January 15, 2011
Marwencol Showtimes At The Uptown
Sighting In: Field Animations
This is what we would call a learning experience. It’s also what we’d call a hell of a fun day out in the bush. I have said this before, but I never get tired of finding open space out in the country. It’s always fun to go out and try out some new gear. I brought my buddy Dan, who looks more accustomed to a battle axe than a tactical shotgun. But if it gets him out of the basement and away from dice, then it’s definitely a more than worthwhile experience.
We hiked for only 4.6 kilometers before setting up the range. The Eberlestock backpack was phenomenal. I carried the shotgun with me out, and the SKS on the way back and both times I could barely feel the weight of the gun. It was astonishing. There were several marshy areas we had to hop, skitter, and jump across, and every time I was able to keep balance just fine. Dan, who was stuck with the other gun slung over his shoulder often had to hand off parts of his gear to me in order to have his hands free and make it across the various brooks and creeks we encountered. When we had identified a site to shoot from and a suitable range the gun came out smoothly hand over hand.
The badlands case on the other hand was a different problem. While my initial idea of having one handed opening to access the monocular was correct, stowing and closing the pocket proved to be more difficult. In fact, it proved to be next to impossible. I may have attracted a wounded crane looking to mate with my flapping around self trying to reach across my ribs to store things.
When we stopped I wound up removing it, using the quick snaps, and re-mounting it on the chest strap of my backpack. This fixed the access problem but was a little more bulky.
The other problem came from sighting in. Let me be clear: when trying to adjust any sort of scope, having the right tools helps. All torque wrenches are not made equal, and the ones that adjust the Vortex strikefire sight are not the same as those that adjust the Barska red-dot. The second problem is how you mount your scopes. Somewhere along the line, I wound up with an extra high mount designed for a flat-top AR-15. That puts the scope tube a fair distance away from the SKS barrel, and I’m thinking the low profile hunting mount would be a worthwhile purchase. We spent a full hour toying with scopes, trying to figure out if we were high or low at particular ranges, before jumping back to the iron sights just so we could happily shoot something.
I’ve discovered what thousands of close range shooters already know: open sights offer better visibility and target acquisition than most scopes. Things are just more fluid when you don’t have to deal with glass or elevation. You can just dial in your adjustable iron sights and shoot.
Having a spotting scope would have also helped. The 7.62X39 SKS makes very small holes, meaning at 100 yards we often weren’t even sure if we’d hit the damn thing. You’d have to stop, walk out there and jump across a small creek before you could see what sort of results you got. I was pleased to learn that my Bates Boots are still waterproof.
We did some fun stuff too. Move from point A to B without being seen, then shoot and explode these abandoned beer bottles. Or fire from standing, crouching and prone in a brief period. But I rigged up my camera to take a full-auto stream of images during one of our runs, and this is what it produced. It’s a little embarrassing to see just how geeky I look doing these things, but damned if it wasn’t a shit-ton of fun anyway.
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To contact the author of this post: edward.osborne@wildgunmen.com
Having grown up in the sticks, I can say there are probably only 3 available activities that will entertain teenage boys in the countryside
Offroad vehicles
Guns
Crystal Meth
Which one do you think is safest?
You forgot the most important one: teenage girls
most dangerous one
Because teenage girls in the countryside have fathers, and the fathers have all three:
Offroad vehicles
Guns
Crystal Meth
These kids look a little young/unqualified to be doing this sort of activity for amusement. :S
Young? They’re teenagers. I got my first .22 at 9.
Yes, but when did you get your first shotgun and assault rifle?
Dude, did you seriously just call an SKS an assault rifle?
Hey now, it’s a rifle and it fires an intermediate cartridge. That’s, like, part of the definition of an assault rifle….
President, it is not a rifle.
It does, however, fire an intermediate catridge, so it does match like 1 part of the definition.
Edit: Figured I’d clarify the “not a rifle” comment.
SKS is an acronym for Samozaryadniy Karabin sistemi Simonova (Russian: Самозарядный карабин системы Симонова), 1945 (Self-loading Carbine, Simonov’s system, 1945), or SKS 45.
Carbines are rifles.
A rifle is a firearm designed to be fired from the shoulder, with a barrel that has a helical groove or pattern of grooves (“rifling”) cut into the barrel walls.
Per Wikipedia. Of course, this means that a handgun with a shoulder stock attachment is a rifle, which I don’t like.
Then a shotgun with rifling is also a rifle.
Edit: That’s one of the worst definitions I’ve ever seen wikipedia give. We should change that.
I can’t come up with a definition of “rifle” that excludes carbines and rifled slug guns, other than using arbitrary barrel length and bore diameter restrictions.
How’s about you and me just know what a rifle, a carbine, and a shotgun are, and we let the noobs use wikipedia.
Except carbines are a subset of rifles, brah!
They be littler though, broseph.
My Toyota pickup is littler than a Ford F350 but they’re both trucks, brodinski!
Yeah, but you wouldn’t compare your toyota pickup with a Mac truck, would you, Bro-the-plumber?
Nope, the Mack truck isn’t a light truck and my ‘yota is, Mighty Bro Young.
Like, all Alaskans are human, but not all humans are Alaskan, something like that. You don’t go “I’m not human, I’m Alaskan!”
ALRIGHT, FINE, YOU WIN, BUT ALASKANS AREN’T ALL HUMANS! MY DOG IS A DOG, BUT SHE’S ALASKAN, TOO!
Edit: Bro-boat.
Damn, I suck at examples, brobot.
But you’re a gentleman, and that’s what counts, bro-that-tells-stories-that-are-relatively-cool.
That reminds me of this one time, my girlfriend had this bra. It had a starry pattern on it. She left it in the bathroom to dry overnight, and the furnace didn’t kick on. So when she got up and put it on, it was slightly cool.
Good re-cap, friend.
Shotgun at 12. A Topper 20 gauge.
I don’t own an assault rifle. I shot my first deer at 13 with a borrowed .25-06 rifle.
I shot my first deer at 9, had my first rifle at 8.
Lol assault rifle, can we stop using stupid words like “assault” its all about what your currently using it for that defines it.
‘Assault rifle’ is a legitimate designation. ‘Assault weapon’ is the one that’s stupid.
SKS isn’t select fire, hence it’s JAFR.
Thanks. I have no idea what the definition of assault rifle is. My post above indicates that I think an SKS is an assault rifle. God, I’m such a noob.
Although I’m sure you knew what an assault rifle is, others who may be reading this thread may not. That’s the only reason I chimed in.
I usually trade out the internal mag for a removable 20 rounder from Tapco when I take my SKS out, but other than that since it seems like they had a good time and no one was hurt I don’t think there’s anything I can take issue with.
I used to be pretty anti-gun, I gotta say. Just the idea of more bullets being in the air when they didn’t have to be, and the fact that I was also held up once by a guy I could have taken on if he hadn’t been armed, made me pretty biased. But after having “gun-nerd” friends, and what with current events being how they are, I see a real need now for people to be truly educated in firearm safety, and the younger the better. I think that would reduce the need that some folks in power see to have unreasonably strict gun control laws.
At least you can see some basic logic and apply common sense when it comes to guns unlike certain people.
Well I mean, guns are tools. Though their purpose can be a little grizzly, I think it’s important that there be experts on these tools who are not all police and military. You’d think it would be basic logic.
Firsts: bb gun – 5 shotgun – 7 rifle – 12 pistol – 18 assault rifle – never but I did buy my first AR15 this year in my late 30’s
My son got his at 9, depending on your definition of “assault rifle”. I’m going under the current popular definition of “black and scary looking.”
Okay assault rifle is:
Intermediate cartridge
Fed from a removable box magazine
And Select fire.
An sks is no more an assault rifle then a bolt action rifle which has a detachable magazine.
Although i gotta say, lose the tapco stock man! use the rifle in it’s military dress it is far more tactical that way. Oh and overall what is your impression of the fabarm? Im normally the remington 870 kinda guy.
This kid owns a Fabarm tactical shotgun and an SKS. I’m going to go out on a limb here and guess that he also often wears a trench coat and was picked on in high school.
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