observations from the range

25 yards is a long way. I do not care what firearm you are using, what caliber it is shooting, or what ammo you are sending downrange… a target at 25 yards is a tiny-arsed thing, especially when seen over iron sights. Enough so that the 10 “ring” was smaller than my front post… hell, I think the five ring was smaller too. How people plug things hundreds of yards away I will probably never understand.
Always bring your own tools. Turns out I did have to adjust the front sight on the M1A, and, of course, I left my Allen set at home. Thankfully, the range had a box of tools that people could borrow, so I was covered. Unfortunately, their Allen wrench sets were the Swiss-Army-Knife variety, wherein the bits fold out from a central body. Nice, compact, and you do not lose the things, but the bits are a little long… long enough that I could hardly wedge the tool between my front sight and my dorsal rail. Getting the sight screw loose was easy, but getting it tight again was a complete and utter nightmare.
Boresnakes are the best things to happen to firearms since iron sights. Never used one of these buggers before, but when I was doing my initial break-in shooting of one round downrange, and then putting another coat of Militec on, it made life a breeze. When it came time to clean the M1A, the boresnake was just as beautifully useful. A few yanks, and there we go, a pristine barrel. Love it. Oh, and while we are on the topic…
Something good came out of Waldorf after all. I spent about seven years or so living south of a town called Waldorf in Maryland. During those years, I had the opportunity to watch it from “eh” to “well that ain’t pretty” to just another ‘burb of DC. However, this mystery substance known as Militec-1 is produced there, so it cannot be all bad. What does this stuff do? Well, it is a lubricant, but that is just where it starts. Check out the webpage for the full explanation… it is a little… poorly… formatted, but the information is all there (and over my head mostly, which is why I am not quoting it here).
16-inch barrels are not that loud. Ok, the M1A SOCOM frame is a little loud when it shoots, I will not deny it. The noise did attract a little attention at the range. That said, it ain’t got nothin’ on an honest-to-god .30-06 or .270, both of which were also shooting at the range. Good lord the latter is loud.
Earmuffs do not make people deaf. When the .270 went off in the range next to me, I literally asked the father standing behind the son shooting what exactly he was shooting. He answered, and I looked it up when I got home. However, all the while I was shooting, I could hear people behind and around me asking what it was I was shooting, what caliber it was, why it was so noisy, etc. The thing of it was, though, they were not asking me – just each other. I could hear them just fine, but any time I turned to look at them, they went back about their own business. Could have made their lives a lot easier just to ask me, get it over with, and get on with it, as opposed to talking behind people’s backs as if they could not hear you.
I need to practice. Even with the bipod, while I shot reasonably well, I did not shoot well enough for even me. And when I tried free-standing against a man-sized target at 25 yards, I plugged the 10 area 8/10 times, but even that is pretty bad with a rifle. Granted, this was the first time shooting this particular rifle… and shooting any rifle for that matter. My previous experience boils down to air rifles, a couple of shotguns, and… well, that is it. Need more practice aiming, more practice holding, and just more practice. Shame .308 ammo is absurdly expensive these days, and I am too much of a pansy to try reloading.
Clean ranges are hard to come by. I have heard firearm stores and ranges compared to auto part stores more than once, and the analogy is generally appropriate. Discount Gun Mart here in San Diego is a perfect example of it – things stuffed in every corner, a general sense of uncleanliness, brass all over the range, shoddy bathrooms, grungy-looking employees, etc. Iron Sights up in Oceanside, however, was like a beam of sunshine. Pristine bathrooms (with anti-lead soap, no less), all the products arranged appropriately in their cases or on their racks, and the brass was swept three times while I was shooting. The only bad side is that it is about an hour drive for me… might be worth it, considering.
There is more than one way to load a magazine. I have a speed loader for my 9mm, so I have kind of gotten out of the habit of hand-loading magazines. No such luck for the M1A. In loading it, I did what I used to do by hand with my 9mm – push down the back of the stack with one thumb, put the back of the next round on the head of the stack with your other hand, push it down, and slide the round in. Needless to say, my left thumb got pretty damned sore in this process. Then I actually thought about what I was doing – M1s, M14s, and M1As can be loaded by stripper clips. I sat the magazine down, and just started pushing rounds into it from the top down, straight into the magazine, squared that it would fit fore and aft. Lo and behold, I could load twice as fast, with a quarter the pain. Yeah, occasionally, I am a little dense.
I like M1As. I like the way they handle, I like the in-your-way reminder the safety gives you, I like the visible indication of the operating arm when you are empty, I like shooting it, I like the fit… Hell, I even like the funny little metal flap that folds up from the butt. I was sitting there trying to snug it against my shoulder, and the damned thing kept sliding down… so I folded up the flap, and was set. Took some getting used to, but it worked just fine. I am not too fond of the magazine insertion process… took a little getting used to, but once you get the hang of it, is not too bad. And shooting it… oh boy it was fun. Decent kick – just enough to let you know you shot something (from what I understand, the SOCOM’s muzzle brake is part of the reason the kick is so kind). Easy to reaquire target – the sight picture was different from what I am used to with pistols, so I occasionally mistook one of the side wings as the post, but, again, something easily correctible. Sweet trigger – straight out the box, this trigger is great, and is actually light enough that a few times it fired sooner than I was expecting. All said, in 220 rounds, I only had one malfunction… on one round, the casing failed to extract. In fact, I had to seat the butt right on the deck and pound on the operating arm to get the casing free. Not sure what happened, exactly – the casing got away into the pile of all its friends before I could grab it – but if I had to guess, the milsurp rounds I used overexpanded slightly in the chamber, and got stuck. All said, though, I think I can live with the rifle.