Busy Day on the Range

Today was one of our "Have A Go Days". We run these most months to give people who want to know what shooting is all about a bit of a go.

We ask people to book so that we have a bit of an idea of how much ammo we need and a bit of an idea of what we're dealing with.

On Friday I got a call booking six people in, but they wanted to start half an hour after the advertised start time. As this was the only call I had had about the course I agreed.

On Saturday I had another call from another couple about coming along. And then a call back from the guy who booked the six in, changing it to 8.

I mentioned it while chatting to some of the folks in the club house after training yesterday and two people volunteered to come and help us.

So anyway, the Chief Instructor, myself and these two helpers turned up on the range just before 12 to be greeted by three people. Two of these were the couple who had booked the day before, and the other was a guy who had come up for a look around the range a couple of weeks previously and who had been told about the day.

We sent them to the shed to keep out of the sun and to wait for the others. We then set up some targets and got some magazines organised etc.

Then another couple arrived. So now we were up to 5 people and the 8 who had booked still hadn't turned up. At 12.30pm the guy who was organising the 8 turned up with four friends (so 10 people now). I asked him about the others and the next thing I know another five people walk in. Found out that these were his other friends and of the 4 only 5 were shooting, so a total of 14 visitors.

So we made sure that all of them had ear muffs / plugs and safety glasses as well as hats and water - it was pretty hot out there - and after a short safety lecture we headed to the range.

We decided to have three people shooting Glocks from one table, and three people shooting either one of two Tanfoglios or my Springfield. So we had our first six people step forward, we checked their grip and then let them pull the trigger. We then swopped these six around, so those who hadn't shot the Glocks got to shoot them and the Glock shooters got to shoot the other guns. Then the second group of six and then the final two shooters.

Once everyone had shot these 9mm guns, we put them away and got three .38 revolvers out, as well as three .22s. Using the same method they all had a shoot of these guns.

Then these guns were put away and we got four .22 rifles out. We had a Winchester lever action, a 10mag bolt action, a 5mag left handed bolt action and my single shot Stirling.

We had four shooters step forward and shoot all four guns. Then cycled through all of the shooters on these guns.

Rifles were then put away and the shotguns came out - and a .357 rifle. We had an over/under double barrelled shotgun, a semi-automatic one and my Tuffy. The .357 was a lever action.

Everyone shot all of these guns and then there were a few 12ga rounds left and I had about a half dozen .410 rounds, so we offered these to the trainees - for some reason most were quite reluctant to shoot the Tuffy again (until I suggested they shoot it at arms length and then almost everyone wanted a go).

By the time we got through all of the guns it was 3pm. So we cleaned up and said goodbye to our visitors. A few of them asked for the date of the next one as they're looking forward to doing it again.