Four wheelin' (wheel gunning, that is)

A Range Report

Range Report

Howdy, folks. Welcome back for another Tale of… Well, this time it’s four guns. I managed to find a few spare minutes and got in a range trip. It was a 25 yd indoor range and in the middle of the day, so I had it all to myself. Perfection for this sort of evaluation.

The four guns I took, I’ve written about here. They were my old police trade Model 10, Charter Bulldog, NYPD-spec Model 36, and Model 38 Bodyguard. If you missed any of those profiles, by all means check them out.

The Model 10 I’ve had for probably 25 years at this point. It’s an old friend, so it was my control for this trip. The Bulldog I’ve shot some, but not extensively. The two j-frames, I’d function tested, (which is fancy English for “I shot them into a dirt pile to make sure they went bang,”) but never put on paper.

The range was unusual in that it had no distance markings at all. I worked at three distances, which were as nearly as I could estimate, 25, 50, and the full 75 feet. For ammunition, I fed the three .38s my handloads, a 125 grain soft-cast RNFP over 3.0 grains of Clays, in mixed .38 cases, with Federal magnum primers. The .44, I shot up the five rounds of Hornady Critical Defense in the cylinder, and then switched to some commercial cowboy loads I’ve had sitting around since I started cowboy shooting, so roughly 20 years. They are something along the lines of a 200 grain cast RNFP over 7-ish grains of Unique, in Starline .44 Special brass, with what looks like a Winchester primer. More on those in a bit.

At 25 feet, I started off gently with the Model 10. I was using a target shooter’s 6 o’clock hold. The sights are regulated for something stiffer, and put these softball loads low. My low hold put them lower still, but the group was nicely centered and not too shabby. My file work on the sight must have compensated for the clocked barrel

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The Model 36 also shot well. Recoil was snappier, as expected from a gun just over half the size but firing the same ammunition. It wasn’t unpleasant, though. The one thing about both Js, is that I need to adjust my grip somewhat. My natural one, with the bore axis aligned with the long bones of the arm, wrist as straight as possible, puts the much of the recoil straight on the thumb knuckle, not the web of the hand.

A surprise, the best group of the day came from the Bulldog, firing the high performance Hornady. I didn’t buy that gun for its supreme accuracy, rather for the potential scenario of “Sir, thou shalt remove thy matron fornicating donkey from my window, lest I remove it from thy person with this fornicatory forty-four!” Still, the premium ammo seems to be well worth the price of admission.

The day’s worst performance came from the same gun, the very next cylinder. Switching to the cowboy stuff got me ten clicks, (I went around twice,) with zero bangs. As mentioned, this is not young ammunition and Winchester primers are not known for being soft. Still, that is far from reassuring.

Next I braced myself to try the Model 38, the Airweight Bodyguard. I was expecting significantly worse than what I got in the recoil department. I honestly didn’t notice a difference between it and the steel framed 36. My guess is the more ergonomic, hand-filling rubber grips make the difference over the slim wood panels and grip converter on the steel gun. It wasn’t nearly as bad as I’d feared. Besides, it’s not like rubber is going to make Quasimodo here any uglier.

What was far worse than I feared, (no, not larks or a wren in my beard,) was the accuracy, or at least the correspondence between point of aim and point of impact. Far left and low.

At further distances, I shifted to a practical shooter’s dead-on hold, and brought the groups up across the board, mostly into the black.

Although I need to have a word with that Bodyguard. It’s very nearly off the paper at the full distance. I haven’t noticed the barrel being clocked, like the Model 10, but it’s a possibility. Whether to have a gunsmith try to correct it, or just the judicious application of a file, something needs to change.

The Bulldog and M36 are both DAO, bobbed hammer guns. The M10 and M38 are both capable of being cocked, but for today’s purposes, everything was shot double action. I did switch from “trigger cocking” and a target shooter’s surprise break, to a practical shooter’s straight roll through, part way through. As you can see on this target, the group opened somewhat and POI shifted, but that’s still decent work, in my humble opinion.

Much learning was learned, but much is still to be learned. For example, if you’re going to the range, don’t forget the .22!