A Garand Day At The Range

By Joe Berk

I had the Garand out a couple of weeks ago and I had a blast. I was on the range by 7:00 a.m., I had the place to myself, and the sun was at my back. In those early morning sessions with the sun directly behind me and low in the sky, the front sight is sharp and at just the right distance from my aging eyes. I can focus on it, and when you’re shooting any firearm with iron sights, that’s the only place you want to be focused.

My Garand is nothing fancy; in fact, it’s sort of a mutt. I bought it several years ago from a small shop in Corona, and it’s a kluge of parts. The receiver is from CAI (which is supposed to be one that’s not very good, but my rifle doesn’t know that), the trigger group is from Beretta (they made a Garand-based rifle years ago), and the rest of the parts are a “who knows?” collection. My Garand wouldn’t cycle reliably when I bought it, so I bought a new gas cylinder (new to me; it was a well used part but it met spec) from SARCO in Philadelphia and that fixed the problem.

I ran into another issue, and that was the first shot always going significantly low left (about 10 inches at 100 yards). I couldn’t find what was causing that problem, and then one day I took the rear sight apart when it felt a little loose. I greased everything, adjusted it to where I wanted it to be, and then tightened the elevation adjustment screw to remove any play. That did it: The low left first round issue went away.

I’ve experimented with a few different loads, and I found what everyone else has found: The secret sauce is 47.0 grains of IMR 4064 and either the Sierra 168-grain jacketed hollowpoint boattail Matchking bullet, or its clone from Speer. My rifle is more accurate with the Sierra bullets, but their price is nearly twice what Speer gets for their bullets. The ammo you see here used the last of my Speer bullets; my next loads will be with Sierra Matchkings.

Reloaded Garand ammo on the bench at the range.

I’m not scaring any National Match competitors, but for an old dude with weak eyesight, I can still do okay. “Okay” is a relative term, I know. Here’s what 20 shots at 100 yards look like from that day on the range.

20 shots at 100 yards. Speer 168 gr FMJBT, 47.0 gr IMR 4064, a cartridge overall length of 3.295 inches, and Winchester primers at 100 yards. Close enough for government work, as our soldiers found out in World War II and Korea. I used mixed brass from PMC and PPU; the group would have been better had I used only one brand.

Here’s the Garmin chronograph data for the above 20 shots:

The Garmin is well worth the money. I am enjoying mine.

I love military rifles, and I love shooting the Garand. I shoot mine regularly. My daughter once got a shot of me on the range and she caught the brass case in midair (it’s the photo you see at the top of this blog). We have other stories on the Garand as well as other military surplus rifles (see our Tales of the Gun page). If you have a Garand (or any military surplus rifle you enjoy shooting), we’d love to hear about it. Please leave a comment below.