Home on the range…

The stream crossing to the West End Gun Club has been too deep to cross in my Subie Outback since early January.  I tried it once back then and I wasn’t going to make that mistake again.

I’ve been going to the Magnum Range in Ontario (an indoor pistol range), watching the West End website for updates and occasionally driving out to check the stream.  The Magnum Range is a good place to shoot, but I missed shooting my rifles.  Then a good thing happened earlier this week:  Good buddy Duane offered to pick me up and attempt a stream crossing in his Toyota 4×4.  I was in.

I’ve known Duane for years, going back to my work with CSC Motorcycles in their early days of the replica Mustangs and the RX3 250cc adventure bike. Duane and I both owned the CSC bikes and we traveled extensively on them.

The Meyer Canyon Road stream crossing was still deep and the water was moving swiftly, but Duane’s Toyota had no problem crossing it.

I knew which rifle I wanted to shoot when I received Duane’s email invitation:  My Mosin-Nagant 91/30.  It’s the one you see at the top of this blog.  The Mosin is a favorite.   It’s accurate, I reload 7.62x54R ammo, and it is fun to shoot.

I’ve owned this Mosin rifle for maybe 10 years now.   It came about almost as an afterthought.  To me, the Mosins appeared to be cheap pieces of junk.  Then one day after a class about engineering creativity, a student asked about the cover photo on a book I wrote.  He told me he and his father owned a Mosin and enjoyed shooting the rifle.  I saw a Mosin on the rack at a sporting goods store a short while later for $139.  It looked crude, but for $139, I thought I’d take a chance.  The guy who sold it to me did not know there was a bayonet in the Mosin’s cardboard box, and when he put the rifle back in its box, the bayonet scratched the stock.   Neither of us knew this until 10 days later (after California’s silly waiting period).  The store offered to sell me a different Mosin, but that meant starting the 10-day waiting period all over again.  I viewed the scratch as an opportunity, and indeed it was.  I refinished the stock (10 coats of TruOil worked nicely).  Then I glass bedded the action, reworked the trigger, polished the bolt, and worked up a load.  It was fun and I learned much about the rifle.  Mine has matching numbers on the receiver, the butt plate, and the bolt.  I know it’s weird: I own some really nice rifles, but the Mosin is one of the ones I love the most.

When Duane and I arrived at the range, I set up a target at 50 yards.  Like always, shooting the Mosin felt good.   It had been too long.

Duane is a milsurp rifle enthusiast, too.  He has a beautiful 8mm Mauser K98 that his uncle took home from Germany after World War II.  I keep trying to buy it from him.  He keeps saying no.

Like me, Duane is a reloader.  He had reloaded reduced loads for our outing.  A reduced load is one loaded for lower velocity, which means the rifle has significantly less recoil.  One of Duane’s loads had cast bullets.  The other had jacketed 150-grain bullets.  Both were loaded with Trail Boss powder, and both shot well.

As soon as Duane fired his first shots, I knew he had reduced-load ammo.  Check it out in the video below.

Duane and I both brought handguns, and to my surprise, we both decided to bring our Smith and Wesson 9mm Shields.  I’ve written about the Shield before, as well as the custom work TJ (of TJs Custom Gunworks) did on my Shield.   I shot my Shield at 50 yards.  Using a short-barreled 9mm concealed carry handgun at 50 yards is not a formula for accuracy, but I managed to keep all of my shots on the target.  The group was large, but at least they were on the paper.

One of the things I like about my Shield is its bright sights.  Duane’s Shield has white dot sights and a green Crimson Trace laser mounted beneath the slide.  The laser is a cool touch for close in work.  My Shield has high visibility fiber optic sights (they catch light from the side and light up green and red dots).   They’re good if there’s any light at all.   If there’s no light, the sights don’t light, but if there’s no light, it’s not likely you’d be shooting.

Before we called it a day, Duane let me try a couple of shots with his Mauser.  I shot at the same 50-yard target I’d been using with my Shield and the Mosin-Nagant.

After the West End Gun Club visit, we stopped at our local Mexican restaurant. I had albondigas soup and a chile relleno.  As always, both were outstanding.

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