This morning is a fine Fall season day. The Fall Foliage colors here in the Great North Woods is peaking. Tourists line the roads snapping pictures in vain a attempt to take back home with them a piece of the wondrous beauty they hehold from the windows of automobiles and tour buses.
But it does not work for them. As you soon as you attempt to capture beauty and mountain freedom, you loose it, much as we are losing it all today.
This morning is also a fine time for some quick rifle training on the Odin Mountain Compound (OMC). So I donned my regulation camouflage clothing, the full battle belt, grabbed the Diana Air King Model 54 caliber 22 pellet rifle and went out back of the Odin Mountain Barracks (OMB).
In this first picture I am kneeling at the 40-yard stake while performing my “Ten Threes” workout routine. Note the 8-1/2 x 11-inch sheet of white paper being used as a target.
Even just forty yards is a fair distance to accurately hit a target when unsupported, on uneven ground, and rapid firing an air rifle. Certainly not the same as at the range on a bench rest.
The next picture shows Odin at the 25-yard stake using a pair of Bushnell compact 12-power binoculars to view impacts on the target.
This target range is located along a skidder track utilized by loggers when they removed a number of huge white pines and hardwoods just over a year ago. I keep it brushed out on a regular basis since the forest is much like a jungle and new growth sprouts up surprisingly quickly. If I left this patch of land alone with a year it would be completely filled in with vegetation taller than a man.
Note just how far 40-yards is in this forest. Just off the skidder clearing you cannot even see half that distance due to the thick forest, brush, and shadows.
So I took my thirty shots, 10 each of standing, kneeling, and prone. Now I am back at the Odin Mountain Barracks (OMB) writing this.
Yes indeed, training with an air rifle at 25 or 40 yards is a good idea. I’ll let you use it too.