Fella's;

I left the house with 4 guns & fully intended to spend most of the day in the lane, shooting.  However, I stopped by the neighbor's ranch to return the Taurus PT99 that didn't sell at last weekend's gun show.

Wherein I got to participate in a knapweed fest.  So, spent most of the morning running around their & our property burning out knapweed with the propane torch.  Which involved strapping the propane tank onto the back of an ATV & promoting rampant desecration of the countryside what with tracks & burned vegetation.  Actually, two ATV's, the truth be known.  Since knapweed is a foreign & pernacious weed, what we did was enviromentally correct.  In our eyes.  On our property.  There may be other opinions, but I seem to recall a phrase involving defecation & Mexican money that covers those.

That took up the morning.  Over the mid-day, I helped the neighbors unpack a cast iron propane heating stove & carry it into their house.  Whereupon I was rewarded with a vast cheeseburger and switching the TV channel from PBA bowling goofy-games to something far more entertaining.  Hell, watching paint dry woulda been more entertaining, but I'm not complaining.

Then it started to rain.  And Dain wanted to go with me, and the home ranch is another 12 or so miles down the road.  So, we rounded up some scrap lumber & built a shooting bench while the weather, sorta, cleared off.  Took off for the upper pasture & initially set up 56 lasered yards from an old corral.  Didn't set the corral on fire with the high-powered laser neither.

Got the Zastava out & was pleasantly surprised to find that the bore site was actually quite close to the bull on the paper when viewed through the scope.  Took a few rounds to put it an inch high at 56 & on the money laterally.

Then I took out the Tikka .338 & performed the same operation.  Dain was amazed at seeing the bullets penetrate the 1/4" plywood target backing, the 8" thick wood upright behind that & then continuing across the corral to bury itself in the 2" thick plank on the next fence.  I dug one of the bullets out & found that the lead had separated from the jacket.  Considering where it'd been, I'm not too worried about that kinda 'failure'.

During all this time we're ducking in the truck to get outta rain showers.  It was a cool, cloudy, frequently wet afternoon.  Didn't even bother trying to set up the chronograph.  I'da had to put an arc-light above the screens in order to get a shadow for the poor thing to read.

We shut down in the later afternoon & went back to the house & had a beer.  I left the Daly at 6" high at 100 yards & the Tikka 4" high at a hundred.  Not that I think that's where they really should be, but we'd had all the fun we could stand to have & it was time to pack it in & go to the house.  They're close enough that on the next range session, it'll merely be a matter of some fine tuning.

Didn't pop a cap on either the 6mm Remington, just to check zero, or the new .22lr conversion for the Kimber.  Those projects will keep for another week or so too.  Hopefully a day with sunshine & a chrono up & working.

Got home in time to buy a Mother's day card & watch the Darlington race whilst cleaning guns.  Got called to dinner & missed the end of the race, but found out this morning that it was just as well.  Some no-name driver in some off-brand car got awarded first.  Eating home-made Mexican chicken manicotti & having another beer beats watching something other than Chevy come in first.

  900F