Good range day

[rgwalt]

I had a really great day at the range this afternoon. I took my 9mm shield with me with the plan to put 200-300 rounds through it, to test reliability for it to become my regular carry gun. After I went through my first few magazines, I realized that I was really tense and rushing things. I was trying to hurry myself up, to make sure I blew through all my ammo in order to accomplish this reliability exercise. However, my accuracy was suffering greatly. So, I decided to relax and take it slow. Focus on the fundamentals...

I slowed down to the point where I was reloading each magazine after shooting. I found that doing so got me into a slower, more methodical rhythm. I could think about what I was doing wrong, and what I was going to do different on the next magazine. I focused on slowly taking up the slack in the trigger, instead of mashing the trigger and pulling my shots low and left. I focused on sight alignment and front sight focus. By the end of my session, I had gone through 200 rounds, but they were 200 worthwhile, effective practice rounds. These were shots that improved my shooting.

I suppose this was one of my best, most successful range days in a long time. It is easy to get into a rut, and go through the motions at the range, rather than make the most of my range sessions. I just need to remember this in the future...

 

[no2gates]

Even the worst day at the range is better than the best day at work.

I always take breaks by switching off and letting my wife take her turn.

 

[qwiksdraw]

Looks like it was as much fun learning as shooting.

I quit taking a bunch of magazines with me for the same reason, it's too easy to shoot everything too fast. Three mags works great for me.

Some times you just got to stop and smell the gunpowder!

 

[BRevell]

I'll take it a step further even and just load three or five rounds in a mag at a time. Make every shot count. Plus its good fun to practice reloads with 2 or 3 magazines stacked with just a few rounds in each. I've got a Shield in .40S&W myself. The trigger is a little heavier than I'm used to so it took some practice to get it to shoot straight. Hopefully you had an easier time of it than I did.

 

[Whisky]

.
I shoot at an indoor range so I can pull in my target whenever I care to (without having to wait for the range to "go cold", like I would at an outdoor range)

then use just one magazine and load/shoot only 5 rounds, pull the target in, look at the results, tape the target and send it back out

yep, could use a couple of "happy sticks" and blow the heck outta the target, but that's just burning gun powder - I feel I'm doing my practice justice when I shoot slowly