At Home on the Range



With the short days of winter, it can be hard to find time to practice shooting skill. So I was glad to see a Groupon for Target Masters come up a couple of months ago.

Yet, I never used it. It expires at the end of February, so I finally made it a priority to put it to use last week, and invited along my friend Robert. I loaded the cars down with guns and ammo and headed out about 6:30 p.m.

The Groupon is a coupon that sold for I think $12 or $15. It is for $68 worth of shooting lane time and gun rental. When I presented the Groupon at Target Masters, the gentleman behind the counter winced, and said he really hated these coupons. He’d been getting a lot of them lately, with the expiration date coming up.

Apparently a lot of people were frustrated when they showed up with the Groupon, but still had to spend money. But I had read the fine print before I purchased it, and was well aware that I couldn’t use my $68 value for ammo, targets or other consumables – rentals and lane time only.

The other sticking point was that if you rent their guns, you have to use their ammo. Fair enough – someone could bring in junk ammo or improperly loaded hand-loads that could damage their guns, so they require you to use theirs so they know its good.

But their ammo is pricey – 9 mm start at $26, so I decided to stick to my guns. I have a ton of old ammo I need to burn through anyway.

Robert goes for the bulls-eye at 45 feet.

Robert had never fired a handgun before, but based on his past experiences of running around in the Nevada desert shooting a .22 rifle, and watching countless hours of police dramas and action movies, he knew the basics of how to safely load, aim and fire. And he fired exceptionally well for a newbie. We started out with my .22, punched many holes in the paper with it, and then moved on to the 9 mm. The gun hadn’t been fired in years, and the ammo was old, yet it still ran through about 100 rounds without a single jam or misfire.

That’s all fine, you might say, but what’s this have to do with putting food on the table? Although I certainly don’t need to make things harder on myself, I’ve always been a fan of handgun hunting. The 9 mm we were shooting may be a less-than ideal hunting firearm, but the .22 is a different story. I’ll write more about that in my next blog post.