A few years ago I took up
the sport of Long Distance Target shooting. Its a good sport for an
86 year old man because you get to do it laying down... As a boy I
had a BB gun and at age seven I owned a .22 rifle. My father was
the Small Bore champion of California in 1936, the year I was born.
So he started me shooting as soon as I was able to hold the gun. At
10 years of age he had me shooting a Remington 45-70 offhand. I only
weighed 80 pounds at the time so it really rocked me. Three years
ago I decided that I needed to get back to shooting as I was now a
Federally Licensed Firearms dealer. Made sense for me to be a
shooter as well.
The
unofficial world record for distance was 4 miles so I planned to do
4.5 miles. I started my training with a Savage .338 Lapua but it was
not capable of the distance I needed.
So I purchased an antique .50
BMG single shot bolt action rifle. “Antique” in this category of
weapons means that it was built in 2004... Made by
Fisher on a Macmillan action with a very heavy Stainless Steel barrel
by Lilja. It weighs a bit under 60 pounds. Not a gun to be fired
from the “standing position.” The weight, while a handicap in
offhand, does a lot to limit the recoil in the prone position. It
has a muzzle break that looks like the one on a tank that also helps
in the recoil reduction. The result is that it's not much worse than
a double barrel 12 GA shotgun firing both barrels at the same time.
Recently,
that record has been extended to 4.5 miles so I better get going
because I don't think the 50 BMG can reach five miles so I will have
to get ANOTHER gun if I want to compete. But as they say, “Too
many wives can be a problem, but you can never have too many guns!”.
