I had s somewhat similar experence last weekend with my initial trip to the range with my new AR (Bushy Carbon-15). Only the range was a 200 yarder out behind my Dads buddies place....ahhh the joys of rual Kansas. Yes this guy has a nice 200 yard range in his backyard.
Anyway, we pull up to the shooting line, and there are several pickups already there and rounds are going down range. Oh...did I say this is a dedicated Bench crowd? I mean all of them are in their 60's, with all their high dollar precesion paper punchers. Yes, someone actualy said look, a "Plastic Fantastic" and chuckled a bit. It was good natured stuff, they kidded me about finally getting a firearm that is not a shotgun and being a grown up =).
We set the targets out at 25 yards to zero it. That goes ok, 10 shots to get it tacking the 10 ring. Other than the brass flying all over, it was fun. And I was hearing less and less bench guns going off around me. One of them said "Ok, you can shoot at 25.....take it out to 100 and lets see how you do"
Hell even my dad was giving me grief. You know, put a bunch of competitive guys in a room and they needle each other endlessly. It was that sort of thing. I was looking at one of them thinking....ya...ya...last time we hunted together, I took 4 pheasents and you shot....thats right zero....and your dog sucks. But I kept that to myself.
Iron sights at 100 yards. I havent shot irons in 25 years and nothing past 20-30 yards in at least 15. I can barely see the black at 100 yards, with my glasses on.....time for a new perscription! I'm sitting there trying to get a good sight picture, meanwhile behine me...."You going to shoot that thing?" etc. 1st shot my dad, whos on the spotter, calls out "Bullseye, 4:30" 2nd shot "Bullseye 3 o'clock a little low"......well hell now I was a member of the crew! The rest of the shots were scattered, hell I was shooting at a blur, but I put together a 5 shot inside of 2". I was happy.
A 100 rounds later all of them had shot it, and had a good time. It was kinda cool. I'm really happy I picked up a AR