I decided to finally burn through some of the 124gr bullets taking up room on my rack and loaded 5000 of them on Sunday, and took them to the range to run through my match gun and my backup gun. I haven't been doing a lot of shooting the last two years, spurts and spits when I can, with demos at classes being the bulk of my shooting. But with a match I'd actually like to win coming up, I thought I should do some real practice and also re-prove my guns to me. I had recently had two detonations in my match gun that were because of damp powder in my powder jug, how that happened I have no idea, but you could see the moisture in the measure once I took it apart. This caused bridging of the powder and I was getting a full grain too little in my cases. Result, KABOOM. Didn't hurt the gun except for the extractor, which I didn't replace until Sunday as it was still running fine up until Saturday when I got a stovepipe during a demo.
So, anyhow, off to the range with 5000 rounds and gorgeous BC sunshine 16 Degrees C in the middle of winter. I put an IPSC target at 25m, a double stack at 15m and another single at 7m. Then I started purposely slow, practicing pressouts on each target at each distance. Nothing ground breaking, nothing exciting.
After I'd warmed up each gun with 500 rounds, I started to push a bit, broke out the shot timer and started trying to hit match speeds on the arrays. Practice, or failure to do so, certainly shows up quick sometimes. My slow speed stuff had resulted in 2 C's at 25m but alphas everywhere else. The instant I turned up the pace, my shots started going right and at 15 suddenly I had a half dozen C's and at 25 probably a full third of the shots were to the right of the A. So as I progressed through another 500 rounds through each gun I slowed down again tried to really manage that front sight. What I began to realize was that the front sight was tracking totally differently with the 124gr load vs my normal 147gr load. I knew to expect an impact lower than my 147gr on the target, but was surprised at the ones going right. Seeing that the sight was definitely tracking more to the right during recoil and when it came back down was something I'd never expected to see. So, now, 2000 rounds in after 5.5 hrs. I decided to grab some 147gr rounds and run them. Fresh targets were put up and I started over. And man, what a difference, the gun simply felt better in my hands with the match load, the sight tracked straight up and down and returned centered. While I certainly wasn't running high speed, I was shooting faster than I had with the 124s and my shots were almost all A's. I shanked a DA pull straight down into the C on the 25m target and let one wander over left into the C at 25 as well. Both shots were called as such.
End of the day both guns ran perfect, made for nice hand warmers now that the sun had set and the wind had picked up. And they had both proven themselves to me again, I had noticed a bit of anticipation during demos after the Kabooms, and wanted to get rid of that.
This was also a proving ground for CCI primers in my match guns, as I usually use Federal (near impossible to find these days). Everyone talks about needing light firing pin return springs, extended firing pins and heavy hammer/main springs to set off CCI's in CZ Shadows. Nope, that's BS. I run factory return spring, factory firing pin and a CZUB 11lb mainspring in both guns. I had zero issues with the CCI's. The 147gr ammo I had Chinese made Dominion primers and out of 500 rounds didn't have a single issue either, which was a surprise as I usually get 1 out of 100 that needs to be hit again and 1 out of 500 that needs to thrown out.
For me the big learning point was what the snappier 124gr bullets were doing in my hands. I tried adjusting my grip, and twisting this way and that, but it was very noticeable that the gun tracked totally differently and I'd have to work much harder to bring that sight into center than I do with the 147s. That was really unexpected. I will be going back tomorrow to do day 2 and see what is what.
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