On Sunday, my son and I packed up the gear, and headed out to Waynesville, OH (about 18 miles from where I live in Dayton) to spend a morning shooting my Smith and Wesson M&P 15 (AR-15) at Spring Valley Gun range – an outdoor range.  Since purchasing my rifle last month, I’ve only shot it at Sim-Trainer, which is an indoor facility limited to about 25 yards.  Spring Valley has a supervised rifle facility, with both 50 and 100 yard ranges.

I was anxious to try out the new Barska Blackhawk Spotting Scope I had purchased to assist with shot siting.  I pretty much loose the ability to clearly see where my shots are landing on target at about 25 yards.  So when shooting beyond that distance, a spotting scope is a real necessity.  Here’s a photo of all the gear set up on the bench at Spring Valley:

I’ll be doing a review of the Barska Blackhawk very soon, but I can tell you that it was an invaluable asset for getting my Aimpoint Pro zeroed to 50 yards.  Conventional AR-15 wisdom on the question of what distance to zero a red dot optic seems to point to the 50 yard mark as a good distance to use.  This allows for predictable combat accuracy out to 100 yards.  When zeroed at 50 yards, an AR-15 will typically shoot slightly low up to 50 yards, and slightly high out to 100 yards.  Once I got the Aimpoint Pro zeroed at 50 yards, I let my son get some trigger time.  Here’s a photo of him shooting the M&P 15 at the 50 yard side of the range:

After we got some time in at the 50 yard side of the range, I wanted to try shooting at 100 yards.  Here’s a shot of Yours Truly shooting at 100 yards:

For never having shot an AR-15 at 100 yards before, I wasn’t at all disappointed with my performance.  Here’s a photo of my target – all 15 rounds I fired are “on paper” with 8 being “in the black.”

Here’s some video footage from our morning of shooting taken with my iPhone 4:

I used American Eagle Tactical XM193C  55 grain 5.56 ammo for the entire shoot (no problems of any kind encountered with this ammo).  I’ve now put about 400 rounds though my M&P 15 and have thoroughly enjoyed doing so.  Look for mor AR-15 related content from me here on ThruMyLens soon!