The UK's Finest Independent Forum for Shooters and Gun Owners. Est 2010.

This year has been pretty dismal so far, especially the first half of the year. I haven't had much opportunity for attending club shoots, not with problems with my feet, only having one car, full time study and Sundays being the main day for my son's figure skating training.

Now that I'm mobile again with my own car, I've been trying to get to the range for what seems like an eternity. Today I managed to get some 'me' time at the range. In reality, I should have spent the time studying and finishing off a lab report, but I decided putting lead down range was more important. So after a couple hours of Human Biology (my only class for the day) I got packed and headed for Milnain.

I took my Marlin M989M2, Win 94AE, Destroyer carbine and the Westlake Pheonix.

Firstly, a few pictures of the range.

As you approach the range. Firing points are behind the embankment to the front. Firing point. View to target. And because three photos as attachments is the maximum, I'll continue with the important stuff - the shooting shortly!

I bought the Marlin 989M2 a earlier this year for the princely sum of £65 and this was the first I've had the opportunity to shoot it. It was worth the wait!
The top and bottom groups are of 25 rounds of RWS high velocity and the centre group is 35 rounds of some left over Eley standard velocity ammunition. The high velocity is definitely the preferred ammunition as I had some failures to cycle with the standard velocity ammunition, however I can't complain about the accuracy. The trigger is on the heavy side, but once I got used to it, it's not really that bad. The big problem with the Marlin is I only have one magazine and 7 rounds is not enough!

The Winchester was problematic today. On the one hand it shoot great with the right ammunition.
The above is a 12 shot group with home loaded ammo (125 gn Rainer flatnose), unfortunately that was the last of it. The 158gn flat nose ammo I loaded (38 spl loads) was OK but nothing special. The 158gn semi wadcutter ammo was dreadful - difficult to load, failures to feed and inaccurate. In the end I just shot, what was left, off - I don't think I'll bother with it again.
On the plus side, no double feeds, so I think I've sorted that problem - use good brass! I have Prvi 357 Mag ammo on the way, so if that works OK, I don't think I'll bother hand loading for it any more.

I had the had the Westlake Phoenix ML pistol at the range. At 25m I couldn't get any sort of group. At 10m I kept it in the diamond (see below), but it was hard work. I've never been a great shot with a pistol and I guess I'm out of practice with iron sights because the Destroyer was hard work as well today.

Westlake All in all, a pretty good afternoon. :shakeshout:

So that's a 25m range? I'm pleasantly surprised someone would bother to organize a range even with limited range. Is it mostly used by air rifle shooters and such?

Roe wrote:So that's a 25m range? I'm pleasantly surprised someone would bother to organize a range even with limited range. Is it mostly used by air rifle shooters and such?

The club was primarily a Pistol club and as such 25m was deemed enough. With the Handgun Ban the club did diversify and now caters for Airguns, smallbore target and muzzle loaders, LBR/LBPs & Gallery rifles. The range has a total of 8 covered firing points. The club also has the use of a 600 meter range.