I picked up my XD-m and went to the range with a friend today. The gun was upgraded with trijicon night sights for an extra c-note, but they are the s*** in fading light.
Holding it, it fits my hand perfect and I can just get my pinkie on the grip. With the full size mag with grip shell I have a lot of unused grip. The grip safety does'nt bother me, but you do need to depress it to rack the slide which is a bit weird. I arrived at a grip that will allow me to lock it back, though. I must say loading the mags is a straight b****! I haven't quite figured out the loader, but I need to. filling the mags gave my thumb a workout. I seem to remember the Glock being markedly easier to load, but they are a bit wider in my guestimation, the XD-m seems to stagger the rounds tighter.
First shot from about 15-20ft bulls-eye and I got the vibe. You know when you have picked right whenever the item is used the first time and just gives you a warm fuzzy. The sights were still coming back down as I thought "this is the one." I didn't have a lot of time to run it because my buddy brought a f*** arsenal and wanted to fire them all.
I tried his .40 Sig P239 rainbow coated thing. I already hated the grip profile and I wasn't real happy about the muzzle flip. Very pretty and I still like the way it looks, but this is a tool and I don't like the way it works.
Next up the .40 Sig P220. I've never been fond of this gun's appearance. It looks like an elevator ride and I was right. I thought the HK USP had some muzzle flip, sheesh, not even close to this gun. 0 stars.
The Sig 1911 was, well, a 1911. The design is very attractive to me, ergonomically compatible with my hand size and shooting style and it ran like a top so I liked it just like every other quality 1911 I have shot.
Now I took the .40 Sig P2022, wow! The ergos are great, it looks good and recoil was very manageable. He was raving about it and I see why; it was the nicest Sig in the bunch. I will add this to the list with the P250.
His Colt Anaconda was a large piece of steel and I found it workable. I think I need to choke up on the grip a bit and the trigger is a country mile long, but for what it was and how new I was to it I did ok and was not displeased.
From that, though, we moved on to a gun he just bought for his son. He handed me that and I was nauseated. The .357 Chiappa Rhino
Now, I get the idea, move the barrel to the bottom and reduce muzzle climb and it does exactly that. It pushed straight back into the web of my hand,,,really f*** hard. It's too light and while I doubt it approaches the abusive nature of a scandium snubby it sure as hell was not enjoyable. I would not take one if you offered
me $20.
The next and final gun was the Kahr P380. The range had a rental one so I grabbed it to try. I wanted to like it so much, but, I don't. I have small hands and even my pinkie is hanging in the breeze. combine that with the fact that it is so thin you are left with no dimension to really grab. As a result, even with .380 it squirms around in your hand and my shots were all over the place. I was able to squeeze some consistency out of it by, squeezing! Squeeze it as tight as you can and you can get some semblance of a decent group out of it, but it's just too small and wild. Because of its size my finger would hang up on the trigger gaurd unless I bent it. The trigger was pissing me off too. I keep hearing the Kahrs have nice triggers, but if this is how they all feel, no thanks. I have never shot any gun that had that much trigger travel before it went bang. It was smooth, but long as Dr. Zhivago including intermission! Combine that with the .380 ammo, more expensive than 9mm and eclipsed by the same in power all at a few dollars less than a PM9, it's a no-brainer. Sorry little guy.
I need to go back again with just the XD-m and run it hard. It shot very well both in accuracy and manners with both the Speer Lawman 180gr and the 165gr Winchester white box. I couldn't discern a real difference between the two. I might try alternating the two in the same mag and running a couple of strings to see if I can tell which is which. Everything being anywhere close to equal, unless I can find definitive proof that the light stuff perhaps expands better from the faster rate of travel, I'm loading it up with 180gr. I have Winchester Ranger talons and Federal HSTs to check for feeding. My buddy had a misfeed with one of his guns with what appeared to be a Remington Golden Saber and was going to chuck it. I said "let me try it." XD-m said nom nom, no problem.
Very happy with the gun and look foward to really putting it through its paces.
