Post by rharper on May 15, 2013 20:42:18 GMT -5
Fun little experience this afternoon ...
Okay, so we have rabbits nosing around the garden, and I've had to adjust things a bit. All winter I've been shooting squirrels with the .22, and I got a couple of rabbits earlier this spring with the same.
Now that the garden is growing, however, the varmint focus has shifted from the "long" side of the property, with good angles and friendly landscape, to the "short" side--the garden is between our house and the neighbor's, (about 60-70 yds, with about half of that thick with brush) so even the CB shorts are out.
I've got a .22/20, so I got an adapter and picked up some .410 shells (Winchester Xpert steel--since it is a garden, and we do have a little kid who will swallow pellets if I don't get them all in cleaning).
And thus the story ...
I was adjusting the sights for the shotgun barrel (the .22 is bent, and essentially useless--if anybody has a line on another 24S barrel I would be interested, by the way), using the .410 setup at maybe 20-25 yards. Immediately after the first shot, I felt something hit my side. It wasn't painful or anything, so I thought a big bug had flown into me. With the next shot, another "bug" hit--this time on my arm. I started to get suspicious, and put on my safety glasses and tried one more time ... and this time one of our garden frost covers (cut off milk jugs) rattled in front of me. I looked, and sure enough, there was a pellet in there.
I was using pallets as a backstop, so It's not like I was shooting at a metal plate or anything, but nonetheless, it seems some pellets were actually bouncing off the backstop hard enough to hit me.
This doesn't happen with 20 ga steel, by the way, so it seems that either I have seriously hard pallets (not likely), or the combination of lower power and "bouncier" steel shot (lighter and less likely to deform) makes things a bit more interesting.
The combination will still work for my particular purposes, but I thought it worth letting folks know about this ammo experience, since there are quite a few .410-ers looking in here on the Savage 24 board.
Wear your glasses, folks ...
Okay, so we have rabbits nosing around the garden, and I've had to adjust things a bit. All winter I've been shooting squirrels with the .22, and I got a couple of rabbits earlier this spring with the same.
Now that the garden is growing, however, the varmint focus has shifted from the "long" side of the property, with good angles and friendly landscape, to the "short" side--the garden is between our house and the neighbor's, (about 60-70 yds, with about half of that thick with brush) so even the CB shorts are out.
I've got a .22/20, so I got an adapter and picked up some .410 shells (Winchester Xpert steel--since it is a garden, and we do have a little kid who will swallow pellets if I don't get them all in cleaning).
And thus the story ...
I was adjusting the sights for the shotgun barrel (the .22 is bent, and essentially useless--if anybody has a line on another 24S barrel I would be interested, by the way), using the .410 setup at maybe 20-25 yards. Immediately after the first shot, I felt something hit my side. It wasn't painful or anything, so I thought a big bug had flown into me. With the next shot, another "bug" hit--this time on my arm. I started to get suspicious, and put on my safety glasses and tried one more time ... and this time one of our garden frost covers (cut off milk jugs) rattled in front of me. I looked, and sure enough, there was a pellet in there.
I was using pallets as a backstop, so It's not like I was shooting at a metal plate or anything, but nonetheless, it seems some pellets were actually bouncing off the backstop hard enough to hit me.
This doesn't happen with 20 ga steel, by the way, so it seems that either I have seriously hard pallets (not likely), or the combination of lower power and "bouncier" steel shot (lighter and less likely to deform) makes things a bit more interesting.
The combination will still work for my particular purposes, but I thought it worth letting folks know about this ammo experience, since there are quite a few .410-ers looking in here on the Savage 24 board.
Wear your glasses, folks ...
