“The inherently accurate .17HM2.”

Not just accurate … inherently accurate. That’s the way I’ve seen this cartridge described in article after article and advertisement after advertisement.

Alright already! I get it!

And yet.

Evidently, I don’t. Not really.

Not today anyway.

I’m in a serious state of “I believe, but help me in my unbelief”-ism as far as things have been going with these Hornady Vmax .17-caliber bullets with Eley primers.

Today’s mission was to put 20 rounds on each of three 2-inch Shoot-n-C targets from 50 yards away.  I really should have remembered to take the binoculars out with me …

By the time 80 (eighty!) shots had been fired (and at least 15 stovepipes had been cleared), I had one (yes, 1!) hit on one of the targets.  That’s, for lack of anything close to better, the shot o’the day, but I didn’t even have the energy to take a separate picture of it, so it’s just in the time-lapse …

Good grief!

And this is from the gun I thought I’d sighted in yesterday.

Today’s main lesson is to more carefully avoid over-estimating my prospects of success on the second day of practice with any gun, especially this Ruger 10/22 adaptation.

Now, all I can do is hope that tomorrow’s target practice will be the today I was hoping for yesterday. Or something like that …

And the moral of today’s story is, to paraphrase an old, hunter’s proverb: Sometimes you shoot the heart out of a target, and sometimes the target tears the heart right out of you.

I had a hard time even getting the pictures together, but there are gonna be days like this. I tried to do my best, and my best didn’t turn out too great.

And that’s the way it was: February 12th, 2011. Good night.