When you catch a day you can get to the range, you better go. If it’s threatening rain – just not the “I’ll get wet,” but the threat of lightning, localized flooding kind – it’s time to take the chance. If I washed out, this trip would be about the third in the last nearly 22 years that I had to abandon the range attempt due to inclement weather.

That’s not bad.

But we’ve had a wet summer, a number of storm events with heavy rains – so much for “drought.” My range time was limited. As I looked on the weather guess for the coming day, I saw some slight chances of torrential rainfall, thunderstorms, clouds of locusts and other various calamities. 

Slight chances. 

As it came to the day, I bagged up a pair of rimfire handguns, a backer, my target bag and set out. It was 73° and cloudy. I’d had sprinkles on the windshield when leaving the house and got a bit more on the interstate, but I pressed on. As I got closer, it was further between rain drops and I got to a relatively dry range during this on- and off-monsoon we’ve had for months.

Tacking up a B-8 repair center, I stood off to 25 yards to stretch the abilities of the Taurus M942 snub revolver and me. Shooting single action, bullseye style, most rounds sailed over the top of the repair center. I moved up to fifteen yards, for a two handed, double-action attempt. I used the “Tactical Professor” “ball & dummy” routine – fire one, open and turn the cylinder without looking, and repeat, sometimes getting a hit on an empty to see if I was moving the gun on the trigger press. It apparently worked out okay as I put all the rounds into 3 ¼”. The bullseye target I’d posted face down, using only the sheet to center the tiny sights. I found I was favoring left. The 25-yard attempt featured a low-center hold. 

I did some work on a dueling tree with ca-4 ½” paddles. The gun would hit when I cooperated. In fact, the little revolver was making the steel sing with regularity.

I changed over to the Taurus TX22 Compact. It’s become a favored range gun over the years because it’s not finicky. 

Shooting Remington Golden Bullet on a business envelope set in portrait mode, I posted five hits along the top of the paper. One was a nick, nearly a miss.

 That was a 3 1/8” effort. I followed that by backing to 20 yards and holding at 6 o’clock. With four rounds, all that was left in the gun, I printed a 2 1/8” group on the lower part of the envelope. I had one nick on the right side, another attempting to escape.

Time for plinking. 

I taped up a bit of fiberboard used to separate ammo in a bulk pack. It measured 2” x 3 ¾”. It was no chore to hit that smaller target at 20 yards. 

I finished with timed fire on another B8, this one with the rings facing me. I posted 80/100-1X. That’s not prize-winning, but for bulk pack ammo in a value priced gun and a bullseye rookie guiding them on target, it was fine enough.

– Rich Grassi