Friday, January 07, 2011

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.

3 comments:

Keith Alan K said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Keith Alan K said...

Sweet old .22!
Remington's .22LR is notoriously dirty, unreliable, and inaccurate.
CCI Green Tag and MiniMags are more affordable than Wolf brand and almost as accurate. For cheap, Winchester and even Federal bricks from WalMart will group tighter than Remington.
Check out Rimfire Central's forums for all the latest info on .22s.

Albatross said...

Remington's .22LR is notoriously dirty,

No kidding. Those rounds fouled up the chamber of that Model 77 pretty good. I'll have to try one of the others, next time.