Nice Day for It!

I spent a few hours at the public range today. I am of the opinion that those who have never had the pleasure of blowing up a water-filled milk jug from 100 yards away with a high-powered rifle cannot truly be said to have lived. I'm borrowing that phraseology from an old gun writer from Lewiston named Jack O'Connor. He said it regarding the experience of trying to hit a running cottontail with a semi-automatic .22 rifle. And he was basically right. But for me, it's the joyful experience of hydrostatic shock that seems to impart more life to life.

Water, like everything else, tends to remain at rest unless acted on by some outside force. Today's force was a .366" diameter bullet weighing 286 grains and moving in the neighborhood of 2,400 fps (feet per second.) Robert Jones, a former student and longtime friend of mine, actually managed to get a photograph of the moment of explosion one time when I ventilated a milk jug with extreme prejudice on the desert west of Rexburg. I was using a .223 that day. Tiny bullet, lots of speed. If I can find that photo, I'll stick it in the old blog some day. It's the kind of picture that makes a guy smile. Thousands of droplets of water are stopped in the act of escaping in all directions at astonishing speed. A little of the jug and it's yellow lid are visible, to remind the viewer of what it once was.

Once of the rifles I used today in this worthy pursuit was my CZ 550 American in 9.3x62mm. Its bullets are of .366" diameter. This makes it a "medium bore" rifle, larger than .30 caliber (.308") and smaller than .40, 41, and .45 caliber rifles and larger which are generally known as "big bores." My cartridge, the 9.3x62mm, was designed in 1905 by Otto Bock, an employee of the great Peter Paul Mauser, himself! The idea was to provide a cartridge that would feed through an action of the same length as that employed by the German 8x57 mm military cartridge, but which would throw larger, heavier bullets at African game with sufficient force to topple them, thus freeing German colonists and hunters from the humiliation of having to use British rifles and cartridges.

A picture of the "medium bore" can be seen above on the left. As you can well imagine, the little rifle kicks pretty hard, but I've felt worse. Besides, this one has such a wonderful trigger, and tends to shoot almost all ammunition with acceptable or more than acceptable accuracy. A couple of weeks ago, my friend Aric Armell set a bright green golf ball on the 100 yard dirt berm. I asked whether he minded if I had a go at it. He graciously consented, assuming that I'd miss and he'd get to plink at it with his . 22 WMR Marlin bolt rifle. As he watched, he says,the dirt berm "seemed to swallow up the ball." It hasn't been seen since.

That was done with a 270 grain semi-pointed bullet by Speer. I rezeroed today for a 286 grain Nosler Partition bullet. This renders the rifle the equal of anything on the American continent. It pleases me to own such a thing. My friend Clark Myers also has a medium bore rifle. His is one of Colonel Jeff Cooper's famous scout rifles, the "Lion Scout" in this case. It shoots bullets of .375" diameter. Its cartridge is called the .376 Steyr, named for the Austrian firm which builds the rifles. It, too, renders one the equal of any creature on the continent. Belonging to the "medium bore" club is an unending and unalloyed joy for me. You ought to try it.