Nonnumeric Metrics: What makes your home range Home?

[splitbeing]

Hector often frames a project with a framing question: What is the intended use of the airgun?

I'm reminded of the philosopher Wittgenstein, who in his later years after writing an early book in the trenches of war began to ask very different, grounding questions about the meaning of words. "Words are defined by their use." Among other things, he followed with (among other arguments) the word's use requiring knowledge of the game or context in which this use could concretely be pointed to.

For many here, the metrics are often numeric as the health of an airgun and the marketing of an airgun understandably refer to chronograph readings, distance, and group size.

On our home ranges, there are metrics we can point to that have nothing to do with numbers except by abstraction.  The flipping of a steel target, the DRT hunting shot, and the clang of a can, spoon, or gong signify the measure of an airgun in a homegrown way particular to each custodian of a shooting environs.

For my part, the sound of flipping steel, the penetration of cigar tins, the safe breaking of a bottle, and the lack of damage to the more malleable targets are common metrics I can point to in my basement range.

All of these metrics also refer to my enjoyment of the hobby.

What are the particulars of your home range that serve as the measure of an airgun's use? Please do not refer to numeric measures.  In other words, what are the nonnumeric signals of an airgun measuring up to the standards of your home shooting experience?

 

[airgunaut]

The home range or the gun used?

Sound plays a major role for me in either case. The home range has to not be surrounded by nosy parkers who would be bothered by air gun sounds. I don't want to irritate THEM, nor do I want them snooping and complaining about ME on my own property.

Sound of the gun must be low enough that shooting without any ear protection won't make my ears hurt and ring afterward. I do use good ear plugs for most of my practice, but unlike with any PB if I omit them I am not in pain! This allows quickly getting a pest that unexpectedly comes close, and it also means that ambient sounds are all still fully audible when I don't use ear protection. That's helpful when it is windy--I can hear the wind approaching from the next ridge over.

At the same time, I delight in hearing a can DINGed or a spinner TINGed or a shot-up can with some used pellets or pebbles in it rattling.

[KevinJBrown]

My home range is in my back yard.
Trees on right, lake on left, ground slopes down towards lake pretty steeply, makes for interesting air flow over 100 plus yards.

[north country gal]

Our home range is also in our backyard, though I also shoot in the basement, which is a life saver during our long cold and snowy north woods winters. Indoors is all paper punching, but outdoors is paper and steel with a variety of steel targets.



Given our north woods location, our backyard is surrounded by thick forest (we also have frontage on a small lake). Given all the trees, shadows are an issue. I do shoot iron sights, but I have to carefully choose the right time of day to get the right lighting. Scopes allow me to shoot anytime, so most of our air guns wear scopes.



Our neighborhood is a couple dozen homes on acreages, so while our particular location is quite secluded (we get bears and deer in our yard), I restrict my shooing to air guns, only, not only for the sake of keeping things quiet for our neighbors, but also for the sake of safety. Air gun shooting is my favorite and my primary shooting, anyway, so it's not really a sacrifice.

Our hunting days are long behind us, so we are strictly target shooters, now. We enjoy sharing our range and yard with all the wildlife, up here. Never know what we will see walking through our yard or down at the lake, next.

[Hoosier Daddy]

I admit, I have a Chrony and while not a real "Numbers Guy" I use it to check performance of a new gun or a rebuild/modification to an existing one.
Then I just shoot it.
 My home range is up to 35 yards to the south and 120 to the north. I live out in the sticks and no close neighbors (yet)... those that are here, all shoot P.B.s so lucky me noise is not an issue.
 (I say "yet" because my cousin is a "City Gal" who her and her husband have built a new summer home right next to my property line. She grew up here "summer weekends" at her grand-mothers cottage across the lake, so I believe she knows what gun fire is like here on the weekends.)

My "Nonnumeric Metrics" is if I can hit what I am aiming at... whether it is a Spinner, Resetables, or the Ram/turkey/pig/chicken... Pop-cans to paintballs.... punching paper is my go-to target.
Each gun has different expectations., but I am in the "aim small-miss small" belief. If plinking with a pop can, I aim at the "o" in Mountain Dew.
A golf tee at 30+ yards tells me I am doing good.

[splitbeing]

Each target down here in the basement range is metal surrounded by wood one way or another.

The sounds...

The stack of cigar tins is a ten stack.  All my regularly shot guns go through at least the first wall.  There is a slap sound followed by a rattle, whose mutedness indicates how deep intothe stack the pellet made it.

To the right of the cigar tins is a coin bin from the coin operated dryer that died here a few years ago.  It is steel.  The gold painted silhouette stands atop a shower head I removed from a bathroom in one of the apartments a few years ago. It occurs to me that by "a few years ago", well, I might mean 8.  Memory is a funny thing.

The Diana foxes are only shot by guns that cannot damage them.  The crosman 100, R7, and P1 are permitted to shoot this target.  The targets rattle in a rigid sort of way.  Sounds a bit like thin metal wings flapping into each other at times.

And below that is a Daisy trap stuffed with sweat shirts and sweat pants with a sheet on top.  The sound of pellets hitting steel, which than flips with a cuh-link is a daily pleasure.  The k98, silver streak, and Rocktitude (if I hit the right spot) will flip these well and quietly enough.

And just above them you see the obvious pellet trap with a 50 ft NRA target though often it sports a GTA casual match target as well.

[A.K.A. Tommy Boy]

In My Back yard.
I can shoot out to 35 to 50 yards.


B est Wishes - Tom

[buellm2]

I shoot 10 meters offhand, indoors most days.  I shoot from one bedroom, down a hallway, to a pellet trap in my office/ gunroom.  Now that the weather is nicer, I also shoot from my deck.  I have a 50 foot range for offhand pistol practice with AGs and PBs.  There is also a 50 yard range which I use mostly for sighting in and testing benchrest competition rifles.   I could shoot at 100 yards but don't usually feel like walking that far to set up and retrieve targets.   There's a random assortment of old frying pans, tin cans, empty CO2 cartridges and other metal objects hanging from trees at various distances from around 15 yards to 25 yards for when I feel like sittin' on the deck and plinkin'.   

I grew up with a 100 yard 4 position range in my backyard.   We had a enclosed pistol house at the 25 yard point that we could shoot from in bad weather.  My father was a much more serious shooter than I am and we did a tremendous amount of shooting in the olden days including with full-auto guns.  The local police dept. also shot there as my father was the firearms expert/reloading guy.   I later became the PD firearms instructor so I kept on doing a lot of shooting there.   Funny thing, my father always spoke of the virtues of practicing with airguns a long time ago but he could never get the cops to do it.  AGs just weren't macho enough for the police.   

[bantam5s]

I don't have a chrony so numbers don't mean much to me, I don't have enough fingers to count that high anyways 


If I'm understanding your question correctly,  you're asking what I have on my range which gives me an index of how much power my guns have ?

Aside from counting the number of times I pump them, I guess it would be my little Crosman 3 plate rack and the resetting squirrel target.
I judge by how much the spin or if they flip all the way over,  and I know roughly how much power it takes to reset the squirrel which most of my pistols can't do.

[Back_Roads]

 Hmm metrics lets see if I stand in front of my indoor bench it is 10 yards, if I sit at the bench it is 10 meters.
 It kinda goes like this LOL I will update the outdoor range as I get it remodeled

[splitbeing]

James, are the cat's responses a metric for loudness?  Like do they jump for some guns and not for others? [chuckling]

[Back_Roads]

 The Torte will curl up in the chair next to me while I shoot, but yes they may flinch a bit when I go testing on my Recluse in my basement range
 I was shooting off the snow plow blade for the Bobcat at work and after a few shots I looked to my left and here perched on the other side of the blade was Convoy my tame pigion sitting there watching me shoot.   

[Hoosier Daddy]

Of all the cats we have had our Torte' was Momma's favorite.. lived to be nearly 20yo.

[splitbeing]

Hello Torte!  You had a good, long life!