British Motorcycle Gear

Categories: Guns

The last Betty…

Some days at the range I don’t feel like punishing myself with heavy recoil or trying to shoot the tightest possible groups with loads that have been tuned to perfection.  Nope, shooting is fun, and sometimes blasting through a box of ammo is just what the doctor ordered.

A few years ago when we were organizing military surplus rifle fun matches, good buddy Paul showed up with a bunch of zombie targets.  Paul called the zombie Boris and the hostage Betty, and the names stuck.  We had targets left after the match, and yesterday I shot the very last one.

I had my trusty Model 60 Smith and Wesson and a box of 100 .38 Specials I had loaded on my Star progressive reloader.   They were Gardner Cache powder-coated 148-grain wadcutters with 2.7 grains of Bullseye (the go to accuracy load in .38 Special).   I set ol’ Boris and Betty up on the 7-yard line and proceeded to double-action my way through 20 cylinders’ worth of ammo (the cylinder in a Model 60 holds 5 rounds).  There was not a single misfire in the entire 100 rounds, and more importantly, not a single one of them hit Betty.  Boris…he didn’t fare so well.


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Joe Berk

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