One of my favorite things to do is to introduce someone into a new realm of the shooting world.
This past year my counterpart in NM stated he had picked up a rifle his Dad had left him. It was a perfect rifle for the woods of New Jersey, not so good for longer ranged shooting. I invited him to come with me to Whittington for a weekend of general rifle mayhem.
The range that was open was the 500 m silhouette range. We put the flag up and hunkered down. I'd brought a couple of 25-06's, a 243, 308, 358 and a 264 WM. He had his Dad's 30-30 and an AR.
While I proceeded to shoot the rams, he was trying to hit the 200 meter chickens. After explaining the trajectory of a 30-30 150 gr, he finally nailed one. He had to stop shooting because the locals were wandering between the 200 and 300 m targets (locals as in the antelope).
I spotted the buffalo. It's a target at 1000 meters. I figured what the heck. I grabbed the 25-06 (magnums aren't allowed on that range) and on my 3rd shot, nailed the buffalo. Now, it's not a small target. The buffalo is 10' long and 6' high with a 16" bullseye. My friend wanted to try it.
I set it up about where I held (it's a hunting scope so Kentucky windage was involved) and had him set up behind the rifle.
He looked through the scope and turned to me and said "I'm aiming at a tree on the top of the mountain!". I again explained the trajectory the bullet will travel to hit a target 1000 meters away.
On his second shot, he hit the buffalo. He quickly turned to me and said "I got to get me a rifle!". He was hooked.
The next month he called me at least once a day to discuss cartridges and rifles. He wanted a hunting rifle that was capable of taking anything in NM out to 500 yards. He stumbled into quite the deal on a Tikka T3 w/ a Leupold 3-9x40 in 308 and grabbed a couple of boxes of target loads. Out to BLM land he went. He sent me a picture of a 3-shot group that was about dime-sized that he shot at 200 yards.
After that, it was questions about what could we hunt with it that year.
We ended up going to Colorado for OTC elk.
Yup, he's hooked. He's now looking for a 'back-up' rifle to take on our hunt this year.
