Tired, Sunburned, Achy, and Happy

I'm back at the Black Bear Inn after a full (and I mean full) day at the range. We started out the morning with Todd Jarrett checking and correcting our grip on our pistols. Now, I'm not one much for tattoos, but I'm giving serious consideration to having the witness marks he put on our hands with a sharpie permanently replicated in subcutaneous ink. By merely altering my grip and teaching the isosceles stance I firmly believe he has reduced my shot-to-shot recovery time by about half. I have complained before about my split times when shooting controlled pairs. That slowness is due to the fact that I have a hard time reacquiring the front sight after the first shot.

Not today. Each and every time the front sight was RIGHT THERE after each and every shot.

When I did it right.

Now I just have to practice that grip, because I've been shooting with a different (and wrong) grip for so long I instinctively use it. And go slow.

As always, it's practice, practice, practice!

The Para ran almost flawlessly for me today. We gunked it up pretty bad. They told us we'd be shooting like 500 to 1,000 rounds a day. I'd say I did at least 500. Towards the end of the day the slide stopped locking back on some of the magazines.

Whoopee.

There is one fly in the ointment, however. Joe Huffman discovered that it was possible to manipulate the controls on his pistol in such a way as to cause the sear to release without first cocking the hammer on the trigger pull. This resulted in essentially the same condition as a misfire - the round in the chamber had to be ejected to re-cock the action. To duplicate the fault, you have to pull the trigger with the thumb safety engaged, then disengage the thumb safety with the trigger partially depressed. You have to do it just right, but Joe, being the analytical type, was able to duplicate the malfunction on his pistol, and on mine, and on a couple of others. He was not able to get SayUncle's to fail, however. I was then able to do it - unintentionally - on the range.

Solution: Don't use the thumb safety. It's not necessary, anyway. The grip safety and the long trigger pull are safety enough. Not encouraging, really, but I still like the pistol. A lot. I WOULD use it as a carry piece.

We shot paper, we shot steel. We shot standing and we shot moving. We shot moving steel, while standing and while moving.

We had a helluva lot of fun. My hands hurt. My face hurts from smiling. My legs hurt from standing all day. And I've got some sunburn despite borrowing some of Armed Schoolteacher's SPF55 sunscreen. I forgot to put any on the sides of my face.

Tomorrow morning we get to shoot in a shoothouse.

This trip is made of awesome.