A Few Suggestions To Keep Things Safe
Cool crisp mornings & warm afternoons of fall always start my cast action to start going into trigger finger action. For those of you getting anxious for hunting and getting your guns sighted inn, I have a few suggestions hopefully to keep things safe and to prevent frustration.
Some hints for sighting in.
- Clean your gun, and make sure there is not any copper fouling prior to shooting or foreign items such as spiders, excessive dust, etc.
- Store your shells in cool place, including on the shooting bench. Myself & Darold Hansen accidently left our shells in the sun, while putting up targets etc, just prior to shooting. Bench temperatures can easily be in the 70's this time of year. combine that with copper brass conductivity, a box of shells laying on the black rubber coated shooting table it can raise the temperature of your shells beyond 80 degrees easily. Whats this mean, is your chamber pressures can easily increase by 1 � to 2 times.
Both Darold and I both experienced (at different times by the way) not being able to open our breaches after shooting these heated up shells because the brass had over swelled from the excessive pressures. If this ever happens to you do not try to take the brass out from the breach end, instead use a cleaning rod pushed down through the muzzle end & force out that way instead. This will help to cause less damage to your extractors, etc. - Try to shoot a fouling shot after you just cleaned your barrel prior to shooting test shots for grouping. The cleaning solutions & cleaning oils will always cause the bullet to fly different than usual on that first shot.
- Check & tighten any loose screws on the mounts of your scope, front & back open sights, etc prior to sighting inn.
- On hard kicking handguns do wear padded shooting gloves such as pact or similar. This takes the bite out of the kick and keeps one from flinching.
- Where coats or padding on your shoulder similar to what your going to be wearing when your in the field. You will sometimes be supprised how easily it is to look down a rifle barrel with a light shirt on at the bench versus a heavy hunting coat on cold mornings in the field.
- If you are reloading make sure you are using the same loads as hunting, so as your adustments for group placing and accuracy will be the same in the field. The same goes for using store bought shells. Always buy the same brand, bullet weight & style, and listed powder charge and your results in the field will be closer to the same in the field.
- Try different positions at the bench. Because in the field there is no bench and most of the time your shooting position is not even close to what might happen. I have crawled on my belly many times and had to shoot from that position for antelope and mule deer in open country. On the other hand a have rested my 44 on trees, fence posts, fence wire, rock boulders, and even my backpack to get a steady quick rest.
- I would suggest for both hunting handgun & rifle hunting, that one should shoot a few rounds with a light kicking gun first such as a 22, 38, 223 etc prior to those magnums. This will help your trigger control & flinch control. If you have a partner shooting with you that day especially on hard kicking revolvers. Keep a few 44 specials or 38 specials or even spent shells to put in the cylinder by your partner, so as the shooter doesn't know if it is a hot round going to go off or not. You will be supprised how many of us flinch like crazy, because we are anticipating the noise or kick.
- Always wear ear protection at the bench even if it is a 22. Always!!!!!!!! This also helps flinching. Eye protection is a good idea also. Especially revolver type handguns or muzzleloading guns, because they spit powder & bits of lead quite frequently from out of the space between the cylinder and the barrel.
- Match the bullet style,weight,expansion to the distance, speed, etc of your weapon and to the game you are going after. Develop the load that works best for you with this bullet, and sight your gun to this bullet and load.
- Know where your gun is shooting at multiple distances. If your gun is sighted in at a 100yds and you can't get to a 200 or 300yd range, there are ballistic charts showing calibers, speed, bullet weight, and ballistic coeifficient of your bullet that will tell you how far that bullet is dropping at certain ranges. Copy it down and keep with you, memorize it. That fancy range finder won't do you any good if you do not know where or how much that bullet is dropping.
- Know your capabilities, practice at that distance. I know you say i won't be shooting 200yds with a thompson contender, but sometimes it does not work out the way you hoped it would. For instance, it you accidently wound an animal at a 100 yds (hit a rock, or tree, or twig, etc and the ricochet gets the animal) are you going to let it run past 200yds or are you going to try to put it down. You need to know if that handgun or rifle can do it, confidence by the shooter will empower one to not panic in those situations.
Hope a few of these tips will help you, and better yet pass them on to your friends.
Bob Harriman
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