Question of the Day: How Do You Plink?

1. I run a vending route for a living. I seldom have to stale out sodas, but when I do, I save them for just this purpose. I’ve made a little “bench” to hold them at my private range (which needs rebuilt- it’s gotten all shot up somehow). Btw, don’t be too impressed with the “private range”- it’s just a bit of a berm where somebody made a halfhearted start on digging a stock tank at some point.

2. Gangbangers in east Baltimore provided a great target for me once. Citizen’s arrest went wrong.

   I haven’t plinked before, but I must just start. Looks great.

3. I’m in the same boat until someday I can move to a less densely populated area with longer and less restrictive public or private ranges.

   In the meantime, my club has .22lr silhouette matches where you can shoot at steel chickens, rams, ducks, etc. That’s the best I can hope for to get my plink on.

4. I just go out to my folk’s house and pick suitable targets out of the garbage. Phone books, pizza boxes, beer cans, and milk jugs. Good stuff.

5. Used playing cards. Balloons filled with air or water. Interesting things that fall off the road or the railroad line.

6. Nowhere to plink here, either. Sucks.

7. Nowhere to plink in eastern MA either. But the outdoor range where I shoot allows metal spinner targets, and that’s the next best thing.

8. RF says: “The only thing that really sucks about Rhode Island: I don’t have a place to plink. I love target shooting. There are plenty of indoor and outdoor pistol and rifle ranges within twenty minutes of HQ where I can indulge. There are even a couple where I can move and shoot. But I don’t [yet] have a place where I can plink. I find that enormously frustrating.”

   This is your whole problem, RF. Being a gun loon in RI is like being a surfer in Manhattan. If you had more opportunities to use your firearms, maybe you would stop dreaming up reasons to shoot people with them. Go West, young man, where there is still room for the shooting sports. On your own property, you can do anything legal with firearms you like. You don’t have to live in the country. You can live in the city and keep a place in the country like I do. It’s very affordable, especially compared to the Northeast.

   Out here you can even open carry at the WalMart. Normal people will still think you are a lunatic, but it’s totally legal.

   • I resemble that remark. No seriously, Magoo, I have only ever said there’s one reason to shoot another human being: when your life or the lives of your loved ones are in imminent danger, and imminence is imminent. I would (will?) go west, but I have responsibilities here. I was thinking AZ, but I’m a little leery of what’s going down on our Southern border. Avoiding trouble. Huh. How about that?

     • RF, I don’t think about shooting anyone more than five or six times a day. I’m kidding. Actually, it’s +/- zero times.

     • Lived in Phoenix my whole life Robert. I’m fine. It will be a while before the cartels have the huevos to try something truly nastey here. Plus we have both the largest indoor shooting range and the largest/best government run range in the form of Scottsdale Gun Club and Ben Avery Shooting Facility respectively. Plus all this untamed western desert. And constitutional carry. Come on, it’ll be fun.

       • Considering Austin now . . .

9. Absolutely no place to plink on Long Island. Paper-punching is nice but sometimes you just feel like making some inanimate objects dance in the dirt. 🙁

10. I love those simple holders that Cabelas sells-they are U-shaped holders with a simple metal stake. Insert a clay pigeon into each and you’re ready for instant gratification targets. Also I have some of those geometric shape plastic/rubber sniper targets. One is a top hat” one is a cube and one is a ball. You shoot them and they jump around. They kind of self seal. I believe it is Cheaper Than Dirt that carries them. On paper I always use the bulls eye stickers that show yellow where you hit. I find them cheapest at Walmart .

11. When I was a teenager, my buddies and I would fill an empty pop bottle with water, screw the cap on it, and set it out between 25 and 50 yards. The object of the game was to shoot the cap off the bottle without spilling the water. Once we traded up from our .22’s to .17’s, we could play the same game at 100 yards or more.

12. I was at a camput afew weeks ago on twenty acres. We had a bunch of wooden doors, so we lined up against them, then drew silhouettes with a sharpie. We also shot at a drywall bucket about 150ft across the pond, shot “skeet” with full plastic water bottles.

13. Well let’s see. How about pumpkins filled with water (much more dramatic). Milk containers filled with document shred and water. Clay’s on a board. Various other stale/rotten fruits and veggies (critters need food, too) vs. a plethora of calibers. I know they aren’t considered a “traditional” target that NRA, SASS, or others will recognize but hey, it’s all a form of practice. AND SOME VEGETABLES JUST NEED TO BE SHOT, damn-it! (Frozen Brussel sprouts come to mind…….)

14. There are several ranges about ten minutes from me; I haven’t been to any of them. Haven’t been to a range in over fifty years. I just drive out into the desert and do my shooting. I tend to like the privacy, and not having to worry about whether the guy next to me knows what the hell he’s doing.

15. “If you had more opportunities to use your firearms, maybe you would stop dreaming up reasons to shoot people with them.” I’ve been reading RF’s posts for quite sometime now, and I’ve NEVER gotten the impression that he wants to shoot ANYONE. I think you’d love AZ cuz it’s really a cool place and you don’t even need any type of permit to carry concealed or open. I recently went to the BCI office in Prov. to take my fingerprints for Maine and Arizona, and the young man behind the counter told me that he was from AZ and that I didn’t need a permit to carry there. I already knew that, but I’m collecting permits from every state that will mail me one. I sent out my AZ permit app. on Aug. 11 at 5 pm and the issued my permit on Aug 17, which was even faster than NH, where it took a week. Arizona’s app. states that you need to take their special class in AZ, but they will make an exception if you can show that your qualified and experienced with firarms. I sent them seven ounces of certificates and a page of my current gun permits and they gave me my permit. I’m sending out my CT app next week and this will be the last of my mail order permits. Then I’m going to fly to Wash. State (the District of Commies won’t even consider giving me anything) ND, Idaho, MN, and PA to get their permits in person. These five states are covered under my multiple nonresident permits, but since they’re willing to give me a state issued permit I’ll go there and visit one of the local ranges. I’ll be able to carry in 40 of the so called 50 states ( I don’t like to consider the 10 commie states that are violating my constitutional rights as states, but maybe things will change when hell freezes over.)

16. Joe, look me up when your travels bring you to Washington State. Seriously.

17. Living in Louisville, I only punch holes in paper when it is raining too hard to go out to Knob Creek. They let you shoot at any target you bring except glass. You do, of course, have to clean up the mess.
    The range is also almost 1000 yards, so there is plenty of room for me to practice 400 yard shots with my government spec. M1911A1.

18. I save milk and juice jugs (recycling!), fill those with water and blow them up, also I have a few steel plates that are fun to plink. One very economical item is the trash-picked folding metal chair; you can drive the legs into the ground (still folded) and punch holes it them all day with a .22. Old laptops, oil drums, whatever – but never glass. All this I set up at 25, 50, 75 and 100 yards out on some family property on the South Carolina coast.

    I usually mix in some serious defensive pistol practice as well, just to keep things practical.

19. Ain’t no plinkin’ roundabouts heah. All y’all jest shoot holes in paper lahk God intended.

20. Well, my 100 yard rifle range is on the back porch to the back field…so I was thinking this year I might try growing one of those Atlantic Giant pumpkins and see if I can’t get a nice 500-1000+ pound beast to plink with in the autumn. I’d like to grow five or six of them but ya gotta dig and fertilize at least 400 square feet for each and I got too many other things to do…figure do one this year and at least five next year. If that works out maybe I could host a little TTAG shoot.

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