Some time last year the person who taught me to shoot and i had a falling out when i became smothered and lost all aspect of independence. Thats a good way to ensure that you’ve lost me, is smother me, just an FYI for the world. I cant be consumed and i cant be controlled. Im very strong willed and i will have my freedom. Well, i’ll forever be grateful that he helped me pick out what is the perfect rifle for me and that he taught me to shoot, but the fact of the matter is, as with anything in life, if you dont use it, you lose it. Since we have fallen out, my days of going to his land to shoot rocks apart from across the dam he built, from one cliffside to another…those days are over. I dont have 200 acres. I have 2. So, if i want to continue shooting practice in solitude and not share a noisy extroverted space with others at a gun range…i have to find a way to reasonably and accurately contain my ammo and ensure its not going towards the street or the neighbors’ properties. Thus; the shooting box. Guaranteed to contain bullets from any 22 as long as you are a good enough shot to actually hit the box. Its more of a triangle really than a box. It arrived in pieces in the mail with photos of how to assemble it instead of words but because the photos are all taken in shade and the thing is all black, it just looks like a black triangular blob. The final image was indoors in good lighting so i prayed for guidance and then reverse engineered the thing from the final photo and assembled.
I know i can shoot something on the ground at point blank range. if i ever find a raccoon or a fox in the chicken pen or a rabid animal that needs put out of its misery, and by golly they want to stand still at point blank range: no problem. The question is: can i shoot something trying to escape me at a moments notice without having time to do anything but grab the rifle and go back outside? If an animal perceives you are going to end it for trying to raid the chicken coop, its not going to wait for you to set up your little rifle stand of bean bags and set the scope. I do have bags full of dried rice to set the rifle up if im in a blind and want to hunt deer but thats not what im primarily going to be using this rifle for. I need to keep building muscle memory so that i wont even have to think about the steps involved in loading, safety off, racking, anchoring the rifle against my body, pulling trigger, and expelling shell. I need to make sure that all that is muscle memory, like i could do it in my sleep, so i can focus all my senses on the animal and not the gun. I also need to know: without setting up, with wind, with holding the rifle in the air instead of on a stand, what is my window of accuracy, what is my range? That will help me determine how close i need to get before trying to dispatch a chicken predator because as it stands now, if a coon had a chicken, and i shot from the shed with the wind conditions of today, there’d be no guarantee i’d get the coon instead of the chicken. Unfortunately yesterday held 15 to 20 mph winds and today 30 mph winds. Thats why i washed the car yesterday. I thought i’d wait and do it sunday since i figured it was so windy it’d just put dust on whatever soap water i threw on the car. However, after checking the forecast i realized i had to wash the car after work on saturday because sunday would be worse. After work and washing the car and putting all the potted trees back outside due to warmer weather, my autoimmune disorder decided i was done and my body quit for the day with a full body arthritis flare up. So, constructing the shooting box got pushed to sunday. The original plan was to just construct it today and shoot another day but then i realized i was missing an opportunity. Shooting without a stand in 30 mph winds gusts…i would get an opportunity to establish a worst case scenario baseline. This would be my range in windy conditions so if the wind were still i could expect a smaller range that the bullets may spread out from my target critter. I wanted to make sure the box worked as well. It was important to me that my neighbors feel safe that when i was shooting, no stray bullets would be finding sheep or longhorns or car tires. I am aware 2 acres is different from two hundred acres and with the right to own firearms comes a responsibility to make sure they are not a danger to the neighbors or passing cars. I took 4 bullets outside with me. I shot twice from the middle of the field and then backed up and shot twice from the greenhouse shed. It was immensely frustrating because right as i’d get the shot lined up in the scope the wind would blow and the scope would no longer be lined up with my eye and i’d be looking half at a black semi circle and half at the target. I thought about going to get the rice bags and setting up on the greenhouse porch for just one of the shots, to see how close i could put the shot to the middle of the target, but i told myself that wasnt the assignment. We could deal with ego another day. For now, i needed to establish that the box indeed did stop the bullets, build some muscle memory for loading and racking the gun, and establish the distance i needed to be standing from the target to effectively dispatch a fox or a raccoon terrorizing the chickens. What i learned is that i needed to be middle of the field distance away from the target critter if i wanted to take a head shot and if i was greenhouse shed distance away, it had better be a body shot and then finish it with a head shot once closer to end its suffering. Of course, if it is still in the pen and not on the outside of the pen, im fairly certain that can be a point blank range situation at which point i wont have to worry about accidentally clipping a chicken. I will practice again on a weekend where there are not 30 mph winds and see if on a still day it could be a head shot from the greenhouse shed distance but honestly im fine with taking a body shot and finishing it up close seconds later. As long as the critter that now knows the chicken pen as a lunch buffet is not still walking around to come back later. Ive got a whole new shipment of non predator savvy chicks coming from ohio in mid march and i’ve got to be on predator duty because those tiny suckers tend to stand too close to the fence until they learn by trial of fire that critters can stick their arms through the rectangular openings. Anyways, ive got to continue the laundry and get the ladder out and start taking down the old chains and putting up the new chains in the greenhouse for this year’s lowered grow lights for better drained and vitamin d’d vegetables, but, the shooting box is set up and operational.
