Winter practice and trying to kill a bad habit

Pistol shooting in winter conditions  is not the most pleasant way to start practice for out coming competitions, but I don't have a choice. Fortunately the cold dropped from -30 to - 6 so I have some chance to practice whiteout frostbites. Simple and short pistol exercises at this time. One shot at pepper popper target in option 1. Winter clothing is trouble factor enough at least when you have some time from last practical shooting.

With thick jacket I was available to hit pepper popper at 20m in 1,5 seconds.

Second thing what I was training was "recoil fear". Especially shooting with one hand(for some reason mostly dominate hand) I make a twitch at 7 a clock with right hand and 5 a clock with left hand. This is only shown at shooting range when handling live rounds. I think this is a some kind of reflex with knowledge because I don't notice this when I practice with dummy rounds.

I read that only way to get rid of it is to make my self aware of it. To do so first I load in 3 magazines a dummy round, then I load hot rounds a random number for each magazine. After that I mix the mag's so when I start to shoot I don't know when I do dry fire. I was surprised how big my anticipation for normal 9mm pistol were. This is what I need to practice more often, after few surprise dry fire I was available to take down small plates in 25m so easily!

  

Remington 700 Police range report

I did spend a lot of time in range in Christmas holidays, espesially with my customised Remington 700. Before Christmas a gunsmith shortened barrel from 26" to 21" and but a 18mm thread in the end for a Aseutra j-zet suppressor. Now with shortened barrel balance with suppressor is quite good, espesially if you need to carry it in the woods.

Here are some results: I shot  Seller&Belliot 9,55 g FMJ and some handloads with Lapua Scenar 10g. S&B performed quite well, all the grouping were under 1 MOA also in 300m range. With 10g Scenar I got one load that gave under 0,7 MOA grouping. Although my scope rings started to move in some point when I fired hot loads. There was a Lapua case, CCI 200 primer and vihtavuori N140&N150 powders. COAL was 73mm(longest that fit in AICS magazine).

S&B 9,55 g 308 Win

S&B 9,55 g 308 Win

S&B 9,55 g 308 Win

Scenar 10g with Lapua case 73mm COAL

Scenar 10g with Lapua case 73mm COAL

Scenar 10g with Lapua case 73mm COAL

Dry draw exercise with CZ SP-01

This years first pistol exercise started in -29 degrees of Celsius, indoors of course. I recorded my pistol draw in video and it looked quite well. PAR time was from 1 - 0,8 second in normal standing and 1,2-1,0 second in surrender standing.

The holster is Finnish SLB Custom. Its good for IPCS shooting but not very "practical" for IPDM or army reserve shootings

First attempt for a long range

My first over 300m shootings were  in a cold weather, -8 degrees Celsius and a little blustering wind. First distance was 320 meters according to my zeiss rangefinder( a Christmas present for my self, maybe I going to do a review of it some day). I shot prone with my remington 700 police with 20'' barrel with suppressor and Dragunov.

In 320 meters my Remigton 700 was easy to hit 200mm plate and head of practical target. One hit on the 100mm plate swing it over the beam twice! So maybe the 100mm plate is to lite for 308win. With Norma jakhtmact 9,7g fmj I had to adjust my scope 1,9Mrad to hit center. That was more than I expected, probably because of the cold weather. And Dragunov with leader surplus ammo hits easily 200mm plate with 350m sight adjustment.

Elevation adjustment for 320m

Remington 700, with norma 9,7 fmj = 1,9 Mrad
Dragunov, with leader surplus = 350m

At 489m thing got very difficult. Blustering wind starts to interfere in shooting. 200m plate was very difficult to hit, one out of five shot hit the target. But with practical target hit ratio was nearly 90%. And it was surprise for me how easy it is to hit target with dragunov! Only 4x scope in that thing! Of course first my friend looked with Remington's 18x zooming scope where I was hitting with dragunov so I know were to hold.

Elevation adjustment for 489m

Remington700, with Norma 9,7 fmj = 4,7Mrad
Dragunov, with leader surplus = 600m

No wind adjustment needed, if you shot in a wind bluster you did not hit the target.

Dragunov's 4x scope at 489m, camera did,n pick up the targets but with bare eye you can see the biggest target.

Steel targets for a long range sooting

Long range shooting is a long waited dream of mine. This Christmas I started to fulfill it. Shooting at long distances 300 to 600 m to a paper targets seem to be little bit poring. Five shots in five minutes and then 20 minutes to check the target. But to shoot to steel targets was more to my taste.

First I watched punch of YouTube clips about steel targets what people use and started acquire equipment for steel targets. I desaidet to do "swinging" steel target. For a swing I needed squire steel pipe two different sizes 25*25mm and 20*20mm for the legs and 25*50 steel pipe for the beam. For hanging the steel targets I bought 10mm thick rubber belt and cut it to a 70*500mm. As for the steel target them self's I order them from a metal shop. They are made from Hardox 450 12mm thick and there are tree different sizes 100mm plate, 200mm plate and C and head zone of a practical target.

Steel targets hanging from rubber belts. After this photo I did extension joints in legs and painted the swing black