Bullets go a long way

This isn't news to me but it apparently is to some people on YouTube.  A .22 LR bullet can go 1.5 miles.   It even says so on the box.  That doesn't mean you can hit what you're aiming at at that distance.  It just means you can hit, and possibly destroy, something unexpected if you're not careful.

Finally a Sunny Day

Thankfully, the 10-day stretch of rain has finally ended and I can get back outside.  Lacking the will to pack up all the gear necessary for the rifle or shotgun range, I compromised and went to the archery range.  Archery is still fun, and there is less and lighter gear needed.

Here's a short first person hat-cam video of one of my better rounds.

Woodbury Wildlife Area ODNR Range Recon

For the first time, I happened to be in the neighborhood of the Woodbury Wildlife Area ODNR shooting range.  So, I decided to stop by and take a quick look at it.  Sadly, I didn't think to take any pictures.

The Woodbury range has 25 yard, 50 yard, 100 yard, and 200 yard ranges.  They have covered shooting areas with benches.  Unlike the Grand River Range, the parking lot is on the same side of the fence as the range.  You can pull your vehicle right up the bench you want to use.

Check-in is a little different too.  There is a small building just as you enter the fenced area.  The check in sheet is inside the building.  (Recall that entering a building with a state employee is of special concern if you have a CCW license.)  They don't seem to be very aggressive at controlling entry, so I suspect you can go park your vehicle where you want to shoot then walk over to the building to get target backing and sign in.  The fellow manning the station was friendly.

I was there about 4pm on a beautiful Saturday, and there was only a single shooter there out at the 200 yard range.  It doesn't look like you'll need to fight for spot.

Though I didn't not look at it closely, they have throwers for trap or skeet.  Since the ODNR ranges do not deal with money on-site, the currency they use are the daily pass shooting licenses.  1 Pass = 1 Round.  One round consists of 25 launched clays from their automated throwers.  If there is no one there, which seems likely, you can also bring your own clays and launcher or hand thrower and shoot for no cost.

They also appear to have an archery range along the entry road.  It doesn't look quite as nice as the one at Punderson, but certainly seemed functional.

In general, I'd say the range is nicer and far less crowded than the Grand River Wildlife ODNR range.  I hope to return one day when I have more time to actually do some shooting.



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A fine day in January

Global warming may one day be our doom, but an occasional 60 degree day in January sure is nice.  I took my recurve bow out for the first target practice of the new year.  For being my first time out in a while, my accuracy wasn't too bad.  Just being outside on such a nice day was rewarding.

25 yards, recurve bow

Robinhood's Blind Cousin

Today I made another trip to the Punderson State Park archery range.  I'm still not good enough to shoot the course there, so I just hung at the 20 yard target on the practice range.  I think I am improving.   I mounted a paper pistol target as an aiming point.  Some of them were fairly close to the bullseye, but more importantly I was able to hit at least somewhere on paper about 80% of the time.  Here's one of my better sets.  For reference, I believe that bullseye is 2 inches in diameter.

Accuracy still needs some work but my consistency is definitely improving.  For instance, I managed to robinhood one of my arrows accidentally.

Regular arrow, and robinhooded arrow.

I wish I could say this happened in the center of the bullseye, but it was actually a good foot and half off the paper.  I just happened to send 2 wild shots in my six shot set to the exact came place.  I heard a metal on metal sound and saw my arrow bounce away from the target.

My target did end up with lots of adjoining holes--just not in the red.   I still have work to do, but there is hope.

Expanding into Archery

While I think it will be a long time until I'm bored shooting firearms, I have been feeling the need to expand my range of skills.  To that end, I dug back into my past and remembered how much fun shooting a primative bow and arrow was.  I just had to try it again.

So, I've recently picked up a simple recurve bow--Fuse Focus 62 inch 24lb.   It isn't an expensive, serious hunting bow, but it isn't just a plastic child's toy either.  So far I've been happy with quality.  It is wood with nice brass accessory taps.  It easily breaks into three pieces plus the string for storage or transport.

The temptation was to get a bow with a higher draw weight.  That would have provided more power and a flatter, faster flight for the arrows.  However, the major downside to bows stronger than about 25lb is you have to start spending more money on targets.  A high poundage hunting bow will send an arrow right on through a basic practice target.   Besides, half the fun is trying to account for the arc of the arrow.  With a lower power bow the distance required for gravity to become significant is far less.

This was my third trip out.  Once to the fine range at Punderson State Park and twice to some private land.  On this day, I was just at private 20 yard range.   I still need to get better before I can take advantage of the challenging course available at Punderson and it is nice to not have to worry about a crowd.

As you can see from the picture below I am starting to get the hang of it.   Most of the time, I'm now able keep all of the arrows at least somewhere on the target, and this particular 6 shot set yielded 2 bullseyes.

I also took the opportunity to do some more shots with my mini-cam.  This is my second, an 808 #16, that replaced the #11 which suffered an unfortunate laundry accident.  Tiny electronics are very easy to lose track of.   You can see a couple point of view shots below if you don't suffer from motion sickness.

Breaking out the rifle again.

As is my tradition, I got lucky and picked an amazingly beautiful day to take off work--weeks in advance.  Sunny, dry, mid-70s.  It dosen't get much better than this in Ohio--or anywhere. 

For my day off, I made a trip to the Ohio Department of Natural Resources Grand River Wildlife Area shooting range in West Farmington, and spent the afternoon getting to know may Savage .308 Win and .17 HMR again.  I really love Savage, they make amazing bolt action rifles.  In someone else's hands they can be very accurate. 

Behind the shooting line at the ODNR Range

Below is my first target sheet of the day at the 100-yard range.  My very first shot was the bullseye on the lower right hand target.  Unfortunately, my shots didn't improve from there.  My first shot was my best shot.

One of the interesting phenomena at ranges is that the animals can become completely desensitized to gunfire.  Birds, rabbits, ground hogs, you name it.   As long as they know they aren't the target, they are fearless.  Take this redwinged blackbird who was just hanging out as an example.



This was a fine way to spend my day off, and I hope to do it again before too long.  With luck, I might get in some pistol shooting this same weekend.

And the prize for smallest no guns sign goes to...

I saw this at Pizza Hut during my most recent (possibly last) visit. They have the world's smallest no guns sign. Sadly here in Ohio these still carry the force of law. Come on Pizza Hut, throw me a bone here. If you don't allow guns, post a real sign.

Sure Site target hangers

Yesterday way a beautiful day.   To enjoy it, I took my new target system out for a test drive.

The key to this setup is the Sure Site clay target hangers.  They are little plastic clips designed to fit over a 3/8th inch dowel or rope on one end and a standard clay bird target on the other. 

Unlike some of the other target systems I've seen, they seem to have accepted the fact that anything in the target area will get destroyed.  So it is better to have something cheap and replaceable than something that attempts to withstand bullets.

That said, they do seem to be adequately durable.  They handled the stress of the clay breaking repeatedly quite well and were only destroyed when actually hit.  I only destroyed 2 of them in my 2 hour long shooting session. That's about $1 worth of them, which doesn't compare badly to the other expenses involved in shooting.

The rest of the setup consists of 2 small shepard's hooks and 2 3/8th inch dowels bought at Lowe's along with some nylon rope.  It has been a while since my camping instruction so I had to look up some good knots to use.   Bowline knots for the attachment to the shepard's hooks and Alpine Butterfly knots for wood dowels provided a good system of loops that wouldn't slip or collapse.

I do recommend having several spare wooden dowels handy.   One of them was destroyed and the other was not unscathed.  I did both some 22LR and 9mm pistol shooting.  My 22LR session had one impressive but accidental shot.   I managed to put hole clean through the 3/8th inch dowel without breaking the dowel.  I was able to keep using it without it dropping the clays.  At least until it suffered another direct hit.

It was a good day, and I do recommend this setup for hours of shooting fun.

Longish Range Shooting

My first rifle shooting trip of the season was something new and exciting for me. Until now I haven't really done any shooting at all past 100 yards. Sadly, that's about the most that can be done safely around my home due to flat land and limited facilities at the public ranges.  Recently, a friend and I were allowed access to some land in southern Ohio where the terrain is filled with natural backstops and elevation changes severe enough to provide a thorough cardiac workout.

To make full use of this unique geographically optimal opportunity, I invested in some steel targets from Big Dog Steel.  I had never shot steel before and this seemed like an ideal chance to try it out.  We had day of perfect weather.  It was almost too warm.  You don't see temperatures north of 70F in March very often around here.

Below you can see a view of the target 200 yards away from my shooting position.  We later tried 300 yards as well.   Even 200 yards seemed a whole lot further away than I expected.  You can see tiny white dot in the center of the picture.  That's a target roughly 8x12 inches.

The steel targets made a satisfying delayed ping when hit by a high powered rifle round, and provided exactly the experience I had eagerly anticipated.  As you can see below the AR500 hardened steel plate shook off the .308 Win and 30-06 rounds with hardly scratch.  The paint was taken off, but the surface was still almost smooth to the touch.

However, we soon stumbled across the little secrete that no one seemed to mention about shooting steel targets.  While the targets themselves are as close to indestructible as anything made by man, the hardware and apparatus used to suspend them from the ground are clearly not.  The point of shooting steel from so far is that fact that you get a ping for a hit and nothing for miss.  So the fact that misses happen seems to be implied, but no one seemed to mention the potential of equipment destruction from my research online about steel shooting.

Below you an see the effect of a 30-06 round on the lesser hardness steel of the Big Dog Steel folding target hanger.  Surprisingly, still held the target with minimal sway even with one side totally compromised.

We also managed to cut 2 of the chains and destroy a bolt head. Luckily, this was not completely unforeseen. I had bought 2 of the target stands "just in case," so we were able to continue shooting.  Still at roughly $60 a hanger, if I do this sort of thing regularly I may look for a more economical system for hanging the targets.  I had thought that because of the round surfaces on the chains and rods of the steel hanger system, that it would survive at least a few hits with less than total damage.

I've seen sawhorses used for this purpose, but I imagine those are even less fun to drag hundreds of yards over hills.  Everything has a trade-off. I would be interested to see if ropes instead of chains and bolts could be used.  But, they may not survive the stress of the plate being impacted.  Even the bolts and chains which were not hit showed noticeable signs of stress.  The amount of force involved on the wrong end of a high powered rifle is hard to fathom.   Though I found the equipment failures interesting and a little surprising, it didn't negatively effect the trip.

My first foray into long range shooting was amazing.  This is first time time ever had to compensate for gravity or even consider thinking about wind.  This trip was more fun than I've had in along time, and it will probably be quite a while before I can find a way to top it.  I hope to try it again someday.

(And yes, I backdated this blog entry a bit.)

Epic mud

I visited the ODNR hand trap range yesterday to take advantage of the unseasonably warm weather.  It was a sunny warm day, perfect for shooting.  However, I failed to anticipate the amount mud at the range.  It was epic.  What does epic mud look like?  Keep scrolling to look at the pictures below.  On the safe side of the firing line there wasn't a patch of dry ground to be found.

I had a good day shooting.  I don't keep actual score, but I'd estimate that I was hitting the single targets 80% of the time and doubles about 40%.   Since I was shooting alone, I had to launch the targets with my foot launcher.  The mud added some extra challenge to my balance.  I'll have to come up with a better plan for the mud next time.

I am tempted to contact the ODNR to see if they have ever gotten a quote for added some drainage, concrete pads, or packed gravel.   Perhaps a fundraiser would get this range in far better shape.

Oh, and here's some more mud.  What a mess.

Christmas Pumpkin

A short video of post-Christmas fun. A leftover Halloween pumpkin meeting its demise thanks to a bit of Tannerite and a .308 Winchester, captured in HD on my Casio EX-ZR100.  I after sitting around for several years, my stock of Tannerite seems to have lost a bit of its zip, but it is still loads of fun.

Making your own sign, not cool

My local Aldi grocery store decided to make their own no-CCW sign. That's legal to do in Ohio-- unfortunately--but annoying. I had to walk back to my car, because it wasn't what I was looking for at a distance.

Here's the official recommended sign. Can you spot the difference?

Ohio SB 17 Restaurant Carry Now in Effect

I was a bit slow with this post, but better late than never.

As of September 30th, 2011 Ohio Senate Bill 17 is now in effect.  It now legal for a person licensed for concealed handgun carry to carry in restaurants that serve alcohol so long as they do not drink any alcohol and haven't been drinking previously.  Restaurants can still post a sign to keep your gun (and probably you) out of their restaurant.

It is now also easier to carry a firearm in a vehicle.  Basically all of the specific instructions for manner of carry are gone for CCW license holders.  Firearms should of course still be carried securely and cautiously, but how you choose to do so is now limited solely by safety concerns instead of arbitrary legal code.

Thank you to all of the sponsors and supporters of SB 17 and sister bill HB 45.  Though it was SB 17 that made it through the final leg of the process, the sponsors of HB 45 also put forth a valiant effort that ultimately lead to SB 17's successful passage.   Special thanks to Representative Lynn Slaby and Senator Frank LaRose for their excellent representation of my district and their yea votes.  Also, thank you to Governor Kasich for signing the bill.  I am not sure about a lot of his other decisions so far, but I do appreciate his help on getting this done.

I am not a lawyer so, please do read the bill details for yourself.  It can be found here.   The updated CCW Manual published by the Ohio Attorney general can be found here.

Ohio SB 17 Restaurant Carry Goes to the Governor (Not law yet)

Yesterday a slightly amended version of Ohio Senate Bill 17 passed the Ohio House of Representatives and received concurrence in the the Senate.  It now goes to Governor John Kasich to be signed.

The amendment was a minor legal tweak to make sure that drinking beer was also prohibited along with other forms of alcohol when carrying a firearm.   While perhaps redundant with other sections of the Ohio revised code prohibiting the consumption of intoxicants while carrying a weapon, it doesn't appear to have had any negative affect on the bill.

Again, House Democrats attempted to kill the bill by adding toxic amendments and subjected the bill to additional mostly repeated debate for almost 40 minutes.  Representative Bill Patmon even managed to try to find a way to play the "race card," comparing standing by the 2nd amendment to standing by the long ago removed part of the Constitution counting a black person as 3/5ths of a person.  Even has he and other Democrats argue that their inner city [mostly black] constituents are too dangerous and untrustworthy to be allowed to carry weapons to protect themselves.  It is just ok for rural [mostly white] people to have guns.  Urban areas should have different rules they say.  Perhaps urban citizens should only be able to carry 3/5ths of their gun.

Here is a link to the 40 minutes of House debate.  The modified bill was then sent to the Ohio Senate for concurrence where it was agreed to so quickly that I couldn't find video for it.

With luck, the Governor will do the right thing and sign the bill soon.

Getting Better

I got lucky Saturday with a bright sunny day where the rains that was predicted mostly didn't materialize.  So, I decided to give the clay shooting range another try.

I was a bit concerned the range might be busy since this time I was going on a weekend.   It was busy, but not unmanageably so.  There was a group of 3 people there with a hand tosser.   They seemed to be having a lot of fun but were having some difficulty getting the clays to go where they wanted them.  So I set up as far as I could away from them down the shooting line.  They cleared out maybe 20 minutes into my session and I didn't see anyone else until I was leaving.

My skills at clay shooting have definitely improved since my last session.  I started out shooting singles and was hitting a very high percentage of them.   I wasn't keeping score, but I'm guessing probably 17 of the first 20 shots were hits.  Because it was going to so well, I switched to doubles.  I was steadily hitting the first of the 2 shots, but missing the second   Soon I was hitting the doubles as well, but only sporadically.  This I think is video of one of my double hits.  The video quality isn't quite good enough to see for sure.  I think the falling objects you see after the shots are just the shotgun wads.



Later on I was joined by a crazy bird that showed no fear of gunfire.  Here you can see me pausing to avoid shooting it.



I believe it was a vulture.  In farm country, vultures are attracted to gunfire because it often means there is a newly deceased groundhog lying in the field.

Clay Shooting

Today I was fortunate enough to get some free time and nice weather to try out some clay shooting with my Mossberg 930 12ga shotgun.  I also got to try out my new Trius 1 Step clay thrower.  It was fun day but I have a long way to go before I can could be rated even marginally competent.

Here's a video of one of my few hits:



As you can see from this short video, the Trius really wings the targets out there.  I was launching the targets myself using the spring loaded pedal.  By the time I got my balance, the targets were already out at a challenging distance.

I did do better later when I switch to my left foot as the launching foot.  Shortly before I quit, I had hit 3 of the last 4 targets.

The video was shot with a DVK808 #11 keychain camera taped to a hat.  It seemed to work pretty well. It did have some issues maintaining consistent color as my view shifted from ground to sky.

I did run into a minor technical problem with the camera + hat + tape setup.


Next time, I'll use more tape.  Luckily the camera is pretty tough.

One thing that disappointed me is amount of litter at the range.  I expected clays, clay pieces, and maybe a few missed shell hulls.   Instead I found lots of shell hulls (clearly no attempt to pick them up at all) and trash.   Boxes, soda cups, cans, plastic bags.  Just lots of trash.  I cleaned up my stuff and a bit more, but there is still plenty more.  Since there was no one there, I also reclaimed a few unbroken targets.

Ohio Senate Passes Restaurant Carry SB 17 (Not law yet)

Today the Ohio Senate passed its own version of a law to allow concealed weapons carry in restaurants that serve alcohol just one day after it left committee.   This puts the efforts of the Ohio House to shame as the their version (HB 45) has been sitting immobile on the House calendar for 2 weeks.

Click here to see work get done.  SB 17 Video

Following these bills for the last month or so has been enlightening. I have a much better understanding of how the House works.  On thing in particular came as a surprise to me.  I had assumed that many hours day were spent in the main auditorium debating the merit of bills and taking votes.   Not so.  The House seems to meet 2-3 times a week for a little over an hour.   At least half that time will be spent doing things that have nothing to do with legislating.  They honor soldiers, teachers, boy scouts, or sports teams.  They introduce resolutions to give a day a name day or congratulate someone.  What little time the do spend actually doing legislation seems rushed and haphazard.

I haven't been following the Senate since I assume the House would be first with a bill out the door.  One thing I, and apparently many other people, have yet to understand is who makes the schedule.  I still don't know who gets to decide when bills get a vote.  The videos of the sessions reveal nothing on this.  If anyone who reads this knows. Feel free to comment.  

Hopefully, the house can get this Senate Bill passed and sent for a swift signing at the Governor's desk.  It is just a shame they had to spend so much time in committee debating their version of the bill that is now irrelevant.

First trip to the range 2011.

Today I finally got to enjoy my first day of target practice this year without snow on the ground. My trip to the ODNR range turned out to be much more pleasant that I hoped as the temperature quickly reached 60F. I had planned to hop around the between the 50 and 25 yard ranges for some rifle and pistol shooting. However, I ended up just camping on the 50 trying to master my Ruger 10/22 with iron sights. I still had a few adjustments to make to the sights to get it shooting straight. I think I mostly have dialed into the point where any fault in aiming is mine now. Here are some of my targets with quarter included for size reference.

As you can see I was getting better at the end, but you'd still stand a fair chance of a long and happy life as a red dot on the other end of my Ruger 10/22 at 50 yards.


Then I switched over to my Savage 17 HMR + scope package--still at 50 yards.  These pictures include a dime for reference.  Every shot fired is on that target at least in the black of the one I was aiming at.  I do love that gun.

After finishing up at the rifle range I went looking for the unsupervised hand trap, clay shooting, range.  I had heard rumor of it, and had even seen it on the park map.   However, it still wasn't clear to me exactly where it was or what to expect.  I did find it.  There were about 6 people there when I arrived. I managed to avoid getting them in my pictures.  My thought was it would be nice to use a clay launcher, but I wasn't sure if it was allowed.  I found very limited signage, and the people there were using a spring loaded launcher.  So, I guess it is ok.


Below is a map showing the unsupervised hand trap area.  GPS: N41 23.471 W80 55.419


View Grand River Hand Trap Clay Range in a larger map
Here are the signs I found:

This was at the entrance.  Notice there is no real mention of a target range.

This sign is as you leave the parking lot headed toward the range.  Notice that some idiot shot it.

This picture and the next one are from the firing line looking out over the target field.

I think I'll be getting a clay thrower so I can give this a try sometime in the future.

After that, I finished the trip up with a stop to Blazing Bill's for the best perch sandwich I've been able to find.   All in all, it was a very good day.

Restaurant Carry HB45 up for committee vote

The Ohio House restaurant carry bill may be up for a committee vote March 8th. Now is the time to contact your representatives to show support. More details available here at the Buckeye Firearms Association.