range safety – The Gun Rack

The cost to shoot at Taupo has gone up

For someone used to paying $20 - $30 to shoot as a non-member at most ranges, $5 bucks is well worth it. Especially when you can see where the money goes around the range!

For someone used to paying $20 – $30 to shoot as a non-member at most ranges, five bucks is well worth it. Especially when you can see where the money goes around the range!

While you used to be able to shoot at the NZDA range for a couple bucks, you’ll now feel your wallet cry as you pull out $5 to shoot. As long as you want. On three ranges. With other casual shooters and locals. I take it back, it’s still cheap as chips!

You can see where they’ve spent the money too, with lots of new safety signage and other bits and pieces. This leads me on to the second and third things I learned…

Get there early and you can use the 200m range

While using the 100 metre and 50 metre ranges is great, having a chance to check your drops – or zero – at 200 metres is great.

With the other shooting positions forward of the 200, you’ll need to either be shooting while no one is around or with others who want to shoot a longer distance.

Arriving early has benefits and drawbacks.

Pay absolute attention on ranges you are unfamiliar with

I read the signage, checked all the ranges, made sure the flag was raised and closed the gate to the 200 metre mound before I commenced firing. However, when I opened the gate up again, I noticed another flag that I should have raised but didn’t see.

Thankfully the closed gate makes it pretty clear, and the flag at the carpark shows the ranges are in use, but if shooters make mistakes, you can soon find yourself not welcome at a range – particularly if your foul ups are of a more serious nature.

Anticipate cold weather and wet ground

Heading to Taupo from Auckland for just a few days, I didn’t bother checking the weather, and to be honest it didn’t cross my mind that there may be some fairly heavy frosts (compared to north of the Bombays). First thing I did was rotate the shooting benches into the sun so I could sit somewhere dry when I moved up to the 100 metre mark later in the day.

The station wagon boot mat is a decent substitute for a shooting mat in a pinch.

But, on the grass mound of the 200 metre range, it’s pretty cold and wet if you don’t have a shooting mat. Well, it’s not the first time the carpet at the back of the station wagon got used as a shooting mat! So, my final lesson for the out-of-town shooter, always take a shooting mat and a towel if you can!

While you’re at it – a cap or sunnys is a good idea. I’ve never shot at Taupo when it hasn’t been bright sunshine coming straight down at you.

Those new to shooting sports will easily become overwhelmed with all of the associated bits and pieces you need to buy before you can really get into your chosen discipline. While you can always get cracking with a gun, some ammo and basic maintenance gear, there’s always something else that you probably “need”.

One of those things that I never really understood was yellow safety glasses. Well, I understood the theory, but I didn’t really think they would make that much of a difference…

So what does the colour do?

Well, yellow isn’t the only colour available. In fact, there are many glasses that come with interchangeable lenses and packs of these in various colours/tints.

The various shades are for shooting in different lighting conditions. You can get some that are similar to sunglasses, – these are great for extreme brightness, such as sunny days in winter, over frosted or snowy ground. You also get those with purpley-blue tints, which are great for picking up orange against a green background. In other words – perfect for trap shooters who have tall trees or hills as their backdrop.

The Champion glasses I was gifted were perfect for the low-light/foggy conditions I was shooting in.

Yellow and orange glasses are great for increasing contrast. These are brilliant for a few reasons. For older shooters with weaker eyes, these really help the targets “pop” into the foreground.

It’s not just for those that have eye conditions or who have been shooting longer than you’ve been walking. They’re also great for shooters who engage fast-moving targets, such as Olympic clays, or who themselves move fairly rapidly, such as IPSC pistol shooters.

Do they really work?

As I mentioned before, I never really bought into the higher contrast for better shooting theory. I thought it was just something else to spend money on. However, having recently been bought a pair for my birthday, I am thoroughly convinced.

Since I’ve picked up pistol shooting, I’ve been using clear safety glasses to protect my eyes. Of course safety glasses of some description are mandatory on pistol ranges. So, having gone through the first few weeks of my tyro course with clear glasses from the work bench, I thought I was doing fine.

When I tried out the yellow glasses, it was a particularly rainy/overcast/cloudy day. It was varying between overly bright and overly shady, with everything looking like a different shade of grey.

Not only did the Champion brand shooting glasses I was wearing make it easy to pick up the black bullseye from 50 yards out (on a Service Pistol shoot), but they didn’t fog up or need cleaning with the changing weather and fast-paced match. I was seriously impressed.

Safety

Shotgun shooters are generally wearing glasses for their beneficial effects on their vision, while pistol shooters and 3-gunners are wearing them for those benefits, but also to protect their eyesight, as they have barrels and ejection ports much closer to their faces, and expend hundreds of rounds of ammo at some considerable pace.

Proper shooting glasses wrap around your eyes a lot better than sunglasses or reading glasses.

I’ve personally witnessed a potentially blinding incident first hand, when a reloaded 9mm round blew up in the gun, forcing burning powder up towards the shooters face through the open ejection port. The round had weakened in the webbing, so after the head of the case separated, the gas had nowhere to go but up.

Fortunately, the shooter was wearing safety glasses and after a bit of time to recover from the fairly intense experience, she was fine.

In fact, I would even recommend bolt action rifle shooters wear glasses in some instances. I always wear a pair when I test brand new loads, fire a rifle I haven’t fired before, or after modifying anything near the bolt. I’ve heard of ruptured primers sending hot gases backwards along firing pins and straight into a shooters face. Anything can happen. In an ideal world, all shooters would wear their “eyes and ears” at all times.

What about sunglasses/reading glasses/safety glasses?

While the above are better than nothing, they are less than ideal. I would (and have) used these over nothing.

Sunglasses and normal eye glasses provide good protection from the front, but generally don’t wrap around to the sides of the face or protect from the bottom. Sunglasses can also make it harder to see the target in many situations.

Shooting glasses and safety glasses wrap around better. Cheap safety glasses will scratch easily and will also fog up when you’re running through a course. And if you’re going to spend the money buying fog-proof safety glasses, you may as well try out some yellow glasses or a set with a few options.