Pittsburgh Shootout with Steyroids: 1 Redneck and 3 Yankee gun nuts

Four of us Steyroids (no, it's not a disease of the hinder parts, it's lovers of Steyr weapons) gathered at the Wexford state wildlife range outside Pittsburgh on June 28 and I'm just now getting a round tuit to finding time to upload the photos of the fun.

At the firing line blamming away with my S&W 29 .44 Magnum is the new guy at the shootout, Cheney at Steyrclub. He's an old fart like me and the other two guys in the group are young farts, Big Taco and OffArtist, the guy grinning in the background. He's a former Marine, so he's gotta be a good guy. There ain't no ex-Marines except for John Murtha and Lee Harvey Oswald.

Next photo is OffArtist blamming away with my EAA Witness-P in .38 Super mode. That's Big Taco in the background with the cool orange shooting glasses on and Cheney in the middle. It was the second outing for the .38 Super slide on the former EAA Witness .45 ACP and I like it a lot. Shoots much better and the sights are pretty much dead on. Now I gotta find me some 9x23 ammo for it.

Then you have Big Taco in the third photo, blamming away with my Sig P229 .357 Sig gangsta style one-handed and whoppy-jawed sideways. He says that's the way you're supposed to shoot one-handed and he's a better shot than me, so who am I to criticize? But it still looks weird. I don't have no trouble shooting straight up one-handed, but one-handed or two-handed, BT blows me away so I'll shut up about his gangsta style.

I brought five of my pistols in 9mm, .44, .357 Sig and .38 Super, BT had his 9mm and .40 Steyr Ms and OffArtist had his Steyr too, I forget what flavor.

I also brought my Marlin 1894 .44 Magnum lever rifle and after we got through 10-yard pistol shooting, we moved down to the 50-yard range for some more pistol and rifle shooting. BT and Cheney were shooting Steyr pistols at 50 and doing pretty good.

Speaking of sideways, that first target photo is a 50-yard group I shot with the Marlin lever gun. I had a nice group about 12 o'clock with .44 holes. Those two holes low and to the left was BT poaching on my target with a Steyr pistol. The one hole in the orange is his too, of course.

So I figured if BT and Cheney could hit with a pistol at 50 yards, I'd try it with my Smith 29, which has a 4" barrel. I was shooting .44 Specials, which are a lot more user friendly than .44 Magnums. The last target is another sideways rendition with all of the holes in the black except the bottom two on the edge of the orange 8" bull.

Now if I could get a bad guy to hold real still at 50 yards and let me take my time drawing a bead from a steady rest (plus not be shooting back at me) I might be able to handle the situation. Whatever. It was a lot of fun anyway.

And afterward, BT, Cheney and me went into town and got a bite to eat and some excellent brews at Fathead's Bar & Grill on the south side of Pittsburgh. Much fun was had by all. Let's do it all again next year.