September 2021

I joined my nearest range in September after umming and aahing for several months. See, the problem with England is that its firearms laws are rather restrictive, and whilst this doesn't technically extent to airguns and air rifles, it does make it more trouble than it is worth to use air guns unless you have a good deal of land. It doesn't help that in a nearby county someone was shooting at parked cars with an air pistol recently.

So I decided that I should join a range, so that I could go shooting at targets without worrying about anything. Why do I want to shoot? Because I enjoyed shooting when I was in the military, and it is a skill which can be improved through diligence (something which I have sorely been lacking in for several years).

12th of September, Induction

In order to join the range, I had to do an induction shoot; listen to the briefings, show that you won't point it at people, shoot a few targets supervised, etcetera. The club has two ranges, a 10 metre airgun and air rifle-only range, and a 25 yard all-gun range (which allows such real firearms as are permissible per UK law). For the time being, until I've built up my skills, I'm simply not going to touch firearms, and shall relegate myself to air weapons.

As this site wasn't ready at this point, I'm writing retrospectively, so I'm looking at my shots and seeing them for what they are; awful. At the time though I wrote "didn't do too badly overall". Hah, foolish Eomer the Younger. I shot 30 shots at 10m with an air pistol, and 30 shots at 20yds with an air rifle (at a 20yd pistol target).

Since it was induction, the main point is to show that you can shoot safely, not to shoot in a way that would be correct for competitions and the like. I took advantage of this, and used a two-handed grip for the air pistol, and bench resting for the air rifle (allowing for far greater stability). In terms of the sport, air pistol is meant to be done one-handed, whilst bench-resting is a category of its own for rifle sports. I found that I simply didn't have the upper body strength to keep the pistol held aloft with one hand yet.

Even at this early stage, just joining the club, it was obvious to me that I preferred the air rifle. This isn't a surprise though, I already had some meagre experience with the SA80 A2 in the military, but far less experience with any pistols.

Weapon	Stance	Card ID	Distance	Score	Notes	Scanned Image
Air pistol	1h	Induction air pistol 1/3	10m	31	2 missed shots	SCAN
"	2h	" 2/3	"	67	Two-hand grip	SCAN
"	"	" 3/3	"	64	"	SCAN
Air rifle	Bench-rest	Induction air rifle 1/3	20yd	83	It's quite a long distance, after shooting at 10m	SCAN
"	"	" 2/3	"	81	"	SCAN
"	"	" 3/3	"	"	"	SCAN

17th of September, air pistol 10m only

Despite, or perhaps because of, my preference for the air rifle, I decided to start off after induction with the air pistol on the 10m range. I shot 30 1-handed and 30 2-handed. I was trying to train my arm strength a bit, but end off the session feeling better than I would if I just shot one handed.

Stance	Card ID	Score	Notes	Scanned Image
1h	air pistol 1/3	38	3 misses, 2 of which missed the card entirely	SCAN
"	" 2/3	49	While score isn't bad, the grouping is awful, all over the place, almost random	"
"	" 3/3	43	"	SCAN
2h	air pistol 1/3	53	The score isn't much better, but it's clearly far more accurate, even with a miss. The grouping is much better	SCAN
"	" 2/3	60	And again, even with one miss, the grouping is so much better that I significantly increased my score by landing that group closer to the centre. But wait, there's more...	"
"	" 3/3	66	Tada! With no miss, and pulling the centre of the grouping a bit leftward, the score hiked up again. Too bad it's 2 handed though...	SCAN

I ended the session feeling good about myself, as planned.

19th of September

I continued shooting air pistol 10m, but I also did a little bit of air rifle shooting from bench rest at 10m. I shot 80 pellets in all.

I decided to start making a note of which of the club's airweapons in particular I was using. It's worth noting, "AP" means "Air Pistol", and "AR" means "Air Rifle".

Weapon	Stance	Card ID	Score	Notes	Scanned Image
Air pistol AP3	1h	Air pistol 1/2	34	3 misses, poor grouping	SCAN
Air pistol AP3	"	" 2/2	42	1 miss	SCAN
Air pistol AP3	2h	air pistol 1/1	59		SCAN
Air rifle AR10	Bench-rest	AR10 - 30 50 pellets	N/a	The target is a 10m air rifle card, with 5 targets on it. You're meant to fire 1 or 2 shots at each target, ending with either 5 or 10 pellets shot. Here, I shot 50 pellets. The first 10 I used to zero the rifle (which is why it's so vertically spread). It was a lot of fun, but honestly bench rest is a bit too easy.	SCAN

24th of September

Air pistol AP3 only today. I shot 45 pellets total, 25 1-hand and 20 2-hand.

Stance	Card ID	Score	Notes	Scanned Image
1h	AP3 Prefire	34	I shot only 5 pellets. It was sort of a warm up.	SCAN
"	AP3 1/3	63	"Firing too fast, losing grip as squeeze... do better". The good score was irrelevant; I knew I was doing badly.	SCAN
"	" 2/3	49	"...overall better control but slow down".	SCAN
2h	" 3/3	68	Out of frustration I think, I swiched to 2 hand. I wrote on the card "shot too quickly not taking time to sight!"	SCAN
"	" 4/3	56	"front sight was below the rear sight, should not have shot then, should have broken off". It may be becoming obvious that I am very self-critical.	SCAN

I ended it there that day out of frustration. I had begun to highlight issues with my shooting; not squeezing the trigger properly (aka trigger-snatching) and firing "too quickly".

By "too quickly" what I meant was that I was getting caught up in the mindset of, and apologies for this crassness, "shit or get off the pot". If you're not lined up properly, you should get off the pot, but I was... doing the other one and making a mess.

September 2021 roundup

That's where September ended for me. I was enjoying it. The reason I was shooting so often, by the way, was a condition of the club; new members have to shoot on at least ten separate days within 3 months of induction. Eventually I would settle down into a one-day-per-week schedule, but that comes later.

Here's a chart logging my average scores and number of misses, with lines of best fit: