Bullseye

If the bullet – not the hole but “the bullet” – touches an inner line, the shooter gets the better score.

In the first of the four days of the Conventional portion of the 2013 Desert Midwinter Competition in Phoenix Arizona, there were two relays on Thursday morning, International Center Fire and then Conventional Service Pistol. The former marks the end of the International format competition, and the latter is the beginning of the Conventional.

It is better than shooting because, if you’re shooting wrong, you’ll spend years figuring it out on your own, if ever. Learning by yourself to shoot Bullseye well is next to impossible. I won’t say it can’t be done, but I will say that everyone I know that does it well has had expert instruction. Even those that wrote this book had expert instruction.

I went to the range Friday afternoon to both get some trigger practice and also to test the loads in the brass that had been though the push-through resizer.

Or, if you prefer, “It’s the red thing, not the black thing.”

I have some 200 grain sample bullets to test. My first test is to see how consistent is the weight from one bullet to the next. I’ve previously learned this is a critical factor for accuracy – to have all bullets weigh almost the same. (I’d like to see +/- 0.5 grains but know other shooters who demand +/- 0.1 grains.)

For some time (as in years) I’ve been having a rare but persistent problem when reloading. When the Dillon 650 places the shell in the first station, on rare occasion - 1 in 100 or 200 - the shell will be slightly out of position such that when the ram comes up to the sizing die, these shells will either “boom” into position as they carrom off the edge of the die, or if far enough out, they will be crushed.

I added an Addendum here about adding a pair of plain old-fashioned bi-focals to my DIY eyeglasses order. With a red dot, progressives just don’t work well.

So I spent a couple of hours doing solo practice at the range. Because I wanted most of my attention on trigger control, I created a sustained fire practice exercise. (Click on the picture for a bigger image.)