At any rate, he was pretty stoked when I unveiled it so with the family home and lazing for spring break this week, we gathered up some friends and some .45s and .22s and hit the range today.It was a beautiful 75 deg. day and everyone shot well, even the kid who'd never held a pistol before! His dad is an Annapolis grad, Marine pilot buddy of mine so I figured he could handle DI duty with his boy while I worked with my boys and wife. My son had his new 1911 he was chomping at the bit to shoot and my wife had yet to air out the "Lavender Lady" .38 snub I got her for Christmas.
I brought a Ruger Mark III Target and a GSG 1911 in .22LR to get us all warmed up a bit (and for initial instruction for my buddy's boy). The GSG was a hit with the boys, what's not to like? It looks great, feels great, shoots acceptably well, but really has the cool factor the boys dig. The rest of us really liked the Mark III Target model because we could hit everything we wanted with it! Man I can shoot that thing. Any dirt clod within 50 yards is DOA.
We had the range to ourselves and there were some great targets back on the berm at about 60 yards that we really whittled down. The boys and loved it.When we swapped to close in targets to start with the center fire stuff my wife got off to a rough start with the .38 snub at 15 yards (a bit far for a belly gun perhaps, but the hallway leading down to our master is the range I have in mind for her to shoot well), but soon she was ventilating that bad guy every time. Even rapid fire. Her other .38 is a stainless steel gun and it's heavier and much easier to control than this aluminum air weight so it took some getting used to. Even I had to admit that with +Ps in it the thing barked like a dog and really rolled back in the palm. Coulda been worse I guess, coulda been a .357! We're not huge recoil fans however so this baby is about at our limit of tolerance.
My son was next up with the Range Officer and at 15 yards he emptied the first magazine into a ragged hole. Man was I proud! Yes, it's only 15 yards but the boy has never fired a .45 before and I was worried that by the fifth or sixth round he'd start to flinch and it'd be all over. Nope! He took his coaching to heart and hunkered down and just kept on squeeeeezing the trigger, putting 230gr slugs one after another through the same hole. Hooah!
And let me say that U.S. made Range Officer is a FINE pistol. I shopped everything in the store against it and even with a new Colt Stainless Gold Cup and a new Series 70 Govt. Model to consider it came up the winner in my book with a much better trigger than either, much better sights than the Govt. Model (the Gold Cup and the Springfield use the same rear sight), better grips, and hundreds fewer semolians out the door.
Well heck! The dirt clods were mocking us! So I made sure everyone had ammo, encouraged frequent gun swaps, and we just started blasting. It was a BALL. I'd brought my Stainless Vaquero in .45 ACP and despite it not being regulated very well I was buggering some dirt clods at 60 yards with it as well and did in fact kill some of those blasted things. They had it coming! I think I'm going to have to send it off to Hamilton Bowen or some gun magician to have an adjustable sight put on it. I like it too much to move it down the road but sheesh, a guy wants a gun that send pills where the sights are pointed! Some day...
I didn't want to wear out the boys or my wife so when I saw them flagging I called it (got to keep it fun, don't want to ruin it for 'em) and we all went for ice cream. 'Twas a fine day!
Some eye candy:
Oly the clod buster
The family that plays together, stays together.