A good friend of mine Mike recently bought a new Springfield XD 9mm, so a bunch of us gathered up our favorite guns and headed up north to Flagstaff to go shooting. Sam has a great place to shoot close to his house, in an abandoned mining pit right across the highway. It really is a fun ride up there, and it got noticeably cooler as we climbed elevation. We were hauling up the mountain in my GTO, and registered a 480ft. per minute climb rate at one point on my skydiving altimeter! Woohooo!!
Mike, Ben and I met Sam and his wife Tia, loaded up and headed to the pit to set up tables, targets and such. We had a couple of ARs, a semi-auto shotty, a .22 or two, Ben brought his cool Sig .223 pistol and we had a plethora of handguns to choose from. We certainly had paper targets, and brought a bunch of clays to shoot at, but the coolest targets of all is the Tannerite! Tannerite is a perfectly legal explosive target that will make a BANG and a puff of smoke when you hit them with a rifle round. It is shipped in a plastic jar of foam pellets with the grey/blue powder propellant in a separate bag. Once mixed up and shaken thoroughly, they make great targets at about 100 to 125 yards. We only had one 1lb boomer (large Tannerite) that day, and set up the jar in a purposely difficult long shot under half a steel oil drum, and got started.
Mike looked VERY comfortable with his new XD, and was shooting impressively by the time we wrapped up for the day. We were taking turns with each other’s guns and having a great time, but I really wanted to concentrate on dialing in my iron sights on my Ruger SR-556 prior to making a decision on optics. Ben and Sam helped with a final adjustment on my front post and BINGO! Man was I dialed in! I was dealing deadly damage to the clays way out past 100 yards, even with my ‘old man eyes”! I was so impressed that I handed my rifle to Sam and asked him to verify how straight this thing was shooting. Well he grabbed the rifle, took a knee and hit the shot of the day by hitting the difficult Tannerite target FIRST SHOT!! Boom goes the Tannerite, Baby! The oil drum went flying up about 30-40ft in the air, and traveled to the right even more than that. Awesome!
Another great day of shooting, Mike did really good and my iron sights are definitely dialed in. I am ready to start thinking about optics, and want to thank Sam and Tia for the hospitality. Sam wins the blog ‘shout out’ for shot of the day, and Tia’s soundtrack was awesome! I highly recommend that shooters check out the Tannerite, simply Google it (and then look it up on the computer) and impress your friends with how fun it makes your next outing. Always remember to be safe and responsible out there, we need you guys for the revolution!
