shooting on a shoestring
12-22-2020, 09:36 PM
By late morning I found myself with a few hours to run to the shooting range. Temperature was in the mid 60’s heading for the low 70’s, south breeze. Oh I love winter in Central Texas!
Decided to travel light, leave chronograph at home with the bench rest stuff, shooting mat, notebook, no working up loads, just time to go shooting for FUN. Grabbed the 10mm’s, ammo, paper plates and dueling tree.
For guns I use as defensive tools, I like to take them out occasionally for exercise, make sure magazine springs still work, make sure I’m still familiar with them, today was a good day for that.
I set up a paper plate chest high at 5 yards in front of me, another 15 yards to the side, the dueling tree at 20 yards between them. I just wanted to do some move and shoot practice with the defensive loads in each gun to see if they would have performed had I needed them. They all ran as they should.
My standard 10mm intruder deflators are Sig V-crown 165 grain JHPs with enough Blue Dot to get 1350-1400 fps depending on which gun they’re in and what the temperature is. I use the NOE 165 RF at the same velocity to replicate the JHP load for practical practice.
First up was the Ruger 10mm Night Watchman, stock except I replaced the plastic chevron panels with checkered Rosewood from Altamont. Gun ran fine, but I found I was struggling to hit quickly. It just seemed that I was very slow with it. I didn’t remember being slow with it before.
Next was the Springfield XDM 4.5” stock except I added night sights. Striker fired polymer pistol should be really fast right? Nope still slow moving between paper plates and 4” dueling tree flags. No use shooting faster than I could hit.
So I hoped the Sig P220 DA/SA might pickup the pace with its weight. Nope. I did hit well with that first long pull DA shot, but often missed with the 2nd or third SA shots. Still struggling for any speed. Just was slow getting hits.
I could tell I needed a break after close to 200 rounds to drink some water and have a snack. Just stuffing those rounds into magazines is work even with an Uplula helper. Revolvers are so much easier to reload than magazines.
As I was walking to the pickup for a bottle of water I remembered I had the Colt SAA in 38-40 in it. So I grabbed it for kicks and there was my speed! Ok, probably still real slow compared to anyone shooting in competitions, but I could hit much faster than with any of the 10’s!
Now the 38-40 was shooting Accurate 40-172E with Herco at 1050 fps. So it was not the horse power of the 10’s, but it also didn’t have the shock absorbing recoil springs and slides of the reciprocators. And the SAA sights are tiny on the 3rd Gen Colt.
I don’t think this proves anything other than I need to buy a shot timer so I can measure how much real difference there is between my slow shooting 10’s and my less slow SAA.
I also did some one-handed shooting holding a flashlight in the other hand. The SAA was much slower shooting one handed, but so were the 10’s.
I guess I’m a little disappointed my performance with the 10mm’s was noticeably worse than with my SAA.
Decided to travel light, leave chronograph at home with the bench rest stuff, shooting mat, notebook, no working up loads, just time to go shooting for FUN. Grabbed the 10mm’s, ammo, paper plates and dueling tree.
For guns I use as defensive tools, I like to take them out occasionally for exercise, make sure magazine springs still work, make sure I’m still familiar with them, today was a good day for that.
I set up a paper plate chest high at 5 yards in front of me, another 15 yards to the side, the dueling tree at 20 yards between them. I just wanted to do some move and shoot practice with the defensive loads in each gun to see if they would have performed had I needed them. They all ran as they should.
My standard 10mm intruder deflators are Sig V-crown 165 grain JHPs with enough Blue Dot to get 1350-1400 fps depending on which gun they’re in and what the temperature is. I use the NOE 165 RF at the same velocity to replicate the JHP load for practical practice.
First up was the Ruger 10mm Night Watchman, stock except I replaced the plastic chevron panels with checkered Rosewood from Altamont. Gun ran fine, but I found I was struggling to hit quickly. It just seemed that I was very slow with it. I didn’t remember being slow with it before.
Next was the Springfield XDM 4.5” stock except I added night sights. Striker fired polymer pistol should be really fast right? Nope still slow moving between paper plates and 4” dueling tree flags. No use shooting faster than I could hit.
So I hoped the Sig P220 DA/SA might pickup the pace with its weight. Nope. I did hit well with that first long pull DA shot, but often missed with the 2nd or third SA shots. Still struggling for any speed. Just was slow getting hits.
I could tell I needed a break after close to 200 rounds to drink some water and have a snack. Just stuffing those rounds into magazines is work even with an Uplula helper. Revolvers are so much easier to reload than magazines.
As I was walking to the pickup for a bottle of water I remembered I had the Colt SAA in 38-40 in it. So I grabbed it for kicks and there was my speed! Ok, probably still real slow compared to anyone shooting in competitions, but I could hit much faster than with any of the 10’s!
Now the 38-40 was shooting Accurate 40-172E with Herco at 1050 fps. So it was not the horse power of the 10’s, but it also didn’t have the shock absorbing recoil springs and slides of the reciprocators. And the SAA sights are tiny on the 3rd Gen Colt.
I don’t think this proves anything other than I need to buy a shot timer so I can measure how much real difference there is between my slow shooting 10’s and my less slow SAA.
I also did some one-handed shooting holding a flashlight in the other hand. The SAA was much slower shooting one handed, but so were the 10’s.
I guess I’m a little disappointed my performance with the 10mm’s was noticeably worse than with my SAA.