Bitter and I went to Myrtle Grove WMA shooting range in Maryland. It’s a nice facility, except we learned a few things.  For one, you need to bring string. Targets are placed on pieces of string strung between posts. Lots of string was cut, or not placed in the right places.
One guy had a neat contraption made of PVC pipe that hung off the baffling, and looked like it provided a much more stable target platform than string. My preferred platform would have been a thick twine, with the target held up with black clips.
On Pennsylvania PGC ranges, the state provides target backing, but it’s at fixed 25, 50, and 100 yard intervals. The nice thing about the string system is you can place targets at 10 yard increments all the way out to 100 yards. It makes shooting pistol easier. Maryland also allows up to ten rounds in a magazine, as opposed to Pennsylvania’s three, which means you spend more time shooting rather than reloading.
The other thing is to take bug spray. It was a hot sticky day, and the flies wouldn’t live me alone. Sunscreen probably would have been a good idea as well, though we managed a bench in the shade, not all of them were. One guy brought a big patio umbrella. I think he planned on staying a while.
The range was a little messy, and needed some cleaning, and maintenance. To be fair to Maryland, Pennsylvania ranges can get pretty ugly if they are at the end of their maintenance cycles, but shooters tend to keep them from getting too ugly. There was also brass everywhere that looked like it had been there a while. I’ve been to ranges at home where guys are there picking up brass quite literally as soon as they cooled down enough after being ejected from my rifle. Our grounds do tend to get littered with steel casings, but reloaders gobble up the brass. Are there no reloaders in Maryland?
All in all I liked the facility. It was run safely, and I was happy to see it busier on a holiday weekend than I see a lot of Pennsylvania ranges. Worth the yearly $20 dollar shooting permit. I will have to return sometime when the weather isn’t so hot and sticky.
I wondered why you shot that damn postal match at 25 yards. Now I have my answer.
No, it was 25 feet. I originally said yards, but I meant feet. The private range I belong to has an indoor range that’s graduated in 10 foot increments starting at 15 feet.
If I were shooting at 25 yards, I’d be lucky to just be able to hit the center of the paper, let alone one of those holes. I could barely see them at 25 feet.
Well – that makes sense.
I guess I assumed that you had a whopper of a scope on your Mark III.
I’ve been shooting pretty decently lately, but I need to practice a lot to keep it up. I went to the range to practice shooting gophers targets for an hour or so every couple of days before trying the e-postal with the Mk.III, and even after that much practice it was damned hard.
That golf target was a bitch, but it was a lot of fun. I’m looking forward to the next match, if I can keep up the current pace of shooting.