Looking forward to returning to the shooting range

One of the things I’m looking forward to doing after my rebuilt left shoulder is healed is to do a lot of shooting. About the only shooting I’ve done in the past two years or so has been with blackpowder firearms at organized matches. I’ve done very little with smokeless powder cartridge firearms in that period. I hope that changes!

One regular monthly shoot I used to do frequently is the “Bang ‘N Clang” lead bullet shoot held the first Saturday of every month at the Birchwood Shooting Range in Chugiak. This informal match involves shooting at steel silhouettes of grouse, pigs, geese, and rams at 50, 100, 150, and 200 meters, respectively. You must knock the target off the steel railing it sits on for the shot to count as a hit. Anything else counts as a miss.

There are ten targets at each distance, and you fire one shot at each target in sequence down the line. A match consists of forty shots, ten at each distance, and the winner of the match is determined by the highest number of total hits. You have ten minutes for your ten shots in each relay. You can shoot as many sighting shots as you want.

The firearms allowed are virtually unrestricted, as are the types of sights that are “legal.” The only restriction is that all the bullets fired must be lead – no jacketed bullets may be used. This is to keep the steel targets from being damaged by the bullets striking their surfaces. There are three categories: scoped, offhand, and benchrest. I usually shoot off the bench with a receiver-sighted rifle. And, no, perfect scores are not real common.

I bought a rifle a few years ago just for this match. I like single-shot guns, and I found a customized Martini Cadet rifle on the internet that I thought would work fine. The little Martini rifles were developed to teach Australian cadets the fundamentals of riflery back in the early twentieth century. Thousands were imported into the USA back in the 1960’s and were customized into a wide range of pistol and smaller rifle calibers.

The Martini Cadet action is incredibly strong, and the design is such that the rifle can be fired with no pins or screws holding parts in place, although I wouldn’t recommend doing so. The original cartridge the rifle was chambered for is an “odd ball” by American standards but served its purpose in the original firearms. Finding an unaltered Martini Cadet in its original caliber is almost impossible today because of all the customization that has occurred over time.

My rifle still has the original barrel in excellent condition, but it has been bored out to 35-caliber, re-rifled, and chambered in 357 Magnum caliber. I wasn’t sure, at first, if the caliber was big enough to knock over 50-pound steel ram silhouettes at 200 meters, but participating in matches has proven, beyond doubt, that the caliber can knock the rams off the rail with the right load.

The gentleman who sold me the rifle told me it shoots best with a heavy-for-caliber bullet, like a 180-grain, 357–diameter lead projectile, powered by a heavy charge of magnum pistol powder, like 2400 or H110. He wouldn’t recommend any specific load, for obvious reasons, but suggested starting with the 2400 powder.

I had a small amount of 2400 and a ton of H110, so I started with H110. I have been trying to find 2400 powder for the last three years and have acquired exactly one pound over that period. The stuff is impossible to find! I worked up a heavy load with a 180-grain lead bullet that shot reasonably well and went from there. I want to do some detailed benchrest shooting to get exact sight settings for my Parker/Hale receiver sight (which matches my Parker/Hale globe front sight) at each of the mentioned distances, so I don’t have to “Kentucky windage” my sight picture as I have been doing all along.

I’ve never won a match, but I usually come in in the top third to a quarter of the guys I’m shooting against. I can usually outscore a couple of my friends I shoot with, and the bragging rights are good enough for me! At one shoot three or four years ago, I won a turkey by being the only one of all the shooters to knock a grouse silhouette off the rail at 200 meters offhand. It was a bit of a lucky shot!