Beaver-Proofing!

Sorry for the light posting...I spent yesterday beaver-proofing the Secret Hidden Bunker, making sure we had defensible space in case of a "flash swarm" of social media-active rabid beavers attacked. Plus, we had to make sure there were no trees that could reach the house if they were felled by the furry bastards. On the way to the range yesterday I was amazed — amazed, I tell you! — at the beaver sign...they're everywhere.

That aside, yesterday was a weak point practice day on the range, mostly focusing on one-shot draws. I think one-shot draws are one of the basic building blocks of shooting...practice them a lot in dry fire, then go to the range to verify. I have another range session scheduled this week to work with Ruger Rimfire guns, especially my regular RRC rifle, a 10/22 Target now fitted with a set of really ugly Tech Sights so I can shoot Limited at the World Championships. I had considered building up a new rifle...you can do that with 10/22s since they don't break the bank...but I've got a lot of rounds through the Target 10/22 and I'm very happy with it. As I mentioned, most of the internals are Volquartsen. Hopefully, this will allow me to focus on my Sweetie's rifle, a very plain vanilla 10/22 I bought mega-cheaply from CDNN on their Memorial Day Sale. Assuming it groups well, the only changes will be a Volquartsen trigger group.

Otherwise, I'm hoping to get together with Marshal Halloway later this month for a mini-9mm "shoot-out." I've read some interesting criticisms of the little nines lately, largely that one doesn't "need" such a gun because of advances in .380 ammunition. Sort of sounds like me a few years back talking about .40s and 9mms. Having shot most of the mini-9mms and most of the pocket .380s, I'd say if you're making a choice noe=w it comes down to how well you can shoot the mini-9mms.

They are a handfull, but not that much of a handful if you're a regular shooter. By that I mean I was able to get the follow-up hits as easily with the mini-9mms as I was with the .380s. I would define a real handful as the ultralight small frame revolvers shooting .357s or some of the semiauto mini-.40s, neither of which I want any part of. Why? Because I subscribe to the lotsa bullets philosophy of life...no such thing as a one-shot stop, so I want a self-defense gun that allows me to readily deliver the necessary follow-ups.

If you don't put a lot of rounds downrange, that's going to push your selection criteria to the pocket .380s (or the small frame revolvers in .38, .327 or even .32 H&R. If you do put a lot of rounds downrange, check out the mini-9mms. The slightly larger polymer-framed versions (the Ruger LC9, the Taurus Slim and the Kahrs) seem to me to shoot a tiny bit lighter than the Kimber Solo, which is truly pocket-sized, but I haven't had any problems shooting the Kimber, either.

Again, I don't usually do ammo tests...there's always something that a semiauto won't shoot. Over the many decades I've been testing guns, I've managed to accumulate a lot of weird ammo, and some of it would choke a single-shot T/C! In the case of 9mm, I have found the Fiocchi 147-gr truncated cone 9mms, won't run in a lot of guns, including my BHP. But so what? The stuff shoots amazingly well in a Para LTC lightweight commander. All I'm looking for is will the gun run with ball and a couple of different rounds of my favorite self-defense ammo (Corbon and Hornady are the usual choices). And yes, different ammo does group differently, but that difference is usually pretty small if you stay within a reasonable sample...for example, 9mm defensive ammo, 115 grains. And I'm not looking for competition accuracy out of a pocket self-defense gun. Sometimes you'll get it...Walt Rauch once told me that a Taurus 9mm I-frame revolver he'd gotten for T&E was the single most accurate small frame revolver he'd ever shot, and he's shot a bazillion of the things. It happens. But little bitty groups is not why one carries a pocket pistol.