This morning the Ruger Lightning was a Pretty Gal.....two hours and about 200 rounds at the range and I can say she's now a Dirty Gal, in all the right ways.
The Lightning grip is comfortable, recoil is more straight back but no sting at all. For a hard grip, its very comfortable. It was a good choice....odd look, nice performance.
This is more than I typically shoot in a session but this one is a ball. Points great.....here's what a real Dirty Gal looks like....
I decided to sight in about 7 meters since its a short barreled gun and that's a good aim for squirrel, rabbit, varmints any day. From there and after the 158g MagTec JHP deer loads were nicely zeroed I proceeded to work on the steels from 3 to 30 yards. Cleaned 25 about three times. It points very well, I think there were under 6 or 7 misses. Very nice....mimics performance from my 1911 and easier to manage than with my other 357 3 screw and its plow share grip.
Starting out, see the lower right....the first shots were 38 Specials with 148g LSWC....moved the sights a bit to shift impact a bit left and check fire more of the 148s and some 125g JHP handloads.
After that, I loaded up some of the good old 357 mags loaded to upper midrange with 125g JHPs. They printed pretty much around the bull and are shown in the more closely centered group.
Final zero at 7 meters was established with my factory Magtec 158g JHP ammo. This is the deer load. A bit harder push back but still very manageable as can be seen on target. From there I went to steel randomly mixing mag handloads and factory in the cylinder and worked over the steels all the way back to 30 meters. Pretty much all were taken down with center hold. The largest steels being 12" rounds on the stands, 8" rounds on the resetting bars and the smallest being 4" rounds on the dueling post.
From a functional standpoint, much of the brass, including the stiffest load (The Magtec 158s) fall from the cylinder when the muzzle is elevated, gate open. If not, a light tick of the ejector suffices to bump them out so they will fall or ya can flick em then with a finger nail. They lift on the ejector about 1/4 to 3/8 inch and then either fall or can be flicked/plucked clean. Glad I put an ejector assembly on this one....its nice to have. Not fast, but it wasn't really all that fast before when it had a longer barrel.
This one is officially done....after I clean it again.....time to move on to another project, whatever that may be. Look for it here.
The Lightning grip is comfortable, recoil is more straight back but no sting at all. For a hard grip, its very comfortable. It was a good choice....odd look, nice performance.
This is more than I typically shoot in a session but this one is a ball. Points great.....here's what a real Dirty Gal looks like....
I decided to sight in about 7 meters since its a short barreled gun and that's a good aim for squirrel, rabbit, varmints any day. From there and after the 158g MagTec JHP deer loads were nicely zeroed I proceeded to work on the steels from 3 to 30 yards. Cleaned 25 about three times. It points very well, I think there were under 6 or 7 misses. Very nice....mimics performance from my 1911 and easier to manage than with my other 357 3 screw and its plow share grip.
Starting out, see the lower right....the first shots were 38 Specials with 148g LSWC....moved the sights a bit to shift impact a bit left and check fire more of the 148s and some 125g JHP handloads.
After that, I loaded up some of the good old 357 mags loaded to upper midrange with 125g JHPs. They printed pretty much around the bull and are shown in the more closely centered group.
Final zero at 7 meters was established with my factory Magtec 158g JHP ammo. This is the deer load. A bit harder push back but still very manageable as can be seen on target. From there I went to steel randomly mixing mag handloads and factory in the cylinder and worked over the steels all the way back to 30 meters. Pretty much all were taken down with center hold. The largest steels being 12" rounds on the stands, 8" rounds on the resetting bars and the smallest being 4" rounds on the dueling post.
From a functional standpoint, much of the brass, including the stiffest load (The Magtec 158s) fall from the cylinder when the muzzle is elevated, gate open. If not, a light tick of the ejector suffices to bump them out so they will fall or ya can flick em then with a finger nail. They lift on the ejector about 1/4 to 3/8 inch and then either fall or can be flicked/plucked clean. Glad I put an ejector assembly on this one....its nice to have. Not fast, but it wasn't really all that fast before when it had a longer barrel.
This one is officially done....after I clean it again.....time to move on to another project, whatever that may be. Look for it here.
