And I don't mean Disney - I'm suggesting Cabela's take the title for a while.

I just made one of my increasingly frequent trip to Cabela's, with the goal of replacing my boots before hiking all over Hawaii next month. I ended up with something different than the 8" duty boot I prefer to wear, but probably better suited to the types of hikes we have planned. Unfortunately, I still need to replace my everyday boots.

While there I wandered through the Bargain Cave, and found two unopened boxes of Barnes .308 180gr Boattail Triple-Shock bullets, marked down almost 22% off of retail. Score!

Add to that earning a $50 "Customer Appreciation" gift card for spending the money I was going to spend anyhow, and I'm a happy boy.

And of course, I was openly carrying my handgun the entire time.

I make the trek up to the rifle range this morning. (It's odd that I get excited by seeing 17.5 MPG on the Jeep's trip computer.) I spent three hours or so under overcast skies shooting rifles. I also did a little tiny bit of holster work from concealment.

I don't know if it was the fact that I shot a couple hundred rounds of .22 first, or that I got soft over the winter, but I don't remember the .308 kicking so hard. Once I cowboy-ed up, I put eight three-round groups downrange - six rounds each of Black Hills factory and my three test loads. Results at 100 yards are:

The orange circles are each one inch in diameter. I shot these left to right across the top row, then left to right across the bottom. I didn't let the barrel cool as much as I should have between strings, which might explain some of the spread, but the more reasonable explanation is I shot badly. The 35 and 37 grain loads seem "fine" at this distance. I imagine the drop at longer distances would be more pronounced due to the lower velocities.

Anyway, a good day shooting.

I also worked up a couple of test loads for .308 Winchester. Nothing fancy: Black Hills brass, Hornady 168gr BTHP Match bullets, between 35 and 40 grains of Varget, Remington 710 primers. I'm well below max pressure and velocity. I'm working towards replicating Black Hills Match ammo, but I expect to be about 400 fps short with the fastest of these loads. Range Report tomorrow.

As recently mentioned, Natchez had the best price I was able to find on gunpowder.

Eight pounds Varget, eight pounds Unique. Enough to load 1400 rounds of .308, and 11,200 rounds of 9mm.

Now I just need the primers.

I'm trying to order some primers, small pistol or small rifle, in case quantities, from Midway. There's quite a bit sold out. It's troubling on so many levels.

Hmmm, Natchez is sold out too. But, they do have the best price I've found on the powders I wanted.

This is really just a hint of what's to come next weekend... Today I purchased several 5 gallon buckets, and a Foodsaver V2460. Several Mylar bags and O₂ absorbers arrived earlier in the week. Stay tuned... (Hint.)

I also trimmed some .308 brass, hopefully also for next weekend.

In anticipation of going shooting tomorrow, I loaded up my second batch of reloaded ammo. Fifty rounds of 10mm, now sitting on 9.1 grains of blue dot. The cookbook says this should give 1100 fps from the barrel.

The RCBS Chargemaster 1500 I have is the cat's meow. It is sensitive enough that a very slight breeze coming in the window over my workbench was adding half a grain of weight to my charges (closing the draft cover on the scale fixed the problem). Plus, the ability to have the scale automagically measure out the next charge while I seat a bullet over the previous is pretty cool. I know I haven't begun to dig into the other cool features it has, but I'm pretty happy.

I measured every round as I seated the bullets. The cookbook says the cartridge OAL is 1.260". I used a tolerance of + or - 0.005 inches as my acceptable lengths (i.e 1.255" to 1.265"). So, a question for the more experienced reloaders: is this an acceptable practice, or should I insist on 1.260" for every round?

Range report tomorrow.

I made it out to the range today, taking along a few things to experiment with. Nice day, breezy, and comfortably cool. The leaves have really changed over since I was last there two weeks ago.

First, I took along the Project Gun to test fire and sight in the EOTech. Surprisingly, the elevation was only off by about two inches. The windage was off by a good 16 inches, but I got that taken care of. Stupidly, I threw a bunch of loaded 30-round magazines into an ammo can to bring along, not thinking that I might want to test the gun with just one or two rounds loaded, or shoot three round groups while sighting in. I ended up stripping rounds out hand. Dumb. Anyway, I put two mags through the gun, and experienced three failures to fire. Two of the rounds fired on a second strike, the third went into the garbage after it's second strike. Could be hard primers, could be a weak hammer strike: I don't know which yet. I haven't had any problems with this ammo in my other AR, but it is cheap Wolf stuff. The gun cycled mostly flawlessly, and was very consistent with where it deposited the empty brass cases.

Second, I took along the Gold Cup to test fire the reloads I finished this week. I'm typing this with all my fingers, and my pistol didn't blow up, so I must have done something right (or at least, nothing too wrong). The rounds were really soft shooting, so the next set will be a little hotter. I also emptied some factory brass so that I have materials to work with. I think I spent more time policing brass than shooting.

Lastly, I brought along the 10/22 to rip a few hundred rounds downrange. I decided to try shooting the rifle left-handed, since I'm one of those screwy right-handed, left-eyed people. A few findings:

1. The image through the scope was much clearer with my left eye. I didn't have to play the squinting games that normally leaves my vision blurry for a few hours after shooting.


2. My accuracy improved slightly.


3. My left handed trigger control / coordination sucks.


4. The eye relief is wrong for my left eye.

I'll play with this more, but I think I'm likely to continue to shoot right-handed.

Since I had the 50-yard range to myself, I also decided to get up off the bench, and shoot from some less supported positions. In retrospect, I forgot to change my expectations while doing this exercise. I expected sub-inch ten-round groups. In reality, I got 4-inch groups, which really isn't that bad for an unsupported position. I'm going to play with this more in the future. I think reducing the magnification on the scope will help a great deal.

I also stopped by the big store to pick up some more reloading bits - shellholders for the brass trimmer, (300) .223 FMJ bullets, and (200) rounds .308 BTHP bullets. I tried to get a box of Winchester small rifle primers, but they were sold out. Plus, I forgot to get the powder funnel I wanted to pick up.

Well, it took me almost a year to get it done, but I've reloaded my first ammunition.

Those are 10mm rounds, 180 grain Full Metal Jacket, atop 8.1 grains of blue dot. The cookbook says that will give me 1000 fps. These should be fairly mild, as it looks like I can go upwards of 10 grains before hitting max pressure. Keep your fingers crossed that I still have all mine after I test fire these this weekend.

I came home to find a few boxes on the door step. First, I received a RCBS ChargeMaster 1500 Powder scale & dispenser combo from Midway. Expensive, yes, but I have read nothing but great reviews. I'm a believer in the axiom "Buy quality and only cry once", so I did.

Second, I found a box of garden seeds for this year's garden. I decided to try mostly heirloom strains of vegetables this year. This shipment had spinach and an assortment of green, gold and purple bush beans. Also included were some free samples - marked as "experimental" varieties - of cucumbers, tomatos, sweet corn, beans and peas. I don't have room for the corn (maybe I'll make some...), and wasn't planning on growing the peas, but I'll see if I can get them in early enough.

My tomatos and peppers should be coming soon in another order, and my replacement horseradish is backordered.

Now I need to start thinking about getting the new raised bed in place, which means tearing down the old shed.