My son, Alex and I went to the range last weekend. He wanted to confirm zero on his rifle before the start of hunting season, and I wanted to do the same with a 50 caliber muzzleloading caplock rifle.
I don’t know how explain this, but it wasn’t until we were half way home that I again realized the fact that I had any problems or concerns in life at all– they had completely gone away for the time we spent at the range.
I hadn’t experienced anything like this in, I don’t know how long. Talk about “Zen and the Art of the Rifle” which is the title of one of Oleg’s recent posts.
Alex had some of his custom ammo left over from the Boomershoot, and since the bullet manufacturer says their VLD is also a decent hunting bullet, he decided to use that accurized load for hunting this year. I won’t tell you the size of his 200 yard group (he fired a total of four rounds that day– three at 200 and one at 50, to get a first-hand feel for the difference in POI) partly because it would be bragging, but mostly because you wouldn’t believe it anyway, coming as it did from a “mere” Ruger M77 MKII. I had to explain to him that this was something remarkable, and yet maybe I shouldn’t have bothered.
It was one of those few days in life wherein one can truly say one was “at peace”. But you don’t realize its happening until its over.