Cabin Fever Challenge
13 March 2025 07:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dime_novel_heroThe Cabin Fever Challenge (link) is an online test of musketry. Participants on the clock will fire five rounds from a standing position, five rounds kneeling, five round prone, and five rounds sitting at an 8 inch diameter target at 100 yards (or 4” at 50 yds for 22 rimfire). Videos of these courses of fire are submitted and shared for whatever accolades people get for posting videos online.
Some years ago, I saw a video online of a cyclist presenting on the C&O Canalway. I had been riding the Great Allegheny Passage for years and thought to myself “Hey, I could do that.” I had worked for years at a science center doing presentations. I have been presenting history and Victorian technology presentation at steampunk and other conventions. I have no issues standing in front of an audience of nearly any size, it should have been easy. So, I loaded up my trailer, rode out on the trail, set up a camera on a tripod, no one around for miles, and completely froze up. Somehow I could not talk to the camera.
So, while the shooting part would be “easy” in that I have no problems aiming and pulling a trigger, doing so on camera with introductions and commentary was going to be. . . well. . . a challenge.
On Tuesday, I had to take off a day of work to get my car serviced and, after that, went to the club and set up. It was going to be a beautiful sunny day with moderate temperatures. A little bit breezy and the ground was still quite wet.
The club has a building with shooting benches and target frames at 50 and 100 yards and it would have been nice to shoot at those already set up frames but the Challenge requires shooting prone and the benches and stations are not set up for that and especially not that AND filming. Therefore I set up on some raised ground next to the building and hauled my standup target out into the field.
The wind knocked it over.
So I went out with some cut wood to hold it in place. It fell down again so I took another chunk of wood, which seemed to do the trick.
I will need to get some tent pegs for the future.
Confirm the distance with a range finder. Set up the shooting position. Set up the camera. Do some test shots to make sure that I would be in frame. Adjust. Adjust again. Film my introduction. Fail half way through. Try again. Hate it. Try again. Hate that, too. Finally get something acceptable. I would have done much better if I had an actual audience.
I am shooting my grandfather’s Winchester Model 67. The finger groove on the stock identifies this as one of the first production models, manufactured between 1934 and 1937. It has a cut and some holes on ether side of the stock so I am pretty sure that, at some time, my grandfather mounted a saddle scope mount that he probably machined himself and refinished the stock. I don’t know what happened to that mount or scope, it was long gone by the time he gave me this rifle.
The ammunition I am using is a box of Remington Kleanbore Standard Velocity 22 Long Rifle. Lot number and box styling indicate these were manufactured between 1949 and 1960 (in the video, I incorrectly say 1960s).
Last month I was at a public range on State Game Lands and ran the course of fire several times and did a lot better than I did this time. I was getting 7 hits give or take. Had one run I got 10 hits.
In sportsball, there is a concept called “Any given Sunday.” The best team can loose a game. The worst team can win a game. There are so many variables on any given day that it can go either way, probably one way more than the other, but it is not a given.
Why was this outing so bad compared to what I had done before? Camera shy? Frustration from having to set up the target multiple times? The wind? Lighting? Dehydration? Fatigue from having walked out and back multiple times? Tired from the recent Daylight Savings Time change? Old ammunition? I was supposed to have a new glasses prescription delivered by now, do I need new glasses? Was it aliens?
If I am to attribute my poor performance to any one thing that I might be able to do something about, it would be my sights.
Running my previous shooting through an app like Range Buddy measures a somewhat consistent point of impact up and to the right by an inch or so. To adjust the sight would require me to knock the dovetail sight a very small fraction of an inch to the right. There are tools that will make these precise adjustments but I don’t have them. Instead, I chose to adjust my point of aim, which I think is a major point of failure.
Sight picture is layers of concentricity. The rear sight surrounds the front sight, and that surrounds the target. The brain can do a very good job of lining all those things up. But if I want to specifically not line those things up, any consistency or precision will be reduced.
And that’s what happened here. My group is much larger than before and all over the place because I was lining up the rear sight with the front sight with the sort of upper right hand side of the black bullseye at 50 yards. Next time I either keep it on the center and accept the grouping not being centered, take it to a gunsmith with the proper tool, or take a punch and hammer to the range, tap, shoot, tap, shoot, and adjust again until it’s better.
* sigh *
Next up, my Rossi 92.
In Cowboy Action Shooting, lever gun rifle shooting is usually at very large steel targets (18 inches) at distances under 10 yards. The only reason to miss is to go too fast. But for the Cabin Fever Challenge, it pushes that range out to 100 yards at an only 8 inch diameter target. 45 Colt is a big, slow bullet, and I only happen to have the light target loads for CAS. Throwing that out to 100 yards increases that challenge.
Same problem.
From the bench, my Rossi 92 shoots high and to the left. A good 7 inches at 100 yards. While I can adjust the vertical with a blade adjustment, any horizontal adjustment would, like with my Winchester 67, require a tool or a hammer. If I didn’t use Kentucky Windage at all, even a fairly tight group might have scored zero hits. But aiming to the right did seem to bring center of my group into the bullseye as I should want but the group itself opened up so much that a quarter of the shots didn’t even hit the cardboard.
Coming up over Memorial Day weekend, I am going to be attending Woodland Brutality. Shooting the Dead Eye division of that will require me to do better with my lever gun. Maybe I can get away with Kentucky Windage for some things, as most of the shooting will be at shorter ranges (though nothing as close as in CAS), but I will also need to be able to reach out to 100 yards. If I want to ever get good, I will need to adjust the sights so that my brain can do the appropriate concentricity processing.
Next up, nothing.
I had brought my M1 Garand with me and was going to do a run with that, but by this time I was getting frustrated with my target getting blown over. Three big blocks of wood weren’t enough to guarantee it wouldn’t fall over yet again, so I called it a day.
Some years ago, I saw a video online of a cyclist presenting on the C&O Canalway. I had been riding the Great Allegheny Passage for years and thought to myself “Hey, I could do that.” I had worked for years at a science center doing presentations. I have been presenting history and Victorian technology presentation at steampunk and other conventions. I have no issues standing in front of an audience of nearly any size, it should have been easy. So, I loaded up my trailer, rode out on the trail, set up a camera on a tripod, no one around for miles, and completely froze up. Somehow I could not talk to the camera.
So, while the shooting part would be “easy” in that I have no problems aiming and pulling a trigger, doing so on camera with introductions and commentary was going to be. . . well. . . a challenge.
On Tuesday, I had to take off a day of work to get my car serviced and, after that, went to the club and set up. It was going to be a beautiful sunny day with moderate temperatures. A little bit breezy and the ground was still quite wet.
The club has a building with shooting benches and target frames at 50 and 100 yards and it would have been nice to shoot at those already set up frames but the Challenge requires shooting prone and the benches and stations are not set up for that and especially not that AND filming. Therefore I set up on some raised ground next to the building and hauled my standup target out into the field.
The wind knocked it over.
So I went out with some cut wood to hold it in place. It fell down again so I took another chunk of wood, which seemed to do the trick.
I will need to get some tent pegs for the future.
Confirm the distance with a range finder. Set up the shooting position. Set up the camera. Do some test shots to make sure that I would be in frame. Adjust. Adjust again. Film my introduction. Fail half way through. Try again. Hate it. Try again. Hate that, too. Finally get something acceptable. I would have done much better if I had an actual audience.
I am shooting my grandfather’s Winchester Model 67. The finger groove on the stock identifies this as one of the first production models, manufactured between 1934 and 1937. It has a cut and some holes on ether side of the stock so I am pretty sure that, at some time, my grandfather mounted a saddle scope mount that he probably machined himself and refinished the stock. I don’t know what happened to that mount or scope, it was long gone by the time he gave me this rifle.
The ammunition I am using is a box of Remington Kleanbore Standard Velocity 22 Long Rifle. Lot number and box styling indicate these were manufactured between 1949 and 1960 (in the video, I incorrectly say 1960s).
Last month I was at a public range on State Game Lands and ran the course of fire several times and did a lot better than I did this time. I was getting 7 hits give or take. Had one run I got 10 hits.
In sportsball, there is a concept called “Any given Sunday.” The best team can loose a game. The worst team can win a game. There are so many variables on any given day that it can go either way, probably one way more than the other, but it is not a given.
Why was this outing so bad compared to what I had done before? Camera shy? Frustration from having to set up the target multiple times? The wind? Lighting? Dehydration? Fatigue from having walked out and back multiple times? Tired from the recent Daylight Savings Time change? Old ammunition? I was supposed to have a new glasses prescription delivered by now, do I need new glasses? Was it aliens?
If I am to attribute my poor performance to any one thing that I might be able to do something about, it would be my sights.
Running my previous shooting through an app like Range Buddy measures a somewhat consistent point of impact up and to the right by an inch or so. To adjust the sight would require me to knock the dovetail sight a very small fraction of an inch to the right. There are tools that will make these precise adjustments but I don’t have them. Instead, I chose to adjust my point of aim, which I think is a major point of failure.
Sight picture is layers of concentricity. The rear sight surrounds the front sight, and that surrounds the target. The brain can do a very good job of lining all those things up. But if I want to specifically not line those things up, any consistency or precision will be reduced.
And that’s what happened here. My group is much larger than before and all over the place because I was lining up the rear sight with the front sight with the sort of upper right hand side of the black bullseye at 50 yards. Next time I either keep it on the center and accept the grouping not being centered, take it to a gunsmith with the proper tool, or take a punch and hammer to the range, tap, shoot, tap, shoot, and adjust again until it’s better.
* sigh *
Next up, my Rossi 92.
In Cowboy Action Shooting, lever gun rifle shooting is usually at very large steel targets (18 inches) at distances under 10 yards. The only reason to miss is to go too fast. But for the Cabin Fever Challenge, it pushes that range out to 100 yards at an only 8 inch diameter target. 45 Colt is a big, slow bullet, and I only happen to have the light target loads for CAS. Throwing that out to 100 yards increases that challenge.
Same problem.
From the bench, my Rossi 92 shoots high and to the left. A good 7 inches at 100 yards. While I can adjust the vertical with a blade adjustment, any horizontal adjustment would, like with my Winchester 67, require a tool or a hammer. If I didn’t use Kentucky Windage at all, even a fairly tight group might have scored zero hits. But aiming to the right did seem to bring center of my group into the bullseye as I should want but the group itself opened up so much that a quarter of the shots didn’t even hit the cardboard.
Coming up over Memorial Day weekend, I am going to be attending Woodland Brutality. Shooting the Dead Eye division of that will require me to do better with my lever gun. Maybe I can get away with Kentucky Windage for some things, as most of the shooting will be at shorter ranges (though nothing as close as in CAS), but I will also need to be able to reach out to 100 yards. If I want to ever get good, I will need to adjust the sights so that my brain can do the appropriate concentricity processing.
Next up, nothing.
I had brought my M1 Garand with me and was going to do a run with that, but by this time I was getting frustrated with my target getting blown over. Three big blocks of wood weren’t enough to guarantee it wouldn’t fall over yet again, so I called it a day.
