Category: Gun/Ammo Tests

I was having a transatlantic chat with Mr. Free Market the other day, and he was telling me about his latest deer cull on Lord Someone’s estate up in Scotland — an annual event, you may recall, which includes the company of Doc Russia and Combat Controller in the slaughter.  Here are two of their implements of Mass Deer Destruction:

(L-R:  Tikka 3x in .270 Win, Remington 40x in .300 Win Mag)

Here’s Mr. FM, with his usual implement, a Blaser something-or-other):

I’m now too old to participate in such merriment — the cost, weather and terrain pretty much rule it out for me —  but that doesn’t mean I don’t feel a little tug when I see pics like the above.

However — and this will come as a huge shock to Longtime Readers — even had I been up to a visit Over There… I wouldn’t have had a proper “reach out and touch” rifle.  I know, I know;  Kim The Ultimate Mauser Guy without a decent hunting (or sniper-, take your pic) rifle?  Say it ain’t so!

Actually, I do have a rifle capable of such an activity:  it’s the last of The Late Lamented Layabout Sailor’s guns, which I have absolutely been unable to sell, a T/C Compass in 6.5mm Creedmoor (which the Widow Irish said I should hold onto until such time as, because she doesn’t want it around in her house).  Here it is:

…and, in the lovely words of the same Mr. FM, it’s uglier than a bucketful of burst arseholes.

Nevertheless, beggars can’t be choosers, and all it needed was a halfway-decent scope, and I happened to have a spare Burris Fullfield 2-8x35mm lying around, so…

…I mounted it on the Compass on Monday evening, and took it off to Texas Legends yesterday.

(That’s a Noveski KX3 flash hider / noisemaker, not a suppressor… but soon, baby.)

I didn’t bother to boresight the thing, just screwed it in place and trusted to luck or whatever that I’d actually hit the target.  En route, I remembered just in time that I didn’t have any 6.5 Creed ammo, so I swung by Cabela’s and grabbed a box of Remington Green Box 140gr because it was the cheapest.

“So, Kim… how did it shoot?”

Cold barrel, no sight adjustment, first time ever on the trigger, 5-round string at 50 yards:

…the orange dot being the point of aim.

Wow.

Okay, here’s what I didn’t like about the Compass (other than its looks, i.e. that ‘orrible plastic stock):  the magazine.  It’s a rotary thing which holds five rounds (5+1 in common parlance), and it’s a cast-iron bitch to load (certainly at first try, anyway).  T/C no longer make the thing, which doesn’t surprise me, but there are aftermarket options available.  My major gripe is that it’s impossible to reload the magazine through the mag well (and I tried, trust me on this).  You have to take the thing out of the rifle to reload it.  On balance, though, it’s not a big deal.

What did I love about the Compass?  The trigger, which has been pulled maybe a dozen or so times, was excellent — as good as any Mauser trigger under the same circumstances.  Takeup is smooth and regular, no grittiness, and the sear release is consistent and smooth as silk.  The action is likewise lovely, the bolt works smoothly and without issue.  And everything else about the rifle is excellent.

So… am I going to keep it?

Yes.  As soon as the funds are available, I’ll be paying the Widow Irish for the rifle.  And I’ll be tossing the box away this afternoon.

Here’s the thing:  given how many times I’m likely to use it — it’s a backup rifle at best —  the T/C Compass is a good, serviceable rifle, every bit as good as the budget-line Mossberg Patriot and far better than the Savage Axis.  The chambering is okay — I know, I’d probably prefer it in .243 Win, .270 Win or even 6.5x55mm Swede — but as the 6.5 Creed is the latest thing for all the cool kids to shoot, it’s available pretty much everywhere.

As for the ammo:  were I at all interested in tightening up the group, there are any number of the Usual Suspects to call on:  Remington Premier Match, Fiocchi Hyperformance, Federal Gold Match, whatever.  As it is, however, I’ll probably just stick with the Green Box;  I’ve dropped many a game animal with this brand, and I’m confident that their Core-Lokt 140gr pointed soft point (PSP) bullets will take care of pretty much anything I need them to.  And at about $1.20 per pull, it’s about the same as even the budget Prvi Partizan offerings.

At a later stage, I’ll bring the group down to land about an inch over the 50-yard aim point, but sufficient unto the day etc. etc.  In the meantime, National Ammo Day is approaching, which is when I’ll likely get the half-dozen or so boxes that will keep me going pretty much for the rest of my life.

Good times, good times.

Tomorrow I’ll talk about the second part of the range session.

Following on from Saturday’s post about my revolver range session, I went off to the local Merchants Of Death Collective (Mesquite Gun Show) to see if I could rectify two problems identified at that session:  getting some decent (fuller) wooden grips for the Model 10, and replenishing my depleted .38 Special ammo supply.  I thought that the first might be difficult, the second easy.  Au contraire, mes amis.

The grips took me about 15 minutes to find (among about 700 tables):

Old:

New:

Much better, innit?  Can’t wait to get back to the range now, except that I don’t have any cheap ammo to shoot.  So I looked around for ammo vendors.

And here’s where the problems began.

Five big ammo dealers were at the show, so one would think…. but no.  If you were looking for 5.56 Poodleshooter or 7.62 Commie, you’d have had no problem.  Good grief:  it looked like the Army was having a clearance sale.  Ditto 9mm Europellet and all manner of similar teeny handgun ammo (e.g. .380, .327 etc.) were proudly displayed in bulk.

.38 Special?  Hardly any.  (And what was there wasn’t what I was looking for anyway.)  As I mentioned, I have plenty of defensive loads in .38 Spec and .38 +P — the goblin antidote — but I’m out of range ammo.  What I’m looking for, in fact, is something like this:

The cowboy stuff is what’s known as a “bunny-fart” load, and it’s both inexpensive (~ 45c/round) and pleasant to shoot because of the lighter bullets.  (Yeah, it’s lead flat nose and not copper-clad, but I clean my guns quite frequently so not a problem.)  The Winchester is ubiquitous, and a little cheaper.

And both are readily available online, except that shipping (for only 200 rounds) adds about $50 to the total, making it… [errr carry the three]  82c/round (?????!!!!).  The hell with that.

SGA Ammo sells the Winchester for a decent price, but you have to buy the jillion-round box to get free shipping.  Philosophically, I don’t have a problem with a bulk purchase (because duh), but financially… ugh.

Let’s see what they sell for locally.

One final note:  it seems as though revolvers are heading for a shrinking market (that would be Olde Pharttes like me)

…because all the new shooters seem to be enthralled by the gangsta/operator Glocks and SIGs and what have you, and not by wheelguns.  And so once-ubiquitous calibers like .45 Colt and .38 Spec are, it seems, being pushed to the sidelines and rapidly becoming unavailable.  Which means that we members of the Ancient Revolver Shooting Club need to buy MOAR .38 Spec.

Duly noted.

Yesterday, I decided that my range time was going to be of the “no fiddling, no hassles” sort — i.e. no adjusting sights, fiddling with scopes, etc., and definitely no malfunctions of the misfeed / bad ejection genre.

You know what that means, right?

Yup… that would be S&W Time, and only .357 Mag and .38 Special ammo needed for the trip, thank you.

And yes, I had an awful lot of fun and yes, it turned out to be a very long session.  In fact, I had so much fun that I actually blew through every last round of my .38 Special practice ammo — I mean, there’s none left in Ye Olde Ammoe Locquere at all.  (Ten guesses where I’ll be over the weekend…)

(I know, it’s not as cheap as buying online but then again, there aren’t any horrible $$$$hipping charges either.  And I need a couple of odds and sods of a gunny nature anyway, so…)

Things learned while having fun:

1) I need to put some beefier grips on the little Model 10.  When I tried some one-handed single-action drills, I damn nearly dropped the gun it turned so much in my hand.  I’m looking for something in wood, like these:

2) I’m done shooting .357 Mag out of a 4″ barrel.  Maybe it’s age, or maybe I’m just sick of being beaten up by a damn boolet, or both.  So all the .357 Mag ammo has been banished to the back of the Locquere until I get a lever rifle thus chambered, or else a revolver with a 6″ or even 8″ barrel.  Even the bedside gun (the shiny one) has been loaded with .38+P.

3) I really need to practice more with my revolvers.  I’ve been spending so much time with rifles recently that I felt like a frigging amateur when at last I put a revolver in my hand:  don’t even ask me how badly I shot the double-action drills.  In fact, I ended up shooting more accurately and more consistently towards the end of the session, when I did the single-hand (left- and right) drills — because by then I’d re-familiarized myself with the trigger pulls of each gun.  I was embarrassed b my performance;  in fact, as I told Mr. Free Market, my target looked like somebody had been having blunderbuss practice.

So:  gun show over the weekend, followed by MOAR RANGE TIME next week.

It could be worse;  I could be living in Southern California or New York.

Last week’s test of the above rifle made me want to test how the thing shoots with serious glass (instead of the “meh, that’s close enough”  accuracy of the red-dot genre).

So suiting the action to the word, I mounted a Burris Fullfield 2.5-10x42m that just happened to be lying around in Ye Olde Odds & Sods box:

Looks better, dunnit?  Also, this time I’d brought a sandbag along, instead of having to rely on my shaky old grip off the bench.  Ammo used was CCI Mini-Mag 40gr solids, and CCI Maxi-Mag 40gr solids.

Anyway, for the life of me I could not remember when last the scope had been mounted, or even what gun it had been mounted on, so I started off slowly, at 30 feet with the .22 LR:

Okay, good enough for jazz / government work.  When I moved the target out to 60 feet and then 75 feet, the shots went quite high, as to be expected.  So I moved the target back to 60 feet, dialed the scope down, and fired off the unlabeled string in the orange target on the left.  (Yeah, I forgot to label it, sue me.)

So much for the .22 LR;  now came time for the barrel swap and the .22 WMR.

The top string, at 75 feet, was fired with the scope untouched from the .22 LR sighting-in.  High (expected) and much to the left (unexpected).  The next string, at 60 feet:  still high (okay) but a lot less to the left (not okay).  When I brought the target back to 30 feet, the group was a little high (to be expected, with the mag load) and still to the left.

So I said a few Bad Words, and decided to zero the scope for 60 feet as the default (which is the very bottom grouping).  Very much good enough for jazz / government work.

But when I left the scope untouched and changed the barrel back to .22 LR, at the same distance (60 feet) I got the un-labeled grouping on the left (with a called flyer because the guy in the bay next to mine chose that precise second to touch off a .44 Mag revolver, and I caught a fright).

Still, there seems to be way too much left/right variance between the two calibers — which means that I can’t swap barrels in the same session without messing with the scope each time.  And that’s somewhat annoying.

So here’s what I’ve decided to do.  If I’m going to be shooting .22 LR, I’ll use this setup:

…and if I’m going to be shooting the .22 Mag, then the scope:

Swapping the scopes — they both have quick-detach (QD) mounts — actually takes less time than changing the barrels.

So I’ll be using the red-dot for plinking .22 LR fun, and the scope for any serious .22 Mag shooting I may want to do.

Final thoughts:  while shooting the .22 Mag ammo, I had several ejection failures (FTE) and a couple of feeding failures (FTF).  As I was too busy doing the sighting-in thing, I didn’t pay much attention to it until afterwards.  Here’s what I learned:  even though the straight-pull bolt looks quite flimsy (plastic, what can I say?), it really isn’t, and the thing needs to be pulled back and slammed home with as much force as a turnbolt action.  I was actually being quite gentle with the loading process, and I shouldn’t be.  That will be addressed in future range sessions.

Next step:  acquire a suppressor.  More on that, later.

As Regular Readers know, I recently decided to do something about my .22 LR / .22 Mag situation, and sold my two Marlin rifles to a Reader so that I could free up space in both wallet and Ye Olde Gunne Sayffe for their replacement.

The old guys:

Their replacement:

…or, as kitted out by Yours Truly:

So last week I took it out to the range and got used to it, working the trigger, adjusting the red-dot scope, changing barrels and so on.

Everything about this rifle works as advertised.  The trigger is fine — a little stiff, but I’m guessing that a few bricks or so of .22 ammo should take care of that — and the straight-pull bolt is excellent, both positive and reliable.  (There was not a single issue with ejecting empties and chambering fresh ones, as expected from a rifle of this heritage.)  The B1 uses Ruger 10/22 mags, but:  please note that because the mag well is longer than a standard 10/22 rifle, you have to use a mag extender (supplied with the rifle) clipped onto the rear of the mags.  (Of course, the .22 WMR magazine doesn’t need the extender piece.)  This is a bit of a PITA only in that one needs to buy more of the extender clip thingies from Walther if there’s lots of shooting to be done without wasting time reloading mags, which is my preference.  It’s a minor hassle, but definitely not a deal-breaker if one should consider purchasing this gun.  (And one should, see below.)
I also like the ability to lengthen / shorten the stock according to preference:  one little button in the rear of the stock, and that’s all there is.

“How does the thing shoot, Kim?”

Well, I’d forgotten to bring my sandbag along, so I just shot off the bench, not expecting too much in the way of accuracy.  Ammo used was CCI Mini-Mag 40gr solid (my regular test ammo)

…and some Remington .22 WMR that was on sale at Bass Pro the other day:

Once I’d got the scope dialed in, I got the following, first at thirty feet:

…and then further out, at fifty:

I don’t actually know what happened with the .22 LR string — my eyes were getting tired, maybe, and that red-dot thingy was getting quite fuzzy.  Maybe I was getting tired of holding the rifle steady — it’s quite a hefty beast — causing the shakes?  Or maybe I just need MOAR PRACTICE.

Which leads me to my next point of consideration:

Am I going to use this lovely rifle for plinking, or just for serious target shooting?  (I know, it’s not an either/or situation, but bear with me.)

Perhaps, given that I may be shooting the Walther more seriously, as I did my two Marlin squirrel guns, perhaps a scope would be a better option?

Let’s see.  But whatever I decide about the sights, let me just say that this is a serious bit of kit, and it goes well recommended.  In my humble opinion, it would keep up with just about any rimfire rifle in a serious competition, for far less money.

Here are the specs for the gun: