First Time Shooting At The Miamisburg Sportsmen’s Club

Sunday I finally got the opportunity to go shoot at the Miamisburg Sportsmen’s Club – I officially joined this month.

I was most excited to shoot on their out door rifle ranges.  At the club, you can pull right up to the 50/100 yard range covered shooting areas, making loading and unloading a breeze:

Here’s the view from the 50 yard range – picutred are my S&W rifles, the M&P 15 and my M&P 15-22.  I also brought along my Konus Konuspot-80 spotting scope:

The shooting experience was fantastic – I was there a good hour before anyone ever showed up – and they went over to the 100 yard side.  A very stark contrast to my experiences driving 40 minutes to the Spring Valley Gun Range and having to get there right when they open to ensure you get a stall.  Here’s a few targets from the session at the 50 yard range – five bench rested rounds (just sitting on the mag) with my my M&P 15-22:

And here’s five with my M&P 15:

I’ve never been as accurate and grouped as well as I did during this session.  I also shot off-hand at the 50 yard range and performed similarly well.  I then went over to the 100 yard range (only my 3rd time shooting at this distance.  Again, I shot five rounds with one rifle (M&P 15, left target) and then five with the other rifle (M&P 15-22, right target) for a total of ten rounds on each target:

On one hand, I was pleased that all ten shots with each rifle landed on paper,  On the other hand, I was shooting for center of the paper and did not group at all well.  So I have some work to do in order to get better at 100 yards, and graduate to the 200 yard range the club has to offer.  Once thing I determined to do after this session is to get match grade triggers for both my rifles, and possibly a bipod.  I ran through about 120 rounds of PMC X-Tac .223, and about 100 rounds of CCI Mini-Mag .22, and did not think my shooting joy could be exceeded.  I was wrong.

After finishing up at the 50 and 100 yard ranges, I drover over to the small bore/.22 caliber range at the Miamisburg Sportsmen’s Club:

In the above photo, you will see targets placed at both 50 and 100 yards, including a black box on the far right which had metal reactive targets!  Here’s a close up of the metal targets:

Words cannot begin to express how both fun and beneficial shooting at the metal targets can be.  In case you’ve never used something similar, the idea is to shoot in the white area of each target.  The white metal portion rests against the back of the black metal frame and is hinged – a hit will result in the white target falling down backward.  So the shooter gets both visual and audible confirmation of a precise hit (you both see and hear when the white metal targets fall backward).  You can then walk down range and raise the targets back up.  Again, I was completely alone on this range when I used it, and I bet I blew through about 250 CCI Mini-Mag rounds on these metal targets over a couple of hours.  I’d load up 15 rounds and shoot at the ten individual targets above.  Typically I’d shoot for the larger white targets first then work my way around to the smaller targets – the top most left and bottom most right targets were particularly challenging due to their small size.  How small you ask?

When I first started  the session, I thought “there’s no way I can hit those two smallest targets from 50 yards” – you’ve got a target area of maybe 1-2 thumb width on each.   So I’d load up 15 rounds in a magazine, and shoot at the 10 metal targets.  I also set up a paper target also at 50 yards next to the metal target box to shoot any remaining rounds in my magazine should I “luck out” and hit all ten metal targets in less than 15 rounds.  The more I shot, the more accurate I because, and the more rounds I began shooting at the paper target:

Soon I was regularly hitting all ten metal targets in 10-11 rounds!  Now, you might be saying to yourself, “Bullcrap!  People on the internet say anything…you’re full of crap…I don’t believe you.”  Well, I can’t blame you there…I’d be saying the same thing.  That’s why I set up my point and shoot camera in the grass in front of the target and got some video footage:

So now I have a membership at both Sim-Trainer (and indoor range) and the Miamisburg Sportsmen’s Club.  The two facilities complement each other well in the resources they have to offer.  Of course, I’ve barely scratched the surface of what the Miamisburg Sportsmen’s club has to offer, so look for future posts here on ThruMyLens with more content about the MSC!