June 18, 2015 - First time on this beautiful range.

Dustin and I had been talking about going shooting and I had read about the Missouri Conservation Department having Shooting ranges through out the state, one of them is about 20 miles from here in the Gist Ranch Conservation Area so we decided to go and check it out. The GPS got us to the area but we didn't see any signs pointing the way to the range and no one was around so we spent a couple of hours exploring the Gist Ranch and found some nice camp sights. We finally ran into a Missouri Conservation Department employee that mows the grass and asked him were the shooting range was, we followed his directions and still didn't find it. I looked on Google Earth and got a view of were it was and we drove on over to the range. 

Two things surprised me; the first was how nice and maintained the range was and the second was no one else was there. There is a short pistol range, a 25 yard, a 50 yard, a 100 yard, and a 300 yard range, they even had targets for sighting in your rifles… Welcome to Missouri!!! We had been back a couple of times and seen a few people but not many most of the time we have the whole place to ourselves. 

We started on the 25 yard range to sight in the rifles and make we were on paper.

Moved on to the 50 yard range and adjusted the scopes.

And on to the 100 yard range...

Dustin shooting his 30-06 at 100 yards.

I'm shooting my Savage MKII TR 22 long rifle, my Ruger 10/22 in the foreground both have 3x9 power scopes. The Savage does not like the Federal Auto Match ammo we got from Walmart I was shooting 8 to 10" groups at 50 yards and I was really disappointed in the rifle, happen to some CCI standard velocity Target ammo which got the groups down close to an inch. At 100 yards shot several 5 shot groups right at   1-1/4"

10 shot group at 50 yards

One of Dustin's groups I don't know the details.

These are two 5 shot groups I shot at 100 yards...

Haven't tried the 300 yard range yet as I can hardly see the targets...

I would like to try some match ammo and see if I can get tighter groups and try a scope with more Magnification but that will have to be another day. 

Really enjoyed spending time with my son and shooting guns is fun too, the only thing that was hurt was some paper and maybe a little pride...