The cocking of the rifles, the marching of the feet.

Today I faintly overheard my big brother, who is visiting for the holidays, talking to my dad at the other side of the house about guns and the inevitable collapse of civilization. I think some degree of survivalism runs in our family. I wanted to experience that conversation, so I walked into the room they were in to find my dad showing my brother some of his rifles. They decided to go out and shoot his Weatherby rifle, which uses .270 Winchester cartridges, and I decided to go along.

As you might remember, this past fall, my dad and I went shooting with my cousin Patrick and his parents. This time was quite a bit different because there's snow and it's freezing out.

We shot at a target printed out on a sheet of computer printer paper, 8.5" by 11", a small image of which can be seen below.

The smaller colored circles on the target are the shots from a range of 100 yards. We each took 3 shots. My dad's shots are signified by yellow dots, my brother's are signified by blue dots, and mine are signified by red dots. My brother and I each missed the target with one of our shots, so you only see two of the small dots for each of us. I'm pretty proud of how close the ones that hit were to the center of the target.

Next we moved back to 200 yards, and my brother and I each took two shots, which are the larger colored circles on the target. Again, my brother's shots are signified in blue and mine in red. With my brother's and my shots, there seems to be a pattern in the relationship between our shots from 100 yards and 200 yards, but it's probably mostly a coincidence. Interesting nonetheless.