Friday, August 26, 2011

"You're a Good Shooter"

"With Practice, You Could Be Great"

That is quite a compliment coming from Chuck.   He does not give them out that easily.

In the very small world of legal Chicago pistol shooting and training the name Chuck is well enough known not to need any other introduction.

And likewise Chuck knows the name Haggerty who was my instructor, and can go on at length as to his style and the problems under which  he operated.

I just had to requalify because one of my shooting cards is coming up for renewal, on a worknight after a worknight, coming off the midnight shift, and the range where Chuck operates is at 142nd and Western, over forty miles from where I live. Through heavy traffic from the Northwest suburbs to the South Side.

At five pm on a Friday evening. That's commonly called "Rush Hour," which is kind of a quaint phrase from some time back in the twenties when some of the other hours must not have also been  rush hour, but it is still the worst hour for traffic, that and the other one right after it, which I was just in.

So I did 81 miles of that plus fired on the range, and absorbed useful pointers about trigger pull, sight picture, when to not shoot, two-handed grip, up to the butt--yes there is one--and talked intelligently about how pistol training was done back in the day, and got back in time to get ready for work in two hours and 45 minutes, and still haven't calculated as to whether that could be mathematically legal or not.  I think it is mathematically possible.

Unless you take out nine minutes for the Mickey Dees at the Hinsdale Oasis on the Tri-State. These roads are famously shown in the movie The Blues Brothers, and I think they even stopped at that Oasis.

With all these millions of people driving around, I still can't get over that I found the one guy who can still talk knowledgably about the legendary Haggerty. That class  must have been twenty years ago, as I look back now on what must have happened which year and because of what.

I still remember Haggerty had a reloading station set up in his living room so he could watch TV while he did reloads.

I got a 95, and my glasses are several years past their prescription date. One round went two inches to the right of the target's chest, and would have probably got his arm anyway.

That's nothing, one time in the army I had broken glasses, so broken that there was no lens on my usual right-handed shooting eye side, and I had to make do with only a left lens, while the right side swung free in the open air. But unfortunately for me, the left side had no crossbar from the frame to the left ear, so I had to attach a suitable twig off the ground with a piece of duct tape. That is Double Broke.

That was using an M-16A1 which would drop hot brass down your shirt front left-handed, without a left-handed brass deflector, and being right-handed most of the time I didn't think to get one, so that did happen a couple times. Still, I am proud that I shot Expert under those conditions, left-handed. They really should lower the price of glasses for us poor folks so we can get them more often.

Anyway I have noticed I seem to shoot at billiards better left-handed too. It's a useful skill sometimes.

What I shot tonight was a Smith and Wesson Model 67 .38 Special, which is a six-shot double-action revolver, I think a J-frame, and a four -inch barrel, which might have been a bull barrel but I didn't really look that closely.  Don't even ask what was in the rounds, it was whatever Chuck provided.

If I get new glasses too then look out. I gone tink abou getting some.

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4 comments:

  1. I've only shot two types of gun, a Lee Enfield rifle, while I was in the Army Cadets and a shotgun on a clay pigeon shoot with Fran,(The Angry Lurker). I do think it may be time to spend some of that hard earned dosh that you earn down the mines and get some new glasses though!

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  2. Yeah, you're probably right but it's a rip, they tell you 19.99 for two pairs and when you come out they've added that much for the cases alone, and it's more like 300 bucks for the works, plus they shoot that air thing in your eyes, if they would just figure out a better way for that part, so I gone tink abou.

    By the time I save up for another piece of silver the price of that will be way up again, and then there's the camera issue, and lots of other things competing for that dosh, like the half a tank of gas I just burned up to get to where Chuck was.

    We meaning the Nemesis and I also discussed besides those things and the cost of forming a corporation, for him anyway, that now I need an Illinois-made Springfield Armory survival rifle in .22 Long Rifle to take advantage of the availability of rounds, that comes with an over and under .410 guage shotgun, co-axial as it were, built on, plus breaks down for easy carry in a violin case, which is convenient.

    Then I'd need a violin case itself.

    Then since I'd have these .410 rounds I'll need a Taurus Judge, a monster five-shot revolver which will fire those normal .410 shotgun rounds, or in the same cylinders you can put .45 ACP and do it interchangeably at the same time in any order you like.

    Very cool and convincing but both rounds will perform better from a more purpose built platform, so then I'd also need more...

    And for the excess .22 LR gots to have a Ruger, the Mark II looks cooler to me than the Mark III, no better reason than that for that one. The M1911 .45 of course will have to wait till my blog really takes off.

    Then when we looked at the Remington .12-guages we trailed off into other subjects from there, and it all adds up.

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  3. Love this blog post! A really interesting read! Followed!

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  4. Aw, shucks, I admit I liked that 'very small world' line myself, but it fits with the Chuck knowing Haggerty thing.

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