Another Weekend Spent at the Range - and Newbies

Well, Saturday saw me at the range again (after Little Athletics) for the trainees.

This time there were only 5 trainees in total so we decided to combine the groups. Mainly because I had one guy learning how to RO and only one other student - which isn't really enough. The good thing about combining with the Chief Instructor is another set of eyes and a much louder voice than mine!

We decided to set up a number of shooting challenges - consisting of a barrel, hatch, soft cover and a door for the guys to shoot through. We also did some strong hand / week hand shooting prior to this (so they knew what to do when they approached the hatch) and practiced some mag changes. Three of the group were comparative newbies so whom I had never taught before so I wanted to make sure that they knew the basics of mag changes and stuff before hitting the stages.

It went well. We did have one guy shoot past the 90 while pretty close to where we were standing. The Chief Instructor gave him a few hints as to why that's NOT A GOOD IDEA.

The poor guy doing the ROing didn't have any notice so found it a bit of a challenge at the start - memorising the commands and looking after a range (even with me a metre off his shoulder) but did well and got the hang of it pretty quickly.

We shot three of the competition stages afterwards. There was a 30 round stage which had some challenging rooms and really cute teepees hiding targets, an eighteen round stage with soft cover and the last stage was three poppers and three paper targets all shot through portals.

All of the shooters stuck the guns in the portals while they shot (talk about noisy). So after they shot it that way, I put a fault line about a meter back from the portals and got them to shoot from there. The main aim of this was to get them to realise that a bullet has no problem going through a circle around 15cm diameter and that they didn't need to get right up close.

Every one had fun but again we didn't get off the range until after 5pm. By which time I was seriously looking forward to a nice cold one :)

Today we had a "Have A Go Day". We haven't advertised it much so today we had one adult and two 6y.o.s. These girls are classmates of my youngest so my whole family came up the range too.

Another club member turned up with his 10y.o. (and a Walther PK 22) so they were invited to join in and play too. At one stage we had all five kids in a line on the range shooting. Three of the girls (2 x 6.y.o and my 8y.o.) were using .22 pistols, the other 6y.o. was on the air pistol and the 10y.o. boy was using the .22 Winchester rifle. Unfortunately the noise and flying brass was too much for one of the visiting 6y.o.s so she decided to watch her sister on the air pistol and then have a go of that, which she liked. After the girls had shot about 20 rounds they decided to go off to play. The 10y.o. boy stayed on the shooting line and tried a variety of guns on offer including my Springfield which he quite liked.

While we were showing the dad a range of 9mm pistols and 357 revolvers another club member turned up with two shotguns. The first was a side-by-side coach gun which I seriously fell in love with although I've never shot a shotgun with two triggers before so it took me awhile to find the second trigger!

While we were all (including the 10 y.o.) taking turns with the shotguns, the Chief Instructor went off and got the club's shotgun. Which, of course, we all had to have a go of too (I had a couple of goes of it!).

I'm not sure how many rounds were shot in total. There was a couple of times where three people with .22 pistols were all trying to knock over the poppers (subsequently taken down with the 357 revolvers) and the targets were shredded by shot gun shot but after 2 hrs we all decided that it was enough and headed up to the club house for a cold one or two.

When we got the club house one of the members had made "Parrot Soup" from some parrots shot on a nearby property. All of the kids LOVED the soup, especially my eldest who not only had three bowls of the soup, she also gnawed on the bones. A friend took a photo of her so I'll put it up when he sends it to me.

It was nice to see the kids having a go and we're looking at doing more with littlies in the future.

When I asked my girls what the best thing was today they both answered "Everything" at the same time and then the eldest said "The parrot soup".

When asking my youngest what she thought of the Walter Pk 22 (one of the smallest guns we're legally allowed to have here) she said "nice, but the trigger was harder than your gun!". I am seriously thinking of buying one of these too - but the current price is around the $800 mark :(