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The 2021-20xx PA [Gun] Thread
SummaryJudgment
Grab the hottest iron you can find, stride in the Tower’s front doorRegistered User regular
Grab the hottest iron you can find, stride in the Tower’s front doorRegistered User regular
Well, we made it just a few months shy of five years before we capped out the previous thread, and the one before that took six and change.
This thread is for discussing firearms. It's welcome to sport shooters, collectors, hunters, and home defenders alike, from the USA and abroad.
This thread is not for judging someone for owning a gun, debating the US Second Amendment, or telling someone they've bought the wrong gun and they shoot poorly. Also to be clear this is NOT a gun control thread, either. We've got a coming SCOTUS decision on that and that might properly belong in the SCOTUS thread.
Feel free to post pics of your firearms, YouTube videos of good reviews, targets at the range, etc.
The Four Rules of Gun Safety:
(I like to remember these in the order one needs to consider them.)
1. Treat every gun as if it is loaded. Any gun you pick up, you should confirm the safety is on, drop the magazine (if it has a removable magazine), and then open and cycle the action by hand to ensure nothing is loaded in the chamber itself. If someone if handing you a gun / you are handing someone a gun, you should be performing those functions in their view before you hand it over.
2. Never let the muzzle of the gun cover anything you are not willing to destroy. Known as "flagging" someone with a gun, this is very bad form and tends to scare the hell out of people, loaded or unloaded. If you're at a range, this means keeping the gun barrel downrange and obeying commands from the Range Safety Officer about when it's appropriate to cross the firing line to post and checking targets. If you're hunting you need to be cognizant of other hunters in your party - I recently did Hunter's Safety and the in-class demo had a huge component devoted to walking with prop guns and realizing that you should not be holding your gun with the barrel to the side when walking line abreast, or with the barrel over your shoulder when walking line astern. Most firearm injuries when hunting, as it turns out, are bad handoffs when crossing a stream or a fence. You should hand the firearm to your partner, cross, and then receive it back and vice versa.
3. Keep your finger off of the trigger until the moment you are ready to shoot. Any manual safeties should be activated, and deactivated only when you are ready to shoot. Your finger should be out of the trigger guard, too, not hovering in front of the trigger. If you decide not to shoot, re-safe immediately.
4. Be sure of your target and what is beyond it. You must be firing at an appropriate backstop at a range. When hunting, many states have limited use of certain cartridges due to over-travel, sometimes graded into zones by population density, and hunting land frequently has a x-degree safety angle setoff to disallow shots near structures. If you're carrying for defense, you absolutely need to be concerned about overpenetration or missed shots.
Organichu made an excellent OP in the thread before last if you're seeking general info about types of guns - handguns, rifles, shotguns - and how ammunition works (tl;dr - hammer, striker, or firing pin hits a primer, primer explodes and ignites gunpowder, gunpowder burns (and does not explode!) and propels the bullet out of the barrel), so rather than reinvent that wheel I'm going to link to his: https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/129950/guns-fire-everything/p1
Personally, I bought my first rifle - a Savage Axis II bolt-action in .223 Remington - in 2014, and spent a couple years target shooting with that at my local DNR outdoor range. I can highly recommend them as a good beginner's rifle (and a good rifle generally). Savage did an excellent job on all of the working components and saved money on the furniture, they're a good candidate for a new stock or bedding into a chassis. .223 was also relatively inexpensive at the time, flat shooting, and low recoiling. If I was any further out into the country this would be a coyote gun.
I inherited a Remington 11-87 semiautomatic shotgun with a rifled barrel, which was my grandfather's deer gun (Michigan had a shotgun-only zone, which is now a "straight-walled cartridge" zone). You need to run saboted slugs through these, as opposed to the rifled or "Foster" slugs which have rifling cut into them for smoothbore shotguns. I went and got Hunters' Safety certified this year, coming to it late in life after some family passed away and I missed the opportunity to apprentice. Class was kind of funny as a 30-something guy and a classroom full of 16 year olds - and I'm hoping to hunt a local parcel of Hunter Access Program land that a farmer leases to the Michigan DNR for hunters. With any luck I'll be stocking a freezer for the winter. Ironically, as I'm typing this I'm watching maybe 4-5 deer cross my (Midwestern urban-ish) street right now - deer population are way up due to rain and due to car accidents falling from WFH covid policies.
I've also been gifted a Remington Speedmaster .22 from the 70's, nice gloss blueing and walnut furniture on that as well. It's fun for plinking and I might shoot an Appleseed event with it sometime.
I bought a Palmetto State Armory AK-pattern rifle after that. I wanted to own a modern autoloading rifle, I like the round's ballistics and it's cheap to train with, and I was curious about an AK being manufactured in the USA (they did a great job after initial hiccups, but purists hate it, apparently). It came with Magpul polymer furniture and I've installed a Primary Arms 1-6x40mm scope by way of a picatinny rail platform using the side scope mount. It's also got a JP Industries muzzle brake attached (the AK uses a really, really nice hand-threaded system with a spring loaded pin, versus AR-15 installation). I'm hoping to run 3-gun Competition with this next year. The recent prohibition on Russian made ammo spiked prices for a moment, but Polish and other EU manufacture has filled the gap and it's back down to about $0.30/round.
Most recently I picked up a Mossberg Maverick 88 pump-action shotgun. At $250, I can't say enough good things about it. I wanted a Mossberg 590, but they're twice or more the price, and aside from the finish (some kind of resistant matte finish instead of a gloss blue) and a few parts made of metal instead of nylon and the ghost ring sights instead of a bead, it's the same gun. I got to practice spraypainting a gun and I'm really happy with how it turned out. In spite of semiautos being popular I think I'm going to use this for 3-gun as well, since I don't want to hack up grandpa's shotgun.
I don't currently own any handguns - I didn't have a safe until recently, so I might revisit that - but I rent frequently from a local range, and I can endorse that as a great way to figure out what handguns work for you, which seems to be a lot more idiosyncratic than long guns. I can shoot a Smith and Wesson Shield very well, but a Sig P365 is a fight, inspite of them being nearly identically-sized micro-compact 9mms. I had put off getting my CPL since I don't intend to carry in public but I think I'm going to go with my dad next month. A ton of private sales rely on a CPL as a background check.
Finally, lock your stuff up. I got this last year from Costco for around $550ish delivered and installed, and it's just so nice to have everything in one place and out of mind. IIRC every new gun now is sold with a cable lock, and DNR will give them out for free if you ask.
Maybe the last thing I'll mention is the Pittman-Robertson Federal Aid act. I learned about this when attending a National Wild Turkey Federation (iirc?) / Michigan DNR class on clays shooting, and it didn't really click until I heard it mentioned - repeatedly - on Steven Rinella's MeatEater podcast (which you should go check out, since it's great and sounds a lot more like a dozen rotating friends bullshitting then the usual stilted podcast fare, if you see it like me). Pittman-Robertson was a New Deal-era piece of legislation that created an excise tax on guns and ammunition (which has since been expanded to include handguns and hunting equipment and apparel) to create a pot of Federal matching dollars for state DNR organizations, and states are only eligible for these Federal funds if they do not divest their DNR organizations hoping to recoup using PR funds. From Wiki:
P-R funded projects frequently include non-hunting or shooting outdoors improvements (to the chagrin of some hunters, unfortunately) and it's kind of nice to know that even my AK and handgun ammo are kicking into that pot, which provides about 60% of funding for state DNRs, per NPR https://www.npr.org/2018/03/20/593001800/decline-in-hunters-threatens-how-u-s-pays-for-conservation.
This thread is for discussing firearms. It's welcome to sport shooters, collectors, hunters, and home defenders alike, from the USA and abroad.
This thread is not for judging someone for owning a gun, debating the US Second Amendment, or telling someone they've bought the wrong gun and they shoot poorly. Also to be clear this is NOT a gun control thread, either. We've got a coming SCOTUS decision on that and that might properly belong in the SCOTUS thread.
Feel free to post pics of your firearms, YouTube videos of good reviews, targets at the range, etc.
The Four Rules of Gun Safety:
(I like to remember these in the order one needs to consider them.)
1. Treat every gun as if it is loaded. Any gun you pick up, you should confirm the safety is on, drop the magazine (if it has a removable magazine), and then open and cycle the action by hand to ensure nothing is loaded in the chamber itself. If someone if handing you a gun / you are handing someone a gun, you should be performing those functions in their view before you hand it over.
2. Never let the muzzle of the gun cover anything you are not willing to destroy. Known as "flagging" someone with a gun, this is very bad form and tends to scare the hell out of people, loaded or unloaded. If you're at a range, this means keeping the gun barrel downrange and obeying commands from the Range Safety Officer about when it's appropriate to cross the firing line to post and checking targets. If you're hunting you need to be cognizant of other hunters in your party - I recently did Hunter's Safety and the in-class demo had a huge component devoted to walking with prop guns and realizing that you should not be holding your gun with the barrel to the side when walking line abreast, or with the barrel over your shoulder when walking line astern. Most firearm injuries when hunting, as it turns out, are bad handoffs when crossing a stream or a fence. You should hand the firearm to your partner, cross, and then receive it back and vice versa.
3. Keep your finger off of the trigger until the moment you are ready to shoot. Any manual safeties should be activated, and deactivated only when you are ready to shoot. Your finger should be out of the trigger guard, too, not hovering in front of the trigger. If you decide not to shoot, re-safe immediately.
4. Be sure of your target and what is beyond it. You must be firing at an appropriate backstop at a range. When hunting, many states have limited use of certain cartridges due to over-travel, sometimes graded into zones by population density, and hunting land frequently has a x-degree safety angle setoff to disallow shots near structures. If you're carrying for defense, you absolutely need to be concerned about overpenetration or missed shots.
Organichu made an excellent OP in the thread before last if you're seeking general info about types of guns - handguns, rifles, shotguns - and how ammunition works (tl;dr - hammer, striker, or firing pin hits a primer, primer explodes and ignites gunpowder, gunpowder burns (and does not explode!) and propels the bullet out of the barrel), so rather than reinvent that wheel I'm going to link to his: https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/129950/guns-fire-everything/p1
Personally, I bought my first rifle - a Savage Axis II bolt-action in .223 Remington - in 2014, and spent a couple years target shooting with that at my local DNR outdoor range. I can highly recommend them as a good beginner's rifle (and a good rifle generally). Savage did an excellent job on all of the working components and saved money on the furniture, they're a good candidate for a new stock or bedding into a chassis. .223 was also relatively inexpensive at the time, flat shooting, and low recoiling. If I was any further out into the country this would be a coyote gun.
I inherited a Remington 11-87 semiautomatic shotgun with a rifled barrel, which was my grandfather's deer gun (Michigan had a shotgun-only zone, which is now a "straight-walled cartridge" zone). You need to run saboted slugs through these, as opposed to the rifled or "Foster" slugs which have rifling cut into them for smoothbore shotguns. I went and got Hunters' Safety certified this year, coming to it late in life after some family passed away and I missed the opportunity to apprentice. Class was kind of funny as a 30-something guy and a classroom full of 16 year olds - and I'm hoping to hunt a local parcel of Hunter Access Program land that a farmer leases to the Michigan DNR for hunters. With any luck I'll be stocking a freezer for the winter. Ironically, as I'm typing this I'm watching maybe 4-5 deer cross my (Midwestern urban-ish) street right now - deer population are way up due to rain and due to car accidents falling from WFH covid policies.
I've also been gifted a Remington Speedmaster .22 from the 70's, nice gloss blueing and walnut furniture on that as well. It's fun for plinking and I might shoot an Appleseed event with it sometime.
I bought a Palmetto State Armory AK-pattern rifle after that. I wanted to own a modern autoloading rifle, I like the round's ballistics and it's cheap to train with, and I was curious about an AK being manufactured in the USA (they did a great job after initial hiccups, but purists hate it, apparently). It came with Magpul polymer furniture and I've installed a Primary Arms 1-6x40mm scope by way of a picatinny rail platform using the side scope mount. It's also got a JP Industries muzzle brake attached (the AK uses a really, really nice hand-threaded system with a spring loaded pin, versus AR-15 installation). I'm hoping to run 3-gun Competition with this next year. The recent prohibition on Russian made ammo spiked prices for a moment, but Polish and other EU manufacture has filled the gap and it's back down to about $0.30/round.
Most recently I picked up a Mossberg Maverick 88 pump-action shotgun. At $250, I can't say enough good things about it. I wanted a Mossberg 590, but they're twice or more the price, and aside from the finish (some kind of resistant matte finish instead of a gloss blue) and a few parts made of metal instead of nylon and the ghost ring sights instead of a bead, it's the same gun. I got to practice spraypainting a gun and I'm really happy with how it turned out. In spite of semiautos being popular I think I'm going to use this for 3-gun as well, since I don't want to hack up grandpa's shotgun.
I don't currently own any handguns - I didn't have a safe until recently, so I might revisit that - but I rent frequently from a local range, and I can endorse that as a great way to figure out what handguns work for you, which seems to be a lot more idiosyncratic than long guns. I can shoot a Smith and Wesson Shield very well, but a Sig P365 is a fight, inspite of them being nearly identically-sized micro-compact 9mms. I had put off getting my CPL since I don't intend to carry in public but I think I'm going to go with my dad next month. A ton of private sales rely on a CPL as a background check.
Finally, lock your stuff up. I got this last year from Costco for around $550ish delivered and installed, and it's just so nice to have everything in one place and out of mind. IIRC every new gun now is sold with a cable lock, and DNR will give them out for free if you ask.
Maybe the last thing I'll mention is the Pittman-Robertson Federal Aid act. I learned about this when attending a National Wild Turkey Federation (iirc?) / Michigan DNR class on clays shooting, and it didn't really click until I heard it mentioned - repeatedly - on Steven Rinella's MeatEater podcast (which you should go check out, since it's great and sounds a lot more like a dozen rotating friends bullshitting then the usual stilted podcast fare, if you see it like me). Pittman-Robertson was a New Deal-era piece of legislation that created an excise tax on guns and ammunition (which has since been expanded to include handguns and hunting equipment and apparel) to create a pot of Federal matching dollars for state DNR organizations, and states are only eligible for these Federal funds if they do not divest their DNR organizations hoping to recoup using PR funds. From Wiki:
The Pittman–Robertson Act took over a preexisting 11% excise tax on firearms and ammunition.[7][8] Instead of going into the U.S. Treasury as it had done in the past, the money generated by the tax is instead given to the Secretary of the Interior to distribute to the states.[4][8][9] The Secretary determines how much to give to each state based on a formula that takes into account both the area of the state and its number of licensed hunters.[2][3][6][9][10]
States must fulfill certain requirements to use the money apportioned to them. None of the money from their hunting license sales may be used by anyone other than the states' own fish and game departments.[3][6][8] Plans for what to do with the money must be submitted to and approved by the Secretary of the Interior.[6] Acceptable options include research, surveys, management of wildlife and/or habitat, and acquisition or lease of land.[1][6][10] Once a plan has been approved, the state must pay the full cost and is later reimbursed for up to 75% of that cost through the funds generated by the Pittman–Robertson Act.[1][3][10] The 25% of the cost that the state must pay generally comes from its hunting license sales.[1] If, for whatever reason, any of the federal money does not get spent, after two years that money is then reallocated to the Migratory Bird Conservation Act.[6][9]
In the 1970s, amendments to the act created a 10% tax on handguns and their ammunition and accessories as well as an 11% tax on archery equipment.[1][2][3][8][10] It was also mandated that half of the money from each of the new taxes be used to educate and train hunters by the creation and maintenance of hunter safety classes and shooting/target ranges.[1][2][3][10]
Results
This piece of legislation has provided states with funding for research and projects that would otherwise have been unaffordable.[10] According to a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service web page that was updated in January 2010, over two billion dollars of federal aid has been generated through the program, which in turn means that states have maintained their 25% contributions with over 500 million dollars.[1]
The habitat acquisition and improvement made possible by this money has allowed some species with large ranges, such as American black bears, elk, and cougars, to expand their ranges beyond their normal boundaries prior to the implementation of the act.[1] Important game populations such as white-tailed deer and several species of the avian order Galliformes have also had a chance to recover and expand their populations.
P-R funded projects frequently include non-hunting or shooting outdoors improvements (to the chagrin of some hunters, unfortunately) and it's kind of nice to know that even my AK and handgun ammo are kicking into that pot, which provides about 60% of funding for state DNRs, per NPR https://www.npr.org/2018/03/20/593001800/decline-in-hunters-threatens-how-u-s-pays-for-conservation.
Some days Blue wonders why anyone ever bothered making numbers so small; other days she supposes even infinity needs to start somewhere.
DJ Eebs on
+7
This discussion has been closed.
Posts
You are the perfect person to take over the thread, as Chu's gun ideals have evolved and has have mine, this thread is now yours.
Also your grouping with a pistol is tight. I can't pull that off.
I have two pistols, a sig P365 for carry cause I'm tiny and a glock 23 that was in a roni frame until recently. For some reason I wasn't getting full ejection of spent casings in the frame. I may have not had the pistol fully locked in correctly but whatever, I kinda lost trust in it and I'm over it. No pictures unless someone needs to see my boring pistols and much worse shooting than summs.
Really though, I've been on a tiny bit of an AK variant kick recently. I inherited a PSL and enjoyed shooting it but it's really unforgiving and wanted to change some stuff. As I researched it and the PSLs absolutely nutso trip to the states I learned it's an all original matching SN rifle from '76. You'll have to deal with my awful photography like I do.
So to change all the stuff I wanted to do; KN adjustable piston, new stock and scope. I ended up having to find some surplus stuff like a new bolt and gas tube and that was horrible and while I'm glad I did it to keep the original parts in a safe spot - it was awful lol.
The other thing I ended up grabbing cause why not was a Palmetto State Armory AK-P in flat dark earth cause I planned to try my hand at rit dying it after seeing it on the internets. The AKP inherited all of my cheap roni stuff like the Romeo and baby light.
I bought some "Hi-temp" vinyl sticker stencils from a company I won't name cause they ended up being awful and falling off the first parts I dipped. After that I decided to just use the stencils to cut shapes out of electrical tape, but even that I kinda gave up on about half way through and started free handing it cause it was exhausting. A friend wanted to see how it would turn out so I documented a little bit, going from lightest to darkest tones and building up a pattern was really interesting.
The stencil snafu ended up splitting my parts into a clean and dirty camp and so now you can tell a pretty clear distinction between the parts where the first layer bled through. But, ironically the less clean parts looks sooooooo much better to me (both grip pieces actually) than the clean mag and brace parts and I don't dare try to replicate it onto the clean parts. It will just have to do.
I dig it though, think it turned out pretty cool. I still want to change the booster out and maybe even take the plunge into a suppressor, who knows. But if you want to try your hand at rit dye I can maybe give some really crappy advice from a dude that did it once.
Assuming you're not sitting on mass quantities, just recycle them. 9mm is down to 35ish cents/round now, i can't imagine cases are more than 5-7 cents apiece
Only got a hundred-odd in total, so not worth selling for sure. Time to look for a brass recycler!
If you'd like, take pictures and post them or PM me a link to a private imgur posting and I'll tell you what they are. If you just want to Google it the manufacturer and model # should be stamped on the barrel or frame.
After that, in terms of if they work, I can tell you how to operate the action on each of them and dry-fire. If that works, and you're interested, you can try cycling a shell through them by working the action by hand and NOT shooting it - i.e. put a round in the magazine, insert the magazine if it's detachable, and rack the slide or bolt to see if it chambers, then rack it again to see if it cycles and picks up the next cartridge. If it does all of that, it's safe to fire, barring some kind of non-age damage to the gun that you'd find after inspection (cracked slide, barrel obstructions, etc)
I will take you up on that. Pictures in spoilers in case they are huge. I'll also include what little info was given to me about them.
I was told this is a WW2 era Japanese rifle. It was my grandfather's, who served in WW2.
Shotgun that belonged to my great grandfather. No idea how old it is. Stamped with Central Arms Co St Louis.
I'm told it's a 22. Belonged to my other grandfather (not the WW2 guy), but was "fixed up" by the WW2 grandpa.
There's also a 4th gun but it's a BB gun so I'm not super concerned about that.
I have no ammunition for any of these, but I would like to make sure they stay at least in the condition I received them in. Also I'm thinking they should probably be locked up, we don't have kids in the house but that will change in the future. Not sure how to go about that either though.
*ninja edit that I thought might be kinda unique. When I was a SAW gunner in Iraq, I removed the hand guards from my weapon so save on weight because everything was so heavy. I wonder if maybe this is a similar thing if it is the rifle I think it is.
The second is a generic single-shot shotgun. AKA the gun that actually won the West. Lots of dinners were put on tables for decades by that type of shotgun.
The third is a Mossberg .22 rifle. Not sure of the model.
They aren't worth very much.
Your local gun store/walmart/etc will have cable locks that will prevent these from being fired. You open the action and put the cable through the opening, then secure it to the lock. If you want a relatively cheap solution that's a half step better than a cable lock, look into metal gun cabinets. Stack-On is a popular brand. You should be able to find something for $100 or so that will fit in the back of a closet.
The main thing that will damage these is exposure to condensation, which will rust them. The store can also sell you a silicone oil gun rag, which you can rub on the firearms to keep them rust-free. You'll want to lightly oil the inside of the barrels, too. If you don't want to buy a whole cleaning kit, just figure out a way to get a patch of cloth soaked in gun oil through the barrel. A wood dowel would be fine, just avoid putting steel in there. Mainly don't keep them in a foam case. Moisture collects in there.
Origin ID: Discgolfer27
Untappd ID: Discgolfer1981
If you wanted you could Google "local gun shops" and see if they publish prices for cleaning and/or inspection on their websites, or give them a call. I'd imagine they'd probably charge you $40-50 each for cleaning and inspection so you may just want to oil them yourself.
Prices vary though - maybe call, tell them you've got something different, and ask for a quote + their process on curio / relic guns. If they're just going to clean it without disassembly I'd pass.
My local shop:
and like Doc said, stored in a cabinet and oiled and with a desiccant packet or two, and they should be set.
of every gun I've ever sold, I only regret two.
- Ruger Blackhawk (.45 Colt)
- Either of two break action 12 gauge shotguns
IIRC an Arisaka with a chrysanthemum that hasn't been defaced is *rare* and reasonably valuable. MacArthur ordered that all Imperial markings be defaced for souvenir weapons as a sign of respect.
That's neat, I didn't know that
Looking to me like the chrysanthemum has been filed off best as I can tell. It does have other markings though if anyone might have an idea what they mean.
Pics in spoilers if anyone is interested and might have some knowledge on the markings.
Thank you
I probably should not have bothered staining the wood cause it came out pretty fake looking in sunlight lol. But it is 10x more comfortable, and yeah its pretty basic to go with the dragunov knockoff appearance but eh it's all in good fun and the original parts and furniture are safe in the case.
The AKP I dont know how to feel about just yet. It is the full 7.62x39 and all the legal mumbo jumbo of being a pistol. I am not opposed to SBRing it I just don't see why yet. A PCC in .40 is actually why I had the roni and glock in .40 it was a fun little thumper on my range while it lasted.
I'm not an expert, but it appears to be a Type 99 Ariska from the Nagoya arsenal.
I'd be careful shooting it, as a lot of Japanese Arisakas that were taken back were rechambered, aka made to shoot a different ammo type that what it did originally. Putting in actual Japanese ammo might make it go boom. A gunsmith should be able to tell you what the bore and chamber are for.
Edit, I just check my own Nagoya Type 99 and the markings are identical.
Anyway, I ordered another AR lower and got dumped in the queue today, which means it'll probably be about two weeks before the clearance comes back. This means I will spend the next two weeks agonizing over which caliber I want to go with. I'm going big boy/big bore so it's either going to be .458 SOCOM or .50 Beowulf (I'm leaning toward the 50) because if I'm gonna build a dumb meme rifle I might as well go whole hog.
The plan is to go as dirt cheap as possible, so I have a multical Anderson lower, an Aero XL upper, and a standard S&W stock that is a hand me down from my AR-15 (that I'll probably only use until something that transfers the recoil more comfortably is on sale). I want to keep the price as low as possible because ammo is going to be like $2 a round. That's like four times(!) the cost of brass case 5.56 right now, but if as long as I have four times as much fun shooting .50 Beowulf as I do shooting 5.56 than it should even out, right?
I’m not recoil sensitive, but shooting 5 rounds from the bench on that rifle I could see where that would wear one out pretty quick. It was fun though.
The weird thing is that the windage drum (that the front sight post screws into) is pretty much centered in the front sight block. Which means that the hole for the sight post was drilled off-center or something? Weird, but whatever.
AK irons are famously bad for "cant" (they're not angled, they're just off center in the horizontal, so I think that naming is misleading?) I've no idea why it's apparently so difficult for manufacturers to make them true. I've heard of people having to drift the front sight post almost all the way to one side of the hood or the other to get the rifle to zero.
My Palmetto AK irons are canted and off-center, too. I keep meaning to send it back to them but I don't want the hassle and once you throw an optic on it it's irrelevant anyways.
Speaking of: I think I'll wind up running. a small red dot on it. I liked the idea of running a 1-6x scope on it but it just gets heavier and heavier, and then I pick up one of my other guns and they just point so much nicer.
So I had intended to take the shotgun out hunting for Michigan's deer firearms opener on Monday and I just couldn't get it to zero reliably. I talked to my dad and grandpa may even have rigged a rimfire scope onto that and I think it just couldn't handle the recoil (shooting sabot slugs is miserable, incidentally).
I was going to buy another box (at nearly $4 a round) but I couldn't even find any ammo, with the opener next day. Sportsmans Warehouse had this Savage 110 in 350 Legend sitting on the rack, but no ammo. One LGS had a box of 180-grain 350 Legend, and then I drove back and picked up the rifle. Came home, pulled the rings (and scope, which has a 7.62x39 reticle) off my AK, threw it onto the Savage, and shot a 1MOA group at 100 off a sandbag with shitty soft point ammo.
After hunting season I'll send it back to Savage for warranty work - it doesn't want to feed the next round correctly unless you point the rifle at the ground to have gravity help out. So, in traditional Savage fashion, it's a hell of a shooter, and kind of sloppy elsewhere. But, it was only $500, and the stock and rail are actually kind of a nice upgrade from my Savage Axis, it's got a heavy barrel, and that compensator at the end might even be doing some work.
I got to my spot at 4am yesterday, waited til legal shooting at 7:06, and had a 3-point buck sneak up on me. I wound up passing on him and I'm still kind of kicking myself, but I didn't expect to see anything and I was frozen at that point.
OnX gave me 115 yards from my sit to the treeline, and I was waiting for them to come out and feed in this farm field for breakfast. I wound up moving maybe 20 yards southwest along the treeline just because that frozen ground absolutely pulls heat out of you bad if you're just proned out. About the time I got to my new spot, the sun came up, and I was looking through my scope trying to figure out how much light I needed, and then the buck ran up maybe 30 yards out of the treeline and couldn't have been more than 70 yards away.
From Now until November 29, if you use the code "turkeyshoot10" you'll get 10% off anything in the store, as well as free shipping, so if you need any magazines or cleaning kits, or any $100 bill hydrodipped pistol grips for your yeet cannon, now would be a great time to dig around for change under your couch cushions and get one.
I'm thinking of picking up this shirt and only wearing it when I'm at the range or in one of the numerous shooting spots out in the woods.
https://outlook.office365.com/owa/calendar/SeattlePoliceDepartmentFingerprints@seattlegov.onmicrosoft.com/bookings/
You may want to confirm that somehow.
P365 is a very nice CCW. I wish I had gone with the version with the optic included though.
Hah I'm going the other way. I need to update my .22 long gun so I can shoot without breaking the bank. Or maybe 17 HMR.