Miasmatic Review

Home on the Range.

Yesterday I finally had a chance to take Ktreva to the range. We hadn’t had a chance to go since buying her Walther PPK .380 or my Colt 1991 Model 80 .45. Graumagus(Who is not dead) and a friend of mine from work, J, came with. I had helped J find a handgun a couple of months back and he also had never fired it. Combined we had a nice little collection of firearms. 2 Colt 1991 Model 80 .45’s, a Walther PPK. 380, a Taurus .357 6-inch barrel, a Taurus .357 4-inch barrel, a Smith and Wesson .44 Magnum with an 8 and ¾ inch barrel. (I think that was the length Grau said it was) and a .22 revolver.

On the way to the range, Grau told me he found a new way to get to the range, and took us this convoluted way through southern Wisconsin. I will be honest, depending on the traffic through one of the towns we travel through in our normal route, this could have been faster, but if there is no traffic it adds about 30 minutes onto the trip. Then again if we hadn’t gone that way, we wouldn’t have seen the warning sign on the 4 lane limited access highway that read, “Watch for low flying aircraft”. We were making fun of it when we saw that there was a runway that ran perpendicular to the highway and started about 200 feet from the edge of the road. That got us to wondering how you would explain that to your insurance. “Yea, I was traveling down the highway when I was t-boned by a Cessna.”

Ktreva had wanted a handgun, but she had always been afraid of them. She admitted it was an irrational fear, and she did want to go shooting to help get over it. At the range she quickly overcame that fear. I did learn a valuable lesson, if you are going to take your beautiful wife to the prominently male shooting range; she’s going to get attention from other shooters. Ktreva ended up getting special shooting lessons from one of the range officers. It’s about damn time guys flirted with her in front of me. For once I can give her crap instead of having to take it from her. Normally some scary girl flirts with me, and Ktreva makes fun of me for it.

That Aguila Ammunition I was to try out was pretty good. It fired nice; it wasn’t anywhere near as dirty as I thought it was going to be. Hell it shot cleaner then the WinClean ammo. I’m going to go see if he can get some more of it in for me. It’s a nice shooting ammo that gave me no problems what so ever. Now I had a box of the .357 American ammo that my revolver just did not like. I don’t know if the lip on the bullet was too thick or what, but it kept jamming the revolver so the cylinder wouldn’t turn. When I switched to another brand of ammo, the problem went away.

Ktreva really got into shooting. On the way out to the range she was saying how she only wanted to shoot her .380 and the .22, she didn’t think she could handle the larger caliber firearms. I had wanted to try hers out so at one point I offered to let her shoot my .45 while I put ten rounds through her .380. She let me shoot hers, but didn’t want to shoot the .45. Grau also put some rounds through it. During one of the breaks, we were all talking and Grau and I had the same experience with the .380. Not only do you have to be careful holding it, we all had been bitten by the slide at least once, but also it had more kick then my .45. After telling Ktreva that she decided to try the .45 and then the .357 (with a .38 special round in it), both had less kick then her .380. Even funnier is that she was most accurate using the revolver with the .38 special rounds.
When my .357 was acting up I thought maybe it had to do with fowling. Unfortunately my wipe down rag was accidentally left at home. Wanting to see if I could fix it, I used the only thing I could find, my shirt. Now I was wearing one of my standard shooting shirts. My Dr. Phat Tony t-shirt is one of the standard shirts I wear shooting. During a break, Grau tells me I got something on my shirt. So I explained what happened. Grau spouts off that Dr. Phat Tony probably will be proud of the fact that I used his shirt as makeshift cleaning patch. I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s right.

My buddy J hadn’t done much shooting, but says he had a lot of fun. We tried to get him to try shooting some of the other firearms, but he was only interested in shooting his. I don’t know if he just wasn’t comfortable or what, but we tried. I’m trying to get him to go black powder shooting with me in 3 weeks.

After the range we hit The Vaj (actually Vaj’s Garage), for food and beer. We compared notes and talked about how good/bad we were. Where we needed improvement and what all we had to work on. While we were there some strange intoxicated bar fly comes up and says to me, “Excuse me, you just walked past me. I just wanted to say you smell good.” She turns and walks away. Grau, J and Ktreva are all looking at me with a smirk. DAMMIT! That was ten times creepier then the ranger officer flirting with Ktreva! At least it’s nice to know that there are women that enjoy the smell of BO and cordite.

We all had a good time, lots of fun. Ktreva can’t wait to go again, and to be honest I can’t wait to take her again. There’s just something sexy about watching her handle a firearm.