backyardsniper
Well-Known Member
I got a chance to go to the range today with my cousin and his daughter, I help take her deer hunting every year but we haven't really had the opportunity to do any serious target shooting before. We are usually limited to the standard zeroing of the rifles and a little practice at 100yds. It just so happened today that they called me and I was off work and we got a chance to get together and go to the range. Since Maddie has never had the chance to shoot more than 100yds I thought I would conduct a little experiment. She wanted to shoot my AR10 first, and that is the rifle she normally deer hunts with anyway, so I put it it up on the bag and I pointed to a steel plate hanging at the 400yd berm and told her to hold center mass on the plate and to simply shoot just like we normally do. I dialed up the dope and there was no wind so this was the perfect chance to do this. I didn't tell her how far it was, I just helped her get the rifle situated and get lined up then I got on the spotting scope and told her to really concentrate and take her time and fire when ever she was ready. She proceeded to drop five consecutive rounds on an 8" plate at 400yds and most of them were in an MOA ish group. I was thoroughly impressed, I mean you don't see too many middle school girls shooting like that. We did a little more shooting with her AR15 and I showed her a little about KY windage since her AR15 didn't have a scope that was finger adjustable. Before we finished I wanted to shoot my TRG42 a couple of times, so I got it out and fired a five shot group and asked her if she wanted to shoot it, to which came the expected reply, does it kick bad? I told her it was more than the AR10 but not bad so she decided she wanted to give it a try. She handled it just as well as the AR 10. No sensitivity to the blast or recoil, only concerned about finding the next target in the scope. At one point she asked me most seriously, "do they have competitions for this kind of stuff"?
It was a great range trip with a very promising new marksman, who I think enjoyed the shooting as much as I did. What I found truly remarkable was her seriousness and her willingness to learn. Her dad took the picture below, neither of us knew he had snapped it with her phone. I was looking at the pic and noticed she was employing all the techniques and safety precautions that i had taught her last deer season. I hadn't mentioned any of these things today while we were shooting. If you look close you will notice she has both eyes open while looking through the scope, she also has her trigger finger indexed along the side of the reciever, I had told her to carry her AR that way when hunting, finger indexed on the reciever and thumb on the selector, and that is the way it is every time I see her with it. Hopefully this year we will start accumulating preference points and in the next few years she will be able to draw a tag and maybe go on one of the LRH group hunts.
It was a great range trip with a very promising new marksman, who I think enjoyed the shooting as much as I did. What I found truly remarkable was her seriousness and her willingness to learn. Her dad took the picture below, neither of us knew he had snapped it with her phone. I was looking at the pic and noticed she was employing all the techniques and safety precautions that i had taught her last deer season. I hadn't mentioned any of these things today while we were shooting. If you look close you will notice she has both eyes open while looking through the scope, she also has her trigger finger indexed along the side of the reciever, I had told her to carry her AR that way when hunting, finger indexed on the reciever and thumb on the selector, and that is the way it is every time I see her with it. Hopefully this year we will start accumulating preference points and in the next few years she will be able to draw a tag and maybe go on one of the LRH group hunts.
