Very Small Range Report

Went to Wacahoota to help a buddy and his parents deal with a raccoon problem yesterday and, once the ferocious beast had been relocated, we decided to do a little shooting.

Results were mixed.  The little Cooper 22CCM would shoot small enough groups but it shot them all over the place.  It would put a couple here, a couple there and then a few someplace else.  I figured it at somewhere between 15 and 20 MOA.    There being nothing wrong with the rifle or scope mounts and nothing that could be THAT wrong with the ammo, I suspect a busted scope.   While pondering what it might be besides the scope, I recalled that I had put that scope on another rifle a year or two ago and that rifle had behaved in much the same way.  Both rifles wouldn't bear false witness.  I suppose I will have to send that scope off to be repaired.

The little 25-35 Model 99 surprised the heck out of me.  We had set up a cardboard box with the target on it and behind that we had some pine logs about six inches in diameter.  (Behind that we had more trees, dirt, woods and a long way before any other houses).

I've looked at the reloading manuals and decided that the 25-35 will do with a 117 grain bullet about what a 30-30 will do with a 170.  I found out that's not quite accurate.  The 117 grain bullets shot clean through the logs.  My buddy's 30-30 with 170 grain bullets didn't.  It seems there's more to the little cartridge than meets the eye.

I then tested one of my Pyrodex 12 gauge loads.  It did about what I expected.  Lots of smoke but it didn't hurt anything.  I have a video of it but its long and needs to be cropped.  I just spent over an hour downloading different free video editors and can't get any of them to open it.  That video will have to wait.

The big deal of the day was the 10 Gauge LC Smith.  I wanted to test out the loads I had assembled for it but I had never fired a damascus barreled gun before.  The loads were light smokeless loads that weren't supposed to generate even 7,000 psi.  I had five of them.

For the test, we set it up in a Lead Sled on top of a table and fired it by means of a long strand of mule tape.  I was confident that it would be fine but not over-confident.  We tested the right barrel and then the left.  When we loaded the left barrel, I forgot to tie the barrels back down to the Lead Sled.  The gun jumped just a little bit and put a nice hole in the turf  a few yards ahead of the table.

The  whole idea of these loads was to have a relatively heavy gun and shoot light loads so there wouldn't be a lot of recoil jarring what's left of the discs in my back and neck.  The tiny little jump that it made was encouraging.

The gouge that the shot made in the yard looked promising too.

Subsequent field testing with the remaining 3 shells proved that it was up to any task I'd assign to my 12 gauge.  It kicked less than a .410.  Of course, it got heavy pretty quickly but that's part of the plan.   I may get some ITX shot and wads to go with it and have me a  gun for wabbit season and duck season.