With the kids away at the beach with Grandma this week I decided to try out my local gun shop/range's "action pistol" match on Thursday. It's like the other pistol sports but much less formal. No concealment, etc... I decided to shoot my S&W 686 SSR because I've been doing a lot of dry fire work with it lately and I really enjoy shooting it. According to the range's website the stages were ~12 rounds so I figured I'd be fine with a couple of speed loaders. I had a new case of freedom munitions 158 gr RNs and was ready to rock and/or roll.
It was a train wreck. I was the only revolver shooter there out of about twenty shooters. I thought to myself, this is great. I can run this gun well. I'll show everyone. Nope. Apparently freedom uses a harder primer than I've ever shot because I had light strikes all freakin evening. At least one round per cylinder didn't fire. The first time it happened was at the end of a cylinder (during the first stage) and the sheer shock and frustration caused me to fumble my reload like a blind idiot. I was making good hits but I was stuck reloading like crazy through the stages. I'd basically pull the trigger six times (regardless of the number of booms) then reload and drive on.
Of course, this could have all been avoided if I had tested any of this ammo prior to the match. I assumed (yes, I know) all would be well. I'm glad it was just for fun, but incredibly irritated by the whole thing.
On the bright side, there were a few kids shooting the match that were very good. Two boys about 13 that were friends and there with one of their fathers shooting a G19 and G26 respectively. They shot alright but really handled themselves very well throughout the short match.
I'm going to take more of the ammo out this week when I have a day off and test it properly with my 686, my 340, and probably my dad's colt king cobra (any excuse to borrow the colt, lol). Also going to test out the Freedom Munitions 9mm in my glocks before shooting a 2-gun match this weekend. I don't expect to be very competitive score-wise but I don't want a repeat of this recent performance.