What I shot today

This:



Inspired by Keith Alan K's post here in which he talks about sighting in his .22 rifle, I remembered that I needed to sight in this old Winchester. It's a Model 77, and it had been in a family member's closet for years before I got it out and cleaned it up. Today was the first day I shot it, and I have no idea how long it's been since a bullet passed through its barrel.

The Model 77 was manufactured in the late 1950s and early 1960s, and it came in two versions: One has a traditional magazine and the other, rarer version has a tubular magazine. This one is the tubular version.

And here is what I was shooting through that old rifle:



The magazine holds fifteen rounds, so luckily I didn't have to stop and reload too often. And I got right into the business of making sure the scope was pointing where I wanted the bullets to go.

It wasn't. At first.



As you can see, it was shooting a little low at first. (This is at 50 yards.) I walked it up and finally got it around the bulls eye in the center, and then I smacked at that upper right target for a while.

Then my wife wanted to shoot some. Here's her target:



Before today, she had never shot a rifle, so I was impressed! I call her Annie, now.

We got off about 80 rounds before that fifty-odd-year-old rifle finally reached the end of its tolerance for powder residue and started jamming. At one point, I was pulling out rounds every other shot, and some of them were so jammed into the mechanism that I had to use pliers to pull them loose. They didn't come out looking very pretty.



At that point I decided this Model 77 needed a very good cleaning, and we packed it in for the day. But overall we had a great time, and I was pleased with this old rifle's performance.



May all your shootings be just as fun.