I Went a-Shootin'

After getting a little work done around the home place, I packed up a couple carbines and some ammo and mags. Hopped in the Cherrymobile (her HHR) and off I went. Where? To her brothers place, lucky him, he has a perfect place to shoot, an old quarry. At times it is flooded to a a foot or two. Most of the time it's a cattail forest. I have put a target board on the far side at a measured 300 feet. Now I haven't been shooting for a while, so when I got there today, the brush had grow up at both the front end and the target end. I ended up shooting at 25 yards then going into the pit and choosing targets of opportunity ( light colored rocks and leave laying on the far slope). My armament? A Bushmaster XM15 carbine with short hand guard and 16 inch barrel, a MAK90 as shown in a previous post and one of my carry guns, a Rock Island Armory Officers model in good ol' .45 caliber. The MAK has open sight and the AR has a scope mounted on it's flat top.
AK ammo was Russian 123 grain hollow point and fodder for the AR was United Arab Emmerate 62 grain SS109 type loading.
First off the MAK shot great at 25 yards. I am at the point in life where the rear sight is very blurry and the front is crisp even so, double taps went around 1.5 inches. A few of those and I moved into the pit. Rocks and leaves were no match. I was rolling rocks 75-100 yards away with regularity. The sites were easier to see in this environment. I went with a light ammo load of 2 thirty round mags for each carbine. I ran through the 7.62 ammo and transitioned to the AR. As expected, with the benefit of the scope I was able to put 10 into a 2 inch circle. The shooting in the pit was really no change, put the cross hairs on your target and its hit. I finished these 2 mags and went up to the "pistol range", a shale bank in front of the barn. I set a target and started off with some cast reloads that friend made. Light recoiling and accurate but they had a bad tendency to cause the gun the fail to return to battery. After several of these incidents I unloaded my magazines and filled them with my high dollar carry ammo, Speer Gold Dots and Remington Golden Sabers both in 230 grain. The Gold Dots were not the short barrel variety. I practiced drawing and shooting single, double and triple taps. Slow is smooth and smooth is fast. I use Ashley 24/7 Big dot Express sights on this little heater. Great for the distances this gun is intended for. It is very similar to point shooting, you plant that big old front sight where you want it and BLAM! It's it's hit. I am a fairly good natural shot and this is a lot of fun for me. To bad I didn't have more functional ammo with me. Oh well, there's always another day. I want to give a report on ammo performance in a later post. In the end, I found that I like shooting the MAK90 better than the AR. And the little .45 is a blast to shoot.