8/22/2011

Woo hoo! That was fun! OK, so Friday evening I went down to Granbury to help set up the clay shoot thingy and try out my guns. I brought 150 rounds of Federal #7.5 bird shot ammo with me and a few 00 and 000 buck shot rounds. When I pulled the Saiga out of the bag, all the guys from last year remembered the .410 I had and began razzing me. I told them this was a 12 gauge and they shifted to giving me grief for having a short barrel. Meh, I didn't care. We went to the first station and shot. It took a few rounds to get mine to cycle the first shot, but it kept stove-piping the second. I was OK with that since I was only allowed to load two rounds per station anyway. I hit a few clays, but missed most of them. After a few stations I went back to the car and got the Auto 5 and Mossy out to try. Of course Mossy worked first time every time but kicked a lot harder than the others. The A5 worked fine as well and was quite a nice gun. I was a bit worried at the amount of metallic “Clank!” I heard with the A5 though. It shouldn't have been bashing the action on the low-powered bird shot. Perhaps I was hearing the action close with a clank though. I'm not sure. Either way, I'm happy with the A5 and Mossy... oh, and the Saiga as well. Eventually the people living on the land asked us to quit so I went home. Saturday morning Larry arrived first and we reassembled his gun. He had tried to field strip it and couldn't get it back together. I showed him how again but it was dark and early and I'm not convinced he really got it. John arrived and we headed out. We stopped at a 7-11 for water and ice then rolled towards Granbury. Apparently I hadn't made it clear where the event was to take place and got John in trouble. He told Samantha it was there at 2871 (Gun Club Road) and I-20. Oops, sorry. We got to the site and signed in. I showed John his options for guns and he chose Mossy. We waited for the safety brief and then went to our starting station with a couple hundred rounds each in my gun bag. My sister had provided us with some Winchester ammo, I wish she hadn't. It was weak and dirty. I didn't find out just how dirty until I cleaned the guns later. I could tell it was weak though when my gun wouldn't cycle as well as it had the night before. Larry's gun wouldn't cycle at all. I had his gas plug screwed out until I was worried it was going to fall off. It only cycled about three times in over a hundred rounds. Needless to say, he’s not too pleased. I kept telling him it just needs to be run in. My gun had at least fifty rounds through it the night before, and had been cycled by hand a couple hundred times before that. By the way, once we fingered out that the Winchester stuff was so weak and I went back to Federal, my gun began to cycle every time. I forgot to close off my gas plug after going back to the Federal ammo and heard a similar “Clank!” like I'd heard in the A5 with each shot in the Saiga. I've since reset it. Anyhoo, I wish I had the score card with me to say how we did at each station... wait, no I don't, we sucked. Suffices to say, John had the best score of the three of us, then me then Larry. I'm not sure I should tell the actual scores for the other guys but I hit 46 out of 100 with John hitting about four more than me and Larry hitting about six less. OK, replace the “about” with “exactly” then go ahead and do the math and you’ll know how they did as well. Once we were done, they served lunch for everyone, they being the Boy’s and Girl’s Club, not John and Larry, but I could see them making the worst team serve lunch. Anyhoo, we ate and hung out until all the raffles and prizes and stuff were awarded. By the way, while we were the worst team, probably, we weren’t the worst shooters. Larry beat the best woman by ten clays and the worst man by eleven. Add six for me and ten for John and we look pretty... OK, we sucked. There ain’t no way around it. We drove back to my house and I sent them home. I took a shower and a nap before cleaning the guns. Since it is lunch time, and I probably won't have much else to talk about this week, I'm going to save the rest of the story for tomorrow. Toodles.