April 19th - Shots Fired

On April 19th every year, I try to go to the range and fire at least a few shots to commemorate the events on that date in 1775 that marked the beginning of the Revolutionary War.  The personal choices and sacrifices of the patriots of Lexington, Concord, and the surrounding communities led to the "shot heard 'round the world", and ignited the war that resulted in our independence as a nation founded on the principles of liberty and unalienable individual rights.  To my mind this is the most important date in American history, and at least as worthy of commemoration as July 4th.

This year I took the opportunity to test out a new pistol that I got for carrying in the mountains, as well as to re-zero a rifle that I recently installed in a new stock.

My first stop was the pistol range to shoot the first shots through my new Kimber "Camp Guard", a 10mm pistol built on the 1911 platform.  I have been planning to get one of these for a couple of years, but was waiting until we moved to Idaho where I would actually have a use for it.

The 10mm cartridge and ill-fated Bren Ten pistol were originally developed in the 1980's under the guidance of Jeff Cooper and others who were interested in a hot defensive round suitable for an automatic pistol.  The cartridge has a checkered history and almost faded into obscurity, but has recently enjoyed a renaissance as an effective hunting and anti-predator round.  Loaded with the right bullets and to sufficient velocity (180 - 200 grain flat points at 1250 fps or more), it is an adequate defense against predators (including grizzly bears), while remaining far more controllable and lighter to carry than a .44 Magnum revolver, which had been my previous choice.  The added benefit of 3 extra rounds in the gun and faster reloads than a revolver make it a solid choice for backcountry carry.

Kimber Manufacturing worked with the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation to design and release this particular pistol.  I don't know how much RMEF actually helped with the design, but a portion of the price goes to them as a donation, and the wooden grip panels feature their logo, adding a cool outdoor flair to the gun as well giving it a very comfortable and positive grip.

The Kimber "Camp Guard" 10mm pistol.

The pistol is very comfortable to handle, as all sharp edges have been rounded ("de-horned"), and the familiar 1911 design requires no new learning curve. It has low-profile snag-resistant tritium (glow-in-the-dark) night sights, so it is a well-thought-out design for an emergency wilderness gun.  It readily accepts Colt Delta Elite 10mm magazines, which was an added bonus for me as I already had a pile of those, and magazines can easily run $25-$40 apiece.  I had disassembled and lubricated it at home already, and I have to say that I have never had a 1911 that was manufactured to such tight tolerances as this one - it's the first time I have ever really needed a bushing wrench for disassembly. I was anxious to get it out on the range to break it in and see how it shoots.

I am still determining which ammunition will be best for backcountry carry (currently I have one box of SIG 10mm 180 gr FP loaded to 1250 fps for that purpose), but for practice I had bought a case of Sellier & Bellot 10mm, which launches a 180 gr. bullet at 1150 fps.  This round is no slouch, but does not reach the full potential of the cartridge design.  It is very affordable in bulk, though, and so makes an excellent practice round until I can get the dies and set things up for reloading the 10mm.

I first fired a couple of rounds into the berm just to get the feel of the gun, and then fired ten rounds from a standing position into a standard B27 center at a distance of 7 yards.  The pistol shot to exactly the point of aim, and I was not unhappy with the score of 99-8X (it might be 9X, but the target was too shredded to tell for sure).  (Side note: the used red-and-white target was already on the backing when I took it from the target shed - none of the holes in it are mine!).

My first target with the 10mm Camp Guard.

For the second target I used up the rest of the ammo I had brought, about 70 more rounds.  I fired the first few shots deliberately, then sped things up a bit to see how the pistol felt in rapid fire.  As the target testifies, I seem to have a tendency to pull a bit to the left with the 1911 as I shoot more rapidly, so I'll have to work on my technique.  Nonetheless I was happy with the result:

My second target with the 10mm Camp Guard.

I had read some negative comments about the reliability of Kimber magazines, at least when they are new.  I did not experience any malfunctions with the magazine that came with the pistol.  I did, however, experience malfunctions with three of the Delta Elite magazines, of a type I had never experienced before.  I had bought these magazines used, and so had recently replaced the springs with Wolff springs. This a widely-used and respected brand of replacement springs, so I expected no issues.  To my surprise, three of the magazines had failures to feed on the last round.  Close examination revealed that despite the fact that there was a round remaining in the magazine, the follower had activated the slide stop partway through the feeding process, interrupting the cycle.  It did not require clearing, however, as the round was not jammed in any way.  All I had to do was press the slide stop with my thumb and the rounds fed into the chamber and fired normally, with the slide remaining open on the now-empty magazine.   I tried each of these magazines again to see if they would repeat the malfunction.  Two of them functioned normally and one exhibited the previous behavior a second time.  I'm not sure if this is just because of the super-strong new springs or perhaps some flaw in the follower, but I segregated all three magazines for future examination and testing.

All in all, I am extremely happy with this pistol and look forward to many more practice and plinking sessions, and to carrying it as my sidearm when I travel in the remote backcountry of Idaho, Montana, and Washington.  

Next, I moved to the rifle range to sight in my Springfield Armory M1A National Match rifle.  I had already zeroed this rifle at 200 yards back in Michigan, but I recently installed it in a new stock, which meant I needed to repeat the process as the zero had almost certainly changed.

For those not familiar with it, the M1A is a civilian semi-automatic version of the military M14 rifle.  This rifle was adopted by the Army as its standard battle rifle in 1957 to replace the WWII-era M1 Garand, of which it is essentially an improved version.  Although officially replaced by the M16 in 1965, it remained in service for many years, and still remains in limited service in special roles.  Many consider it to be the finest battle rifle ever fielded by the U.S. Army.  Although declared obsolete and destroyed in large numbers by the Clinton Administration (750,000 M14s, over half the Army's stockpile, were destroyed during that time), it remains in demand and was eagerly sought-after by units in Iraq and Afghanistan due to its longer range and harder-hitting cartridge, a distinct advantage in the flat terrain of Iraq and the mountain valleys of Afghanistan.

I hated to pull my National Match rifle out of its glass-bedded serial numbered stock, but because I had added a scope to the rifle, I needed a higher stock comb to put my eye in the right position for a proper sight picture.  I had installed a Bradley cheek rest on the original NM stock, but it didn't feel quite right, and I wanted an adjustable comb that I could quickly change back and forth without having to remove it.  So I bought an Archangel polymer stock, which has an adjustable length of pull, adjustable comb, pistol grip, and an M1913 rail on the bottom of the handguard for mounting accessories (in my case, it will be a bipod).

I set up to fire from the bench at 200 yards as the rifle was already zeroed in the original stock and I didn't expect to have to make major adjustments. I cracked open one of my last remaining cans of surplus 7.62x51mm NATO M-80 ammo, headstamped WRA-63.  This cartridge has a 147-gr spitzer bullet loaded to 2750 fps, and is the same type of cartridge with which the rifle had previously been zeroed.  I will probably fine-tune it later for National Match ammunition, but this will be adequate for now.

I set up two standard service rifle ("SR") targets at 200 yards, and set up the bench with my spotting scope, notebooks, and adjustable sandbag rest:

The shooting bench set up for a pleasant afternoon.

My first few shots were low and right, but they didn't form any kind of a group.  This was to be expected, as it takes a few shots to shoot in the rifle to the stock, the recoil from shooting firmly seating the action in the stock until it "settles down".   After a few successive shots hit the target very close to each other, I knew it was time to start making adjustments.

Sight adjustment is one of the things we teach at Appleseed clinics, focusing on "inches-minutes-clicks", or IMC.  This teaches how to relate the movement of the shot impact on the target, measured in inches, to the corresponding measurement in minutes of angle, and finally to the number of clicks required to adjust the sights to move the point of impact to the desired point on the target.  One inch equals one minute of angle for every 100 yards, so if you know how many clicks it takes to adjust your sights by one minute, you know how many clicks it will to move the point of impact the desired number of inches on your target.

My scope, however, is calibrated in "mils" (short for milliradians), which is a metric designation that allows the same sorts of calculations (but with which I am less experienced).  So I had the scope manual out, reading it assiduously to ensure I was making proper adjustments.  Similarly to the IMC relationship above, 1 milliradian equals 10 cm for every 100 meters of range.  Each click on my scope is 0.1 mil, so I was able to calculate the adjustments with some precision.  As it was a 200 yard range (183 meters), they were not exact as I did not do the detailed math to make that conversion.  I just made the initial estimates as though it was a 200 meter range, and fine tuned it by trial and error.

My initial SR target at 200 yards. 

The shot cluster in the 9-ring at 5:30 was the point from where I started to make sight adjustments to bring the point of impact into the X-ring.  Once I felt confident that I had the scope properly zeroed, I transitioned to a fresh target and fired ten shots:

My second SR target at 200 yards.

I was satisfied with this target as an indication that my scope is properly zeroed.  Although I'd prefer 100-10X, 100-5X is pretty good considering that it's my first range session of the season and I was also getting a little tired.

After the scope was zeroed in, I decided to have some fun.  There were a couple of steel targets hanging out at 380 and 400 yards, and I decided to shoot at them.  Calculating the come-ups is possible using the same methods if you know the ballistics of your cartridge, but I decided to play around with an app I had downloaded for my iPad called "iStrelok".  I'm guessing the programmer was Russian, as Strelok is Russian for "shooter" or "rifleman".  It's a really cool ballistics program that allows you to input all the data for your rifle and ammunition, and produce tables showing bullet drop and wind drift at different distances, etc.  There are a number of programs that will do this, but iStrelok has a feature I have seen nowhere else - it has a library of scope reticles from all different manufacturers, and will show you a diagram of your own scope reticle with the relevant range information for that cartridge.

My scope is a Leupold Mark VI 3-18X with a Tactical Milling Reticle (TMR).  Here are some screen images from iStrelok, first with the measurements in yards, then in meters.

The main screen of iStrelok, where you enter all your data.

The ballistics table it produces.

The scope reticle image from iStrelok.  To me this  is the coolest feature of the program.

The main screen displayed in metric mode.

The ballistics table in metric measurements.

The scope image calibrated in meters.

To me the most interesting and useful feature of the program is the scope reticle image, because it allows you to assign a range value to each stadia line on the reticle as it relates to your zero range and the ballistics of your particular cartridge.  Since the steel target on my range was at 380 yards, I was able to consult this chart, and know to hold just over the third stadia line (labeled 387 yards).  A satisfying "thunk" as the bullet hit the steel told me that I was right on target, time after time.

The TMR reticle and the mil system are tremendously useful, as they allow you to use the various stadia lines and known average dimensions of objects to estimate range and then to calculate your holdover. But since I had a laser rangefinder, it was much simpler to just read the range and hold on the appropriate line in the scope.  FUN!   I imagine it would be very good for me to go out and practice the traditional way of estimating range using the stadia lines and doing the math, but for now it was just more fun to thump the steel target for the last few rounds until it was time to go.

I was happy finally to be able to accomplish the task of zeroing my rifle in its new stock, and especially happy to do it on the historic date "When marksmanship met history, and the heritage began".

Music: AC/DC - Big Gun
Mood:  Happy