By Glen Wunderlich

It’s always fun trying out a new gun and working with energetic beginners makes it that much more rewarding. So it was yesterday, when a friend brought his two teenage daughters over to the range for a plinking session. (Plinking is a technical term for punching paper, “recycling” plastic bottles filled with water, and bowling with bullets in an informal setting; at least that’s what I’m calling it.)

L-R: Mike, Abbey, and Allie Load Up

The two young ladies, Allie and Abbey, had already been introduced to plinking this past summer, but now they were able to partake in a live practice session with their own pistol: a Smith & Wesson model 22A in .22 caliber long rifle. (Dad’s keeping it under his control until they are older.) With an ATN reflex sight, the young ladies took to it like a fast-action video shooting game with which they were quite familiar.

We started with some sub-sonic fodder for introduction purposes. The target pistol functioned flawlessly with the lower-power ammo and we soon graduated to some Winchester rimfire rounds advertised at 1300 feet per second. We experienced several misfires in 200 rounds but found that the pistol’s firing pin was doing its job on the rim of the cartridges; they just didn’t ignite for some reason.

Of course, punching paper gets a bit boring after a while, so we moved on to bowling pins at 20 feet.

Abbey lines 'em up

Both youngsters are quite competitive, so the challenge became to knock down 10 pins with 10 shots. It was a bit problematic, because my stock of bowling pins are quite shot up and have been outdoors for 15 years and some of the wood inside them has “gone away.” Because of that, we found that some good hits passed clean through without much more than a wobble, but we could tell a good hit anyway.  Below is a short clip of the action.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ObahxPgYz_A&feature=plcp&context=C335c633UDOEgsToPDskJ5WbNVYHg6AUo3d3HPdggt

Guess it’s time to visit a local bowling alley for some fresh targets.

In any case, all of us gained a bit of experience and look forward to another session when the weather is more cooperative.