PLINKING

[bradshaw]

Reckon it’s time for a confession. This morning saw a conflict between hitting the single track trail on mountain bikes versus throwing lead. There was not time for the undulating bike workout. And there was not time to set up a big bore shooting session. There was time to break out some handguns and have at it. My friend says, “what are you going to shoot?”

“Ruger .22, the Mark II 5-1/2-inch Bull. No centerfire.”

“Well then, I’ll get out my Single Ten and the .22 auto,” she says. A bag of cans feeds into this enterprise, namely cans which once preserved baked beans, along with beaucoup cat food cans. These we variously stood and stacked in a row along an eight foot 2x6 plank. Distance twelve or thirteen yards. The object, pick a spot hit that spot, make can dance. My partner does well with the Ruger Single Ten, not nearly so well with the faux 1911 grip Ruger MK III 5-1/2-inch.

As present shooter tries out his friend's MK III it's immediately clear the trigger has a glitch and a hard pull. Unlike the Single Ten trigger, which enjoys a firm yet shootable break. The owner of the Single Ten and MK III Faux 1911 tries the present shooter’s MK II 5-1/2”, an early Mark II which survives on a trigger job performed in 1982. She shoots the MK II bull 5-1/2 better, yet not notably above performance with her Single Ten. Her MK III Faux 1911 lagging.

Reckon this is plinking. “Plinking" has a poetic ring. The word is not in my vocabulary. Maybe it ought to be. After all, I use terms like ”throw lead” to describe sharpshooting. Nowhere intends this confession to endorse a meaningless pull of the trigger.
David Bradshaw

[jayhawker]

David,
All of my .22RF shooting with handguns is "plinking". I have a 3 screw Single Six 4 5/8 bll with no sights, A High Standard Double 9 ( with barrel shortened to fake ejector housing and no sights), and a Wilson Combat 1911 ss receiver with Colt .22 conversion unit, with sights. I load all 3, walk down close to the berm and point shoot at clay birds. If I run out of birds, I shoot at a plastic soda bottle once I have emptied it, also shoot at empty cartridge boxes. Center Fires I use the sights, but with the .22s I play "gunfighter" and practice DA, SA and auto. Goes through 200 rounds real quick with 9 in the DA, 9 in the auto and 5 in the SA.

[Sarge]

I find myself shooting at paper less and less these days. Usually it is a 14" plate with a black dot sprayed in the middle, 6" knock-downs.

[bradshaw]

jayhawker.... the very best training brings joy. Back when we had the old town dumps, my shooting partner Ed Verge and I would drive a truck of garbage to offload Sunday morn. Verge packed in Bradshaw leather a S&W M-57 .41 Remington Magnum 8-3/8-inch barrel, while lived on this shooter’s side the S&W M-29 .44 Mag 6-1/2-inch bought while in college. Rats covered the refuse like a cheap suit, so we threw down single & double action, killing & educating beaucoup vermin. Suppose you can call that “plinking.” Except the word wasn’t in Ed Verge’s vocabulary, nor mine. Ed was a stone shot with that .41, not to mention any other gun he got his hands on.

Shooting rats at a dump comes fast & furious, as the chisel teeth rodents learn real quick life above ground ain’t smart. So you nail em while you can. I shot a running rat with a swaged .44 240 SWC Half-Jacket, the bullet throwing rodent up and onto the end of a plank, feet hanging off, pumping air. I was enraged that a rat could survive a .44. “Look closer,” said Ed, “the rat is cut in half.” From my angle, it looked like the rat was alive. It was just a death dance, performed by half a rat on a diving board, its last will & testament to Earthly Thunder on a Sunday morning.

If all of this is plinking, reckon silhouette shooting and eating venison represent plinking, too. When plinking means fire each shot like it’s the only one you have then I’m a plinker, too.
David Bradshaw

[Ken O'Neill]

The world was a better place when we had garbage dumps.
Well, except for those places where the garbage dumps were.

[alukban]

And so I must now thus plink on this fine Sunday morning

[bula]

Hunting the dump here, meant crows and shotguns. We couldn't access the dump itself but positioned ourselves to intercept inbound winged vermin. 

[jayhawker]

Spent many hours as a teenager plinking at a small rural Kansas town dump.

[Alaskan454]

To some of you silhouette shooters this may be sacrilege, but I do all of my "plinking" on the falling steel range at our club. I like to walk down there and see how far out I can make hits on any given day. There is also great satisfaction when 100yd rams tip over from a slow moving 9mm. I wish I could hit them more often!

[sixshot]

I'm lucky, I get to do my plinking on hundreds of miles of back roads within easy access from town in search of ground squirrels, rock chucks, badgers, foxes, coyotes, etc & it's all public land & I seldom see a soul. A century ago Buffalo roamed these same valleys, along with huge herds of antelope. I see deer & elk most times, there are hungry trout in all the streams but you need skeeter dope or a double barrel shot gun to keep the buggers off you. Two guns are always a necessity. If you get a little higher in elevation make sure you have a bucket with you because right now the Huckleberries are on & you don't want to miss out!
Hope this photo shows up! You know how I'm always cussing Utah fishermen, well one of the local Soda Springs guys got even with them about a week ago, he caught a new Utah State record Lake Trout, 57 lbs!!! Not only that but he caught 2 that were over 35 lbs.

imgur.com/a/at4Hr
Dick

[akray]

I clicked on the link and the pic is there. That's a big fish!

[jeffer]

Plinking is a lost art...

[bula]

Many of us had our first taste of shooting in the form of plinking. I'll vote for the Ruger 10/22 as likely to be the most popular plinking arm going for several decades now. We can pass mine around the gang at camp and everyone can shoot it well enough to have a big grin on when the 10 shot rotary mag is empty. Empty cans tremble when it is drawn from it"s cover. 

[lange1]

One of my all time favorites is the Ruger MKII with a 5 1/2" bull barrel. At the top of the list for entertainment is the 10/22 with which I have done muchas mas "informal target shooting" than anything else. I am truly grateful that the 22 LR shortage has been mitigated. But still hate it that 22s about doubled in price since before he-who-cannot-be-named took office.

I will say that plinking with a 10/22 and MKII has increased my ability to know where the shot is going with anything I shoot. You get to the point where you can feel where the bullet is going to land. Maybe like throwing a football. Muscles and eyes just plain do what your brain wants automatically sometimes without going through all the steps consciously.

[callshot]

I wish I could go out and plink again. After moving to the megopololis (large city) there is not a place to do that here. Dick and I have plinked on about anything and everything imaginable. It helps to have a spotter. While learning to shoot, Dick would give me a handgun and I didn't know the caliber or if it was loaded or how many loads were in it. I just had to depend on the task that he was teaching that day. Now the only thing we seem to do is practice using a fork in an eating contest. He won yesterday.