A few days ago, I (finally) picked up my combo gun. That Merkel is so sweet you wonīt believe it. The day after it was new in the house, me and Urban went to the range to sight in the Aimpoint for a dead-on zero at 100 meters. I never really finished the zeroing process... Man, that rifle kicks like Pauls .375 off the bench. Or even worse. No kidding. Very light rifle, plastic buttpad and a good factory load pushing out a 150 grn bullet at (stated on the ammo box - have to fire up a few to get empties) 800 m/s really means things happen at the aft end too. I managed to get off eight shots, then I was through. No more shooting that evening with that rifle. Went down in the butts, got Urban out and had him to sit down at the bench to try a few rounds. I even "nicely" offered him to touch off the rest of the box - 12 rounds. He got a good rest, aimed carefully and squeezed that trigger. The look on his face was pure astonishment. And his commen was something along the lines of "oh, that HURT!". He had no need to punish himself more that neccesary, and after the second shot he felt that he could call it a day. We ended up using the rest of the evening dispensing empty 9mm cases on the pistol range instead. And I got an idea for a t-shirt print: "A Glock in recoil is beautiful". How about that?

Now, two days later my new toy has a thick classic looking (Uncle Mikes #57212) 1" rubber buttpad nicely fitted. This should be a huge improvement. And I canīt wait until season starts... This afternoon (if rain stops) I will try out a few more shots.

All this reminds me on why shooting seemed so hard in the beginning. Pain from recoil. A kind advise to eventual beginners out there is "before getting out to the range for the first time, get the thickest buttpad you can find and mount it on your stock". Itīs very easy developing a flinch, and it takes ages to work it off. In my own case, itīs no big deal. I have worked off flinches before, and know the process. But I was stupid enogh to forget the realities of life, and paid for it with a sore shoulder. Still, it was fun!

Per

-- Balltip (ace.rimmer@spray.se), June 30, 2002

Answers

Took me over a week to get to the range to try out the buttpad. Itīs been raining and raining... And yesterday I picked up my new used rowing boat and transported it to the lake. Pikes wonīt go safe this summer...

Anyway, this morning I found the weather to be good, and just after 9 AM I was on the range with combo, Aimpoint and Zeiss. Now some serious shooting should be done!

It took me no more or less than 14 rounds to sight in the two scopes and to find out a few things; 1. Yes, as always a thick rubber buttpad really helps. Sting/pain from recoil was eliminated completely, and the gun had become nice to shoot. 2. Scopes was working exactly as they should regarding adjustments. 3. The quick change scope rings worked as promised: Exellent. They kept zero between shots. 4. Gun is a MOA rifle with the current factory load. 5. All in all that gun, combined with the two sighting systems should be all I could ever ask for in one neat package. I will add an "insertion" barrel to the 20 ga shotgun bore comes fall. It will be in either 7x57R too, making that gun into a double rifle (ah, short ranges in these woods, moose or deer up cloase - a dream!), OR 5,6x50R, turning the gun into a "bergstützen" giving me the opportunity to shoot either big or small game with two different loads having the same POI from the same rifle. All by choosing wich trigger to pull. Beautiful! And after removing that extra barrel, the gun goes back to beeing the ideal combo it is from the beginning.

This will be very interresting comes fall. I believe from todays second trial that this will be THE gun i bring on ALL my hunts for a good time to come.

Per

(When I got back home, the BBQ had been cooking that pork for 1― hours, and it should be done at about noon. Low heat makes really juicy and tender meat. The steak had been sitting in some marinade over the night, made from syrup, chilli, vinegar, cinnamon (ingefära that is, havenīt got a clue to itīs english name really), black pepper, salt, ground red pepper and rosemary. Smells so sweet it almost makes me drool!)

-- Balltip (ace.rimmer@spray.se), July 07, 2002.