Anyone else not shoot their long guns often?

aterry33

aterry33

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It frustrates me, but I don't seem to shoot my long guns hardly at all anymore. The closest ranges where I can shoot them are 45+ mins away (as opposed to 5 minutes for an indoor hangun range). Plus the indoor handgun ranges are protected from the weather.

Anyone else have this problem?
 
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Hunting guns, both rifles and shotguns are used only occasionally, during the various seasons, etc. All my rifles have synthetic stocks, so don't even need sighting in from season to season. The only long guns I shoot very often are the "Assault Rifles" and a 10/22, which are just fun for plinking, although that has become costly.
 
95% of my shooting in the last 7 or so years has been with .22LRs. When I did fire one of my CF rifles I found all that practice with rimfires paid off.
 
Every week. Miss a week once in a great while. Winter weather can cut down the range time for rifle practice.

A trip to the range for a session on the rifle & pistol range. Then a few rounds of skeet.
Find myself shooting more rifle than pistol lately too.
Remington 08 in 30cal, a 1910 M/S and a 30-40 Krag were last weeks line up. Try to mix it up every time.
 
No problems here. I shoot mine quite often. I enjoy both long guns and pistols. They are all fun .I'm fortunate to have alot of land where I can target shoot in my backyard and shoot clay pigeons.
 
I have a number of Military type bolt action rifles. I enjoy shooting them but I like hand guns a bit more, and yes it is a faster trip to the indoor pistol range for me too.
 
I thought I was the only one, I have not shot any of mine in close to a year I hate to say,just find myself going for the handguns instead.
 
Not as much as I used to. I have a Ruger 77R, .30-06, that I used to deer hunt with. I guess I haven't fired it in 5 years.

A couple of AR's: over a year.

An SKS: 2 or 3 years.

A Yugo M98 Mauser: over a year. Arisaka T99: ditto.

BUT, I have an M95 Steyr and a Turk M1938 that I shoot now and then and a sporterized 1917 Enfield (not guilty....it was done decades before I got it) that a shoot fairly often, usually with an MCA .32ACP chamber adaptor or cast bullet loads.

Most of the handguns get used on a regular basis. They just interest me more these days. I also found out that staying tuned up with precision work in a handgun keeps you sharp on a rifle as well, although not the other way around.

It's all good. :p
 
BLACKHAWKNJ said:
95% of my shooting in the last 7 or so years has been with .22LRs. When I did fire one of my CF rifles I found all that practice with rimfires paid off.
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I have to agree on the benefits of rimfire practice. I live in town. Built a backstop from landscape timbers, set twenty yards from the back porch. Using an ancient Remington 341P and CCI CB Longs, I can practice all day relatively silently. For targets, I take little 1/2" X 3/4" sticky tags stuck to a piece of notebook paper. Using yellow tags on the white paper makes a small, hard to see target, particularly with open sights.
 
aterry33 said:
Plus the indoor handgun ranges are protected from the weather.
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I haven't shot at an indoor range since the late 70's. I'm paranoid about breathing in all the lead dust.
I assume that most, if not all, indoor ranges have a ventilation system?

But to reply to your question...no. With me, it's the other way around. I do more shooting with my .22 rimfires and shotguns than I do with my handguns.

Does anyone else worry about the lead dust or is the ventilation adequate? Maybe I'm staying away all for nothing.
 
Heat, wind and numerous competitions at my range are the big issues. Even if you get up early on a weekend to beat the heat and wind, you often find a competition has dibs on the best ranges. The only other issues I have are the AR crowd wincing when I get a big old Mauser or short Enfield out to have a go and finding the brass from my AK.:D
 
Reloading rifle is time consuming. Trimming, weighing each charge. Heck, buying quality bullets - I cast for the pistol.

Solved this dilemma with the purchase of a .44mag lever gun. Now I get to shoot a rifle as often as I like and don't mess with bottleneck cases.

But to answer your question, I find it difficut to get to the good 100 yard range some 50 miles south of me when the indoor range is 12 miles away and they let you shoot rifle (25 yards) but at least you can get a function check out of the deal.
 
I only shoot the rifles and shotguns during hunting seasons. But in SC,you can hunt SOMETHING year round! :D
f.t.

p.s. What the hell is an INDOOR range? ;)
 
I don't shoot any of my guns as often as I'd like. Especially the .22 rifles. I used to love to plink with my .22. When I lived in Michigan, state land was a short drive away, and it was easy to head out for a few hours of fun. Looking back, I now wish I had passed on this house and got one in the country with enough land to set up a range.
 
Skeeziks said:
I haven't shot at an indoor range since the late 70's. I'm paranoid about breathing in all the lead dust.
I assume that most, if not all, indoor ranges have a ventilation system?

But to reply to your question...no. With me, it's the other way around. I do more shooting with my .22 rimfires and shotguns than I do with my handguns.

Does anyone else worry about the lead dust or is the ventilation adequate? Maybe I'm staying away all for nothing.
Click to expand...

All the indoor ranges I have ever used had ventilation that pulled the air from the firing line downrange, some more than others. I have no idea how much is enough. I go to one maybe 3 times a year at most, so I'm hoping that is not often enough to cause a problem IF the ventilation is inadequate.
 
I understand from my range-designer friend that any modern commercial indoor range is ventilated to the extent that lead-contaminated air is exhausted aggressively. Still, I wash up thoroughly after using an indoor range, as I'm suspicious about surface contamination...
 
The hunting rifles I have are family hand-me-downs and I'll not part with them but lately I've been getting rid of a few other rifles in order to buy handguns. There's nowhere to shoot rifles near me so they just sit unused. The ones I've gotten rid of aren't collectible (AKs, ARs, etc.) so I figure I may as well swap them for something I can enjoy whenever I want, indoor handgun ranges being all over the place here.
 
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jkc said:
Hunting guns, both rifles and shotguns are used only occasionally, during the various seasons, etc. All my rifles have synthetic stocks, so don't even need sighting in from season to season. The only long guns I shoot very often are the "Assault Rifles" and a 10/22, which are just fun for plinking, although that has become costly.
Click to expand...
not an uncommon occurrence.
figure between rifle, optics and other odds and ends ye olde deer rifle might well bee a 2 kilobuck rig ... fired less than 20 times a year.
meanwhile the vastly inferior 22 LR in whatever form it may be, sees all the real fun.

I dont have that problem since I cast.
30-06 magnum primer and right around 8 grains of blue dot for starters behind either 150 grains or 200 grains of cast lead has kept her in regular work as a varminter, bunny buster, squirrel smasher, paper puncher and can opener and general all around 22 replacement ... my old Marlin Glenfield mod 60 hasnt seen the range since 1999
 
In this area outdoor ranges are few and far between, I have been an indoor shooter for years. At my usual range the heat and humidity are more of a problem than lead in the air.
I bought adaptor catridges for several of my rifles, they let me engage in what used to be called "gallery" shooting.
 
I have guns, both hand and long, I have never shot and have others that are shot at least a couple times a month and one that has 100 rounds a month at least through it.

The more guns a person owns, the less they will get fired due to preference of one gun over another.

A person is more likely to use a handgun for self defense than a long gun and therefore needs to be more accurate with the handgun. Long guns are mostly used for hunting and are generally resighted just prior to the season each year so it is not as critical but a lot more costly to shoot long guns

True enough, it is more difficult to find a good place to shoot a long gun these days. For me, it is either a local shooting range at 50 feet, an outdoor range that is very pricey to join or drive to my farm some 130 miles away. Here, it is getting worse due to new laws about open range shooting that has been adopted. Louisiana is gun friendly but passed laws as to where one can shoot in rural areas. A person has to either own the land they are shooting on or else have written permission from the owner saying they can shoot on the land. The days of open land shooting are gone.
 
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