Battleship with .22s
By MARJ LAW
Last week, Joe and I shot at “Battleship” targets with our 9mm handguns at the Wakulla County Sheriff’s Office range.
How’d we do?
Well, this week we plan to shoot at Battleship targets again. But this time with .22s; not 9mm handguns. I guess that tells you how well we did last week. (sigh)
Today, Rona and Wilson are playing with us.
Okay, you’ve guessed that we didn’t shoot wonderfully well last week with my Kimber R7 Mako and Joe’s Springfield Ronin. What happened? Was it the breakfast coffee? Was it just a “bad” day? Or was it… Age?
Oh, couldn’t be. Age? The last time we played Battleship with .22s was back in March 2019 at the WCSO range. That wasn’t so long ago, was it? People don’t age and shoot worse in a mere 7 years. Do they? Do we?
Maybe we didn’t do so well last week because we were shooting 9mm guns. This week we’ll do better with the smaller caliber .22 handguns like we did in 2019.
In 2019, Joe shot with his K-22 Masterpiece Smith & Wesson Model 17. I used my Ruger Mark II. Today, Joe is shooting his K-22 again, but I’m using a newer Ruger Mark III.
Rona and Wilson are also mature shooters, and are happy to shoot Battleship with us. Rona has a Walther and Wilson has a Buckmark. It will be interesting to see the results of shooting four different handguns: all .22s.
The four of us plan to shoot 26 rounds each into the targets.
This is going to be fun. These .22s don’t have much recoil. Not like the 9mm guns of last week. They will make the difference. No 9mm, just the long-barreled target-shooting 22s. We’ll be outdoors and we’ll improve our hand/eye coordination. We’ll do so much better than we did last week. Rona and Wilson won’t have any problem shooting at their targets either. They practice fairly regularly with their familiar guns.
The Battleship targets have 1 to 5 circles in each group and they are on a blue-checkered background. Inspecting these targets more closely, I realize that those circles are really quite small. Barely an inch in diameter.
Back at the shooting bench, I squint. Even though the target is in the closest position at about 21 feet from the shooting position, I can barely make out the little red circles. At least they’re easier to see than the green circles on Joe’s target.
“The circles,” explains Joe, “denote boats. Our targets have one circle representing a gunboat, two circles which are submarines, three circles are destroyers, four circles are cruisers, and the five-circle grouping is the carrier.”
“This is how it works,” he continues. “You pick a boat, and shoot a hole into all the circles of the boat. When you’ve ‘sunk’ one boat, go on to the next until you have sunken all my ships. Since my K-22 is a revolver and can carry six shots, I’ll just continue filling it until I’ve shot 26 times. We’ll shoot our each other’s boats until they are all sunk, or until we’ve shot the 26 times.”
“Remember,” he says to me, “your Ruger has very little recoil. The barrel is one-half inch shorter than my K-22, but they weigh about the same. And now you’ve put on a green reflex sight on your Ruger. It’ll be close to an even match. Really. You can go first.”
It has truly been some time since I’ve shot the Ruger. It holds 10 rounds in its magazine, so I fill two magazines and put six rounds into a third magazine. Funny, but the gun seems heavier than I remember.
With some serious squinching, I hone in on one of those itty-bitty red circles.
Bang! Bang!
I keep shooting until all my mags are empty. I look out to the target which is just those 21 feet away. Strange. Not many of the red dots seem to show that they’ve been struck.
Joe fills his K-22 and will continue filling it until he shoots 26 rounds as well.
“You’ve got an advantage,” he complains again. “You have a green dot reflex sight on your Ruger.”
“True,” I return. Not at all feeling competitive, right? “But you’ve had your gun for decades and decades. And it has a longer barrel. That’s your advantage.”
He shoots. Bang! I keep listening as he shoots all his 26 rounds. Finally, Joe is out of ammunition.
He lowers his K-22 and gazes at my target.
“What’d you get?” he asks.
I pick up binoculars to see the unharmed green circles on his target. “My” boats are still alive in the water.
Then I look at my mostly pristine target. Joe’s boats are still safe in the water too. Drat.
We hear that Rona and Wilson have stopped shooting also.
We call “cold” and Rona calls “cold” back at us. Nodding in agreement, we all trudge downrange toward our targets.
“Remember,” calls Joe to them, “if your shot even touches the black rimming on the red or green circles, it counts.”
We begin counting our strikes.
“If one shot touches the rim of two circles at the same time, is that one hit or two?” asks Rona.
Joe thinks for a moment. “That counts as two hits.” He turns to me. “We need all the hits we can tally.”
We walk from target to target. It’s depressing. I look at Rona and Wilson and think, “They used to be better shooters too!” But I don’t say that aloud.
Ah, well. So what if we don’t shoot so well as we did 7 years ago? We’re at the range with friends. The sun is shining and a light breeze is blowing. It’s not too hot yet and we have time for practicing some more before lunch.
Lunch!
We all perk up as we agree on a place for lunch. When we get there, we sit down and catch up on what we’ve been doing for the last month or so. We discuss family members, and trips we’re planning. But we don’t say much about our little shooting competition.
“Sometimes,” Joe says, bringing that subject to a conclusion, “it’s just not the right day for shooting.”
Marj Law is the former director of Keep Wakulla County Beautiful who has become an avid shooter in retirement.