Last night was a wonderful night at the range. One of those where you leave just smiling from ear to ear. There were several things I came away with last night and I'm going to post them in series here.
First off was my personal night. I hadn't hit the range in a few weeks which for me is an eternity. I wanted to take the .22, .357, and the 7.62x54R. The first two for precision shooting, the latter for keeping my "muscle memory" in tact.
When I got to the range, oddly enough the other three guys in there were all shooting Ruger Mark II / III 22/45s. I loaded up the magazines, put my target out to 10 yards, and proceeded to remove the bull's-eye. I slipped into that Zen-like meditation almost immediately. I was calm, my hands were much more steady than normal, the "misses" were mere centimeters outside of the middle and those didn't phase me in the slightest.
If you'll allow my ego to take over for a minute, some of the other people came over to start watching and even complimented me on my shooting. Part of that had to do with my accuracy, the other part was because I was mixing .357's into my routine and they wanted to see what was knocking the wind out of them. The .357 proved to be deadly accurate as well, and someone mentioned they were surprised that I was able to control it (I told them there was no recoil due to the light bullet).
Something interesting I discovered last night was that laterally, I kept my shots dead center. Vertically, I'd hit higher or lower, but it almost looked like a line drawn down the center. It was kind of interesting.
At 15 yards, my groupings spread out a bit (but not by much, maybe fist sized), and my first attempt I found I was shooting high. I put a hi-viz sticker over the target, and on my second try, the same thing happened - a nearly vertical line appeared. So for me, that's good. I can focus on keeping the pitch of the barrel level since I seem to have the yaw down pat.
After I started feeling a little bit of fatigue, I hit the rifle range. I sat down to shoot for the first 20, just to concentrate. At 30 & 50 yards, I put every shot basically on the target. Offhand, I actually managed to miss once, but that didn't bother me too much. One thing I don't like about the trigger on the M44 is that it takes a lot of pressure to reach the break point and here and there I'll find myself applying too much pressure to keep it right there while I aim. I guess I pulled just a little too hard.
Shooting wise, a great night. Accuracy was well beyond what I normally expect which makes me feel good. There are a few more stories to tell, but those are later.