I had not shot the 97B"E" since November of 2018! That's a long time. I did my best to clean the barrel yesterday and I took it to the rifle range today. This pistol has a Burris Fast Fire 3 in a dovetail mount and it used to be my bullseye centerfire match pistol. I got all interested in the 9mm pistols for 2019 and neglected the big bore pistols. Until today.
I had swapped some red dots around for the 9mm pistols and so I knew I would have to zero the 97 again before trying 100 yards. Here is the zero target. Four groups of 5 shots each. I was pretty excited to get to shoot the steel pistol and I never did really settle down. First 5 were low, second five were right, third five was further right since I went the wrong direction on the sight adjustment, fourth five were perfect, after undoing the first windage adjustment and going the direction I was supposed to. On a normal day for me, this should have been 5 x ring hits at 50 yards. I couldn't do quite that well, but I did well enough to try 100 yards.
I know about how to set the aim point for 3000 feet and 6000 feet above sea level. It took a few rounds for me to get the aim point high enough to get on paper at 800 feet! I think I wound up with about a 17" hold over for today's conditions. I had another shooter show up just as I was getting ready to shoot another 5 shot group. He wanted to discuss what I was up to, and I needed to settle down anyway, so he set out his target for his rifle and we returned to the firing line. By this time I was pretty confident that the aim point was right and that what would determine the group size now was my ability to duplicate the hold on every shot. I decided to shoot 10 rounds and then go look. Here is the target:
All 10 shots on the target and 5 in the black. Yes, I blew two shots. Lack of practice with this pistol. I got in 55 shots today with my finest .45, and some of the hits were pretty good!
Gun is fine, even if there is still copper streaks and carbon build up in the barrel. Shooter needs work. Shooter plans to work on it...and clean the gun this evening...even if it doesn't need it.
This is fun. This is not easy.
Joe
