WT Forums

As most here may know, I spent a good deal of my life as a small arms instructor for the Air Force. While I never got into hunting much, I do love shooting. My problem has been finding a place to shoot. These days in Colorado, nearly every scrap of land is owned by somebody and the available places to shoot are few and far between. Even when you find a place, its either insanely expensive, and/or packed to the gills with every arm chair wanna-be soldier under the Sun. Most of which have little to no weapons safety training, niether formal nor informal.

However, up near our place in Torrington WY, I've found the Goshen County Sportsmans Club, and I got a chance to go out there this weekend to do some shooting. The price to join was only $65 for the whole family for the year, granted, in my case the family is just me and Jo, but still it's a great deal.

Sporting Clays,
18 Trap and skeet ranges,



An archery range,


A rifle range with target lines every 50 yards out to 300 yards.


2 25 yard open bay pistol ranges.


And a 25 yard small bore rifle range for teaching the kids, Boy Scouts, and other groups.


I had a new rifle barrel to break in and did some shooting on the rifle range, but there are no targets or frames for the other ranges. So I dropped about $5 on some 1X2 Furring Strips and got some free card board and used some 2X4 cutoffs I had laying around and built a pair of target frams, one shown in the background here:

_________________
Slow is Fast, Fast is Slow
Violence may not be the best option, but it IS an option

What do you do for barrel break-in?

Jack,

While we never did this in the AF in CATM, it is good idea to break a barrel in before getting heavy into getting it zeroed. The process for rifling the barrel involves cutting each groove and leaving the lands standing between. Anytime you cut anything, wood, steel, plastic, especially with a scraping type tool, you'll leave a rough surface behind the cutter. With most materials and in most applications, these surfaces can be sanded or polished smooth. At the microscopic level, smooth looking machined steel is really quite rough after the cutting of the rifling and only so much polishing can be done to smooth it out. The Break In process pretty much uses the bullets to burnish the bore smooth. Cleaning between each shot prevents a buildup of copper/lead, so that the next bullet is also burnishing the steel bore, and not just smoothing the copper or lead build up.

Here's a good procedure I found from DS Arms, the same place I bought my new upper from.
http://www.dsarms.com/brebarrel.asp

_________________
Slow is Fast, Fast is Slow
Violence may not be the best option, but it IS an option

We have only one 100yd outdoor range anywhere near me.

However, my brother runs a local indoor range, so i can shoot my guns with no range fees any time i want.

It's only a 25m range though.

Take what you can get. Give nothin back! ARRRRRRRRR!

Seriously though, getting free trigger time, even on a short indoor range is not bad. You are out of the elements, can shoot after dark, and I'd be willing to bet it's a lot closer to home. Not seeing the down side there.

_________________
Slow is Fast, Fast is Slow
Violence may not be the best option, but it IS an option

25 meters is, in reality, far beyond the distance any civilian should ever reasonably expect to have to fire a weapon in defense in a big city like the one i live in.

I can keep a 25 meter military zero and practice shooting tiny groups at the indoor range with my AR. So it's really not bad.

25 meters is plenty far enough for practicing with my Beretta 12 ga semi auto or my pistols.

Here's a pic of Andreana trying out some of the wares at the range used gun rack: