Call me Ahab

posted by Caleb on Jul 28

and a man stood facing his destiny…a table with 5 bowling pins. As a haunting spanish horn played mournfully in the background, wailing the notes of desperation and anguish into the hot Indiana morning, the man waited…and waited.

Crisp and clear, like a bird singing its morning song, a whistle rang out - the man, his destiny…and the pins were for a brief moment a whirlwind of gunfire and steel, flame and brass. And then all was quiet again.

All melodrama aside, this weekend’s bowling pin match at Marion County Fish & Game was great. Shot the always fantastic Glock 24 again, and as you can see from the video the 180 grain bullets from a .40 S&W seem to be more than adequate to get pins moving off the table provided I get good hits on pins.

Also rounding out the awesomeness of the weekend was the fact that blogger Brigid of Mausers and Muffins was in attendance - it’s always great to hang out with bloggers, especially cool ones like her. She and another shooter were kind enough to get some photos of me shooting, which came out really well.

I really like this picture - the action on the gun is opened up, the brass is in the air and thanks to excellent photography, it actually looks like I know what I’m doing.

Don’t worry, my eyes aren’t closed, just the right eye. I still haven’t taught myself to shoot action with both eyes open.

Here are the other two pictures.

Another one with brass in the air, and the .40 in recoil.

I love the smoke coming out of the gun.

I just think it looks neato.

This last one is my wife’s favorite picture from the bunch.

Once again, I had a great time shooting pins at Marion County Fish and Game. The guys there not only run a fun match, but it’s a safe match as well. When you really get down to brass tacks, that’s what really matters is that everyone there is having fun and is staying safe about it.

Update: To the guy who asked why I’m wearing a t-shirt with a peace sign on it, what you can’t see in the video is that it says “peace through superior firepower”.

posted by Caleb on Jul 25

I’m so excited for tomorrow’s pin shoot - my buddy Greg won’t be able to make it, apparently his newborn second child is more important than shooting up a bunch of bowling pins.  I keep telling him to get his priorities fixed, but apparently “family” is more important than “awesome trigger time”.

All kidding aside, for more information on the match check out this link to Marion County Fish & Game - set up starts around 8am, and shooting begins usually around 8:30 or 9am.  I’ll be there for sure, shooting my Glock 24 in .40 S&W.  I’ll also be taking some video, so show up and you might end up being internets famous.

Since the .40 may not have enough juice to blow those pins off the table, I will practice my new strategy of “shoot a lot of bullets faster than the other guy”.

posted by Caleb on Jul 23

Bowling pin shoot at Marion County Fish & Game this weekend!

July 26th around 8:30, we’ll be out there doing our damnedest to smoke some pins off the table.  I’ll be shooting my new Glock 24 in .40 S&W, which may or may not have enough juice to move the pins off the table in a timely fashion.

Just to give you an idea of how fun shooting bowling pins is, check out the video from the last shoot.

Come out, shoot some pins, and have a great time - I promise you won’t be disappointed.

posted by Caleb on Jun 30

The monthly pin shoot at Marion County Fish and Game was a blast, as usual.  I brought my Taurus Tracker in .357, which I shot like crap with, and my Walther P22.  It turned out that I only shot one real bracket with the .357, as for the second bracket one of the regulars asked me if I’d like to try his Smith & Wesson 945, which is the Performance Center 1911.  I have to tell you, shooting a $2k pistol was painful experience, but I did for you, my dear readers.

Here’s a pretty awesome picture from the shoot - the gun has opened up and you can see the empty casing in the air, and the bullet has just hit the left most pin.  Click to embiggenate.

Even though this video is titled “Part 2″ it’s actually the first video with me shooting the 945; had a pretty good time shooting it.

The second video is a lot of fun - as you can see, I had fallen behind on the actual pins because I dropped a couple of shots.  I made up the time on the reload, which lead to us having quite the photo finish.  I give a little Tiger Woods-style fist pump right there at the end; and if you slow the playback down you can see how closely together our pins hit the the ground.

However, I saved the best video for last.  Here’s my buddy Greg, who normally shoots a Beretta 92 in 9mm, trying out a guy’s S&W double action .45 Colt.  He has a little bit of trouble with it, but the video is so great I had to post it.  Everyone is yelling and hollering, which made what was already a fun round even more interesting.

I didn’t get any video of the .22 round this week, and even more sadly I didn’t get video of what we did after the pinheads match.  We had some time to kill, so the ROs let people just kind of “have at it” at the little pinheads with whatever caliber they wanted.  Let me tell you, a pinhead flies when you hit it with a .357 magnum round.

The next pins match is July 26, and there is a Friday night steel match on July 11.  If I have my new Glock 35 by the 11th, I’ll make a solid effort to be there for the match.

As usual, the pin shoot was a great time - it really is one of the most fun things you can do with a pistol.

posted by Caleb on May 27

Had a great time at the Bowling Pin shoot this weekend at Marion County Fish & Game Association, as usual the match was a lot of fun. One of the highlights was the guy who brought his .445 SuperMag and shot a round with it - my buddy Greg was standing at the point next to him when he set it off, and was not expecting the “flash and thunder” that came out of that gun.

A couple of cool pictures before the video stuff - first is this picture of a broom handle that apparently caught a ricochet from one of the pins. We use this broom to sweep pin debris off the table - the odds of it catching a ricochet perfectly in the center like that are pretty long. As usual, click all pics to embiggenate.

It’s a perfect shot - I must confess, I’ve never seen anything like that before. Right through the center of the broom.

The next picture is kind of cool as well - it’s another one-in-a-million photo. I only wish that I’d had a camera other than my camera phone, but it worked out okay in the end.

The reason why I like this picture is that it’s one of those cool “gun pictures” that you see from time to time. If you look closely, you can see that I’ve got brass in the air from my P22, but all five pins are standing up. I shot this run clean, so that means that the bullet is somewhere in the air in between the muzzle of the gun and the first pin on the left. Kind of neat if you ask me.

But anyway, on to the video. First up is my buddy and reader Greg shooting his Beretta 92 - he had a pretty good day actually.

Next video is actually two videos, I ran the two clips of Greg running his Remington .22LR rifle in the pinheads match. Our club does the .22 LR match the following way, if you’re shooting a pistol with iron sights you have five pins, a pistol with an optic gets 6 pins, a rifle with iron sights gets 6 pins, and a rifle with an optic gets 7 pins - which is why Greg has so many pins to knock down. In the second part of the video where Greg’s gun starts jamming, the laughter you hear is coming from the R.O. - Greg still won that heat as the other guy’s gun jammed as well.

The last video is me shooting the .22LR match with my P22. This is the short barreled P22, not exactly what I would call an “ideal” pin gun, as at 25 feet the front sight was the same size as the pin head. However, I’ve shot this gun a lot, literally thousands of rounds, so I ended up doing much better than I had any business doing - I made it to the final stage and only lost the championship match by a hair. This video is the semi-final round of the pin-head match.

As usual, I had a blast-and-a-half shooting the pin match. The guys at MCF&G ran a safe, fun match. I’m starting to slowly get the hang of this “bowling pin” thing - I was hitting the targets cleanly with my 9mm, but not necessarily clearing them off the table until one of the RO’s told me to hit ‘em just a little higher. Sure enough, I adjusted my point of aim up a hair and the pins started moving off the table. Next time, I’m going to switch to a 147 grain bullet for the 9mm and see if I can’t get those pins off the table with a bit more alacrity.

posted by Caleb on May 23

At Marion County Fish & Game Association.

MCFG allows for a “minor” category on pin shoots, which is usually shot w/9mms and .38s, where the pins are placed a foot closer to the back edge of the table than they would be if you were shooting a “real gun”. My plan for tomorrow is to shoot minor, mostly because I need to practice reloads with my carry and home defense guns, both of which are Beretta 92 style guns. I say “style” because one is a Taurus Pt-92, and the other is an actual Beretta 92. That and I’m a little short on .45 ACP ammo.

My quandary, dear reader is what bullet to use. I have at my hands the choice between 115 grain, 124 grain, and 147 grain 9mm rounds. The kinetic energy figures for each round is as follows:

115 gr FMJ: 1150 FPS at the muzzle, for about 330 foot lbs of energy.

124 gr FMJ: 1130(ish) FPS at the muzzle, for about 350 foot lbs of energy.

147 gr FMJ: 1000(ish) FPS at the muzzle, for about 325 foot lbs.

Update: Curse you, typo.

Based on those numbers, it seems like my best bet would probably be the 124 grain rounds which are super accurate (for whatever reason) from my Pt-92. Plus, I’ve got 5 mags for that gun, so I figure if I miss I’ll just shoot a lot of rounds really fast and hope that I can keep up by volume of fire.

Shooting pins with a 9mm is tricky, even with the extra foot of distance they spot you versus the bigger guns, you have to hit it just right to get a knock down. Since the bullet is lighter and faster, your margin for error with a 9mm is a lot smaller than it would be with say, a .45 Colt or a .44 Special.

I’ll have a report up on Monday, complete with horrible amateur cell-phone video.