Getting ready to host newbies

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bdzjlz

Member
Jul 11, 2016
2,174
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Terre Haute, Indiana
I am hosting two groups, on two consecutive days this week, guys curious and interested in learning about our sport, heretofore mostly powder burner enthusiasts. I have the indoor range and outdoor ranges ready to go. The targets shown below are from rifles I have selected from my collection aa representative of the various springer and action types. To be certain they would give a solid performance and fun experience, I shot 10 shots with each this morning, and then adjusted the scopes to perfect zero based upon the resulting core of each group. BTW - all of the spring rifles have Vortek kits installed and the triggers meticulously tuned. The AA 410 was worked over by Motorhead a few years ago and he installed a HUMA reg.


They will also get to shoot outdoors off of the covered deck a Red Wolf HP and RAW Chassis, both in .22.


I have as much fun hosting as I do shooting!



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I host a shoot in my back yard weekly with a local group of Cowboy Action Shooters who I've hooked on air guns. I think that the longest any of them have been shooting is about 6 months, some a lot less.

I always try to keep the target array (@ 25 yards, but splatterburst's at 52 yards) 'interesting' and challenging. I can punch paper all day, but the newer shooters really love reactive targets. We have our standard array of cocktail picks and Charms Mini-Pops down range:

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For next week's (hopefully between the rain storms) planned shoot, I have just made a couple more 'mini-arrays' which get hung below the main targets. These include clay slingshot ammo (nominal 9mm diameter) and coffee stir sticks side-on (nominal 1mm width). The group loved the playing card splitting fixture I made up, but that's kind of a pain to keep refilling.

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If you haven't got some reactive targets set up for your group, I would suggest that you do. The Charms Mini-Pops have hooked more shooters on air guns than I can count. When you hit them square on they just vaporize (and sound just like when you pop a ground squirrel in the noggin), and if your shooting bench is down-wind, you get the sweet sugar smell. We normally let a new shooter take out 3 candies (and many are surprised that they can even do that with a rifle). After 3 candies the instructions change: When you shoot a candy from here on out, you then have to cut off the stick before you can move to the next candy. Once again, amazement from them when they can actually cut that skinny little stick!
 
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Sounds like a great time. Sure miss being around to join you. Just went through some of the targets I shot there last year. Still trying to build my indoor range here in the new house. I hope all goes well, and I'm sure you will have no trouble converting a few of the powder burners. Great temperatures today for the outside shooting. Really loved your range.

Brian M.
 
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Always good to hear from you, Brian. I hope you are getting settled in to your new job and your new home. JC and I ran into each other the other day, and he says his old AA 410 is not functioning. He is supposed to bring it over for me to look at some time.

You are always welcome if you get back to the neighborhood.

Pat D. was here shooting and working on his FWB earlier today.

Happy New Year!

DZ


 
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