Mark’s back has been hurting for several days and yesterday he kind of laid low and rested.  It seems to have done him some good.  He wasn’t in as much pain when he woke up this morning.  I asked him if we could go shooting because we haven’t done that for a couple weeks, and he said yes.

I guess we got down there around 10:30 in the morning, with 200 rounds of .22s.  We stopped at the 25 yard range first because Mark decided it was time to “zero” the rifle I’ve been using.  I’m not exactly sure what the term actually means, but as I understand it, by shooting at a closer target that you can see well, if you aim the crosshairs of the scope dead center and your shot comes out to the left or right or up or down, you use that to figure out how you need to adjust your scope.  Once you have it adjusted at closer range, theoretically, it should work on more distant targets too.  Mark watched where my shots were hitting if I centered my crosshairs and worked on the scope for a long time till what I saw through the scope matched up with the direction the bullet went after it left the barrel of the gun.

Then we went to the 50 yard range, and there was a bit of tweaking that needed doing.  After that was done, Mark used his big scope to be able to tell me where my shots were landing because I couldn’t see the target very well.  He would tell me, for instance, that my last shot hit at the 3:00 position on the 10 ring, and I would adjust a little to the left so I could hit the red dot in the center.

Mark thought that once a scope was set up, it would work for any shooter, but after I fired 100 rounds, I began scoping for Mark and he was consistantly shooting between 12:00 and 3:00 in the 9 and 10 rings.  (10 is the center ring around the red dot at the center.)  He finally gave up trusting the scope and began following my suggestions based on what I could see very clearly through his high powered scope.  He got so good at it that by the time he was done with his 100 rounds, the whole center was blown out except for the 9:00 to 12:00 part that was bravely hanging on!

We looked at the time and it was 2:30 by the time we ran out of ammo.  We spent about four hours shooting and being each other’s eyes.  It’s kind of like one of those trust walks where one person is blindfolded and led around by someone else.  We were happy and close to each other after sighting for each other.  We were also starved, so we came home and had lunch together and grinned at each other across the table!