Wednesday, August 5, 2009

The Hearst Doubles.

Sounds easy, like everything does when you haven't done it. 30 rounds. 10 standing at 200, 10 rapid fire prone at 300 and finish with a lousy 10 rounds prone slow fire at 600. Two guys. Add the scores together. No problem

I was paired with Gregg Foster who is the Webster definition of a decent guy. Temple Inland manager from Lufkin or therabouts. Never a discouraging word. Beside us we had some Oklahomans, (Dan Arnold who made the top 20 for the shootoff in the Presidents 100 Monday). On the other side were four US by-God Army drill sergeants from Ft Leonard Wood who were here for the first time with rack M16s. Not nice ones either. The recruits had been swordfighting with them, it looked like. The Sgts were game though, and plunged in shooting very well for new people with light battle-grade rifles. The M16 really IS a miracle, though it never gets respect because it doesn't have a wood stock. The Sgts shot some Xs, even at 600.
I think they were shooting 75 Hornadys.

Mark it: NRA assault rifle rednecks? The people the political elite despise? The first discouraging word I have heard all week was when one of the drill sgts swore. It was the FEMALE Drill sgt, which probably has some lesson buried in the experience. I did notice they started talking more.....correctly...after we all got to chatting. Peer group.

We tried to spoil them with our fancy optics and shooting. Then we hired them at extravagant rates to pull targets.

It was windy this morning and it didn't help our shooting at 200 yards. At 300 we burned it up shooting 99s. Foster and I went to the pits to pull targets with the Drill Sgts and came out to shoot 600. Looked easy, bright, blue-sky day, 72 degrees with the wind down to a few puffs, eagles out over the lake. Turned out those puffs had 3 1/2 to 4 Minutes of wind in them. Pushed me around on an X-ring thick line from the seven ring on one side to the eight ring on the other. 553X9 is our final aggregate score. Oh well.

Shoot better.

Tomorrow is the real reason we came. Team Day. Six of us per team on two teams. The Drill sgts got hired on to pull targets much to their delight (100 bucks each). Its a pretty good teams this year we think. Gotta shoot the team you bring.

We had a team meeting and now are enjoying retail therapy on Commercial Row. I'm blogging from the OTHER computer at Springfield Armory. Before I came in I snagged a free Rock River hot dog. You think that ain't are livin'? You ain't livin' unless you are here in the center of the gun universe this month with God's heavily armed people.

Going to post this and go get another hot dog. They used to come with 1000 hot dogs. This week they brought 4000.

2 comments:

Alan said...

I am really enjoying these posts Robert. Makes me wish I was there.

Anonymous said...

Ditto.

Allan