passed. He said they left some clay pigeons out on the 1250 yard range and said i could shoot those if I didn’t want to hump steel and also that the mirage was really bad.

I got up there and set up the spotting scope at the 1250 yard spot. Through it the pigeons were shimmering bits of orange that didn’t even seem to be in one place at any one time. Yep, the
mirage was bad allright. No way I was going to only shoot those.

So back in the car and up to set up my steel. I humped it down to the spot with my folding hand truck (which is probably going back to CostCo) and set up.

Back at the spotting scope aaaaaaaand WTF? I can’t find my targets. I can see the fluttery shimmery orange things, but no targets. None.

Okay, so. WTF? How can I have lost my targets? Maybe SOMEONE STOLE THEM!?!

Okay, that seems unlikely. Back up to the road with the spotting scope and aha! There they are.

It seems there are two places I can set targets. I set mine in the wrong place for the 1250 range. I can’t get a laser range finder read at all on how far they are from where I am and the mirage is so wicked that I’m not remotely confident I can reticle range them.

So everything back in the car, drive up a ways and eventually I find a spot that reads 794 yards.

I set up there and look up my settings on Ballistic FTE on my iPhone and also on the mil 168gr tables I have in my data book and settle on 8 mils up and guess on .2 mils for wind.

My first mag is a bit all over but once I get the wind right things settle in pretty nicely. It’s shifting almost full reversals though, so I can get 3-4 shots on and then I have to adjust again.

I’m still at a place where I’m kinda surprised every time I get on target at any distance so when I centered the 6 inch circle on my 3rd try I was pretty happy. Of course it was then knocked so badly off center I had only the edge to shoot it, which is all my fault for going such a hack job at hanging it.

All in all a good day though.