Since free time and weekends don’t overlap, I took a day off a couple weeks ago to get in some “me” time down at the range.

Back in March I dropped two grand on a Tavor X95, a bullpup rifle produced by Israel Weapon Industries, and six months later I’m just now getting to try it out.

Background

A bullpup is a style of rifle where the magazine well – and thus what I believe is referred to as the “action” – sits behind the trigger rather that in front of it as you’d find on a typical AR-15. This also means that the “stock” on a bullpup is full of goodies rather than just eating up dead space. The net result is a rifle which still sports a full-sized (and thus legal) barrel in a pint-sized package. Specifically, the 16.5″-barreled X95 is only a hair over 26″ in length, whereas my Ruger AR-556 MPR has an 18″ barrel and 35″ to 38.25″ length due to the adjustable stock. 9 to 12 inches is a huge difference, and as a bonus it also means you can throw on a suppressor (I have a Banish 30 on order) and still come in shorter than a standard rifle.

Speaking of suppressors, my X95 is chambered in .300 Blackout (aka 300 BLK), a round which is designed specifically for suppression. It has the same case width (meaning, it can use the same magazines as) 5.56 but sports a 7.62-sized bullet. 300 BLK typically comes in two loads: lighter supersonic (around 120 grains) and heavier subsonic (around 220 grains). The heavier rounds won’t break the sound barrier, eliminating the supersonic crack from the shot, and paired with a suppressor it’s said to be quiet enough where you don’t even need ear protection. The Tavor has a two-setting gas key which allows you to quickly switch between the two loads since they produce significantly different amounts of gas. Good times!

Sighting

The first thing to do when you get a new rifle is to zero in the sights such that the bullet hits the thing you’re pointing at. Doesn’t sound like rocket science, but, as someone who apparently only gets to go shooting a couple times a year, I managed to make a mess of it. You’re supposed to zero the iron (built-in/flip-up) sights first, but since my previous rifle didn’t have them I skipped right past this step, which means that in the event of battery/other fancy electronic equipment failure I don’t have a good way to aim accurately.

I use a combination of a Sig Romeo 5 red dot and Sig Juliet 3 Micro 3x magnifier for aiming and magnification, respectively. You’re supposed to zero the red dot first and then place the magnifier in front of it, which you can then tweak to get a proper picture. For some reason I attempted to zero the red dot through the magnifier and ended up cranking the elevation all the way up before blowing through 40+ rounds slowly bringing it down (note to self: learn the tick adjustment size on the Romeo). I did, however, manage to finally get the thing centered (only after removing the magnifier), it just cost me an extra $75 more than it should have.

For the record, I zeroed in the rifle against a target at 50 yards. Since bullets travel in an arc due to gravity, you need to choose a target distance so that the bullet “falls” into the target as it travels. It turns out that, even with a pair of binocular to help with spotting holes in targets, 50 yards is still pretty far away. One solution would be to get more powerful binoculars, but that doesn’t solve the problem of starting so incredibly off target that you’re not hitting anything at all. The proper way to zero would be to start with something much closer (25 yards ought to do it) which you could essentially hit just by pointing at it, get everything calibrated, and then move your target distance farther out.

Gear

What Worked

I picked up a Savior Equipment Urban Warfare double-rifle range bag in gray to use as my new range bag, since it can handle both the AR and the bullpup with lots of room to spare for goodies. I’ve only used it once, but it got the job done and the layout seems pretty solid. It comes out of the box with a bunch of backpack and other straps attached, but I prefer suitcase-style for the range, so detaching all of that made it a lot less cluttered.

There’s not a ton of ammo available locally, but the Winchester 300 BLK 125gr (aka “Winchester white box”) seemed to perform just fine. It’s supersonic, and I’m definitely interested in mostly subsonic shooting, but it was a good starting point.

I purchased an IWI/Savvy Sniper collab sling specifically for the X95. I’m not a sling expert by any means, but I really like it so far. After attaching it in the manner shown in the demo video the rifle hangs hands-free very nicely down my chest.

I picked up a cheapo no-name hand stapler off one of the big box sites to use to attach targets to stands, since that seems to be something I always forget. It worked great.

What Didn’t

Well, first off, I forgot the little gas adjustment tool so my subsonic rounds (Remington UMC 220gr OT FB) were all over the place: my sighted-in supersonic groupings of a few inches at 50 yards were now not even remotely hitting the target. I had no idea that the gas level would have that level of impact on the round (at least, I’m assuming that was the issue) so in any situation where you might be swapping between ammo types you’ll need to have it handy. In fact, a quick glance at the manual gives the impression that you shouldn’t be shooting the rifle at all with the wrong setting (it won’t cycle properly), so I won’t be making that mistake again. I’m thinking about using an oversized keyring to attach it to the hardware on the sling, which has the added benefit that it’ll be almost impossible to lose. Of course, you also need a long slender pin or screwdriver to depress a portion of the gas regulator. I think this is where one of those hollow pistol or vertical grips with the tool compartment would come in handy.

The range I shoot at has a red button at each station which activates a klaxon (a warning siren) and a rotating red light to let shooters know that someone is going to go downrange and that rifles need to be unloaded and put down. I wear a combination of Mack’s Slim Fit foam earplugs and 3M Peltor Sport Rangeguard electronic earmuffs, which have 29 and 21 decibel noise reduction ratings, respectively. Together they make the klaxon inaudible, which isn’t good for safety. To compensate, I found myself glancing up at the warning lights before every shot. I think a slightly weaker set of ear plugs might do the trick.

I use a pair of Athlon Midas 8×42 binoculars to make out bullet holes on targets when I’m zeroing in without magnification, which saves a trip down range. However, even at 8x magnification, 50 yards still seems pretty far away. I don’t know if 10x would be a significant improvement, and I’ve read that 12x and above is too unstable for handheld use. But, that might just be for activities like birding, and I’m sure there’s some tabletop accessory (monopod?) that would help with stabilization.

The Sig Juliet 3 smears the red dot a bit, creating two bright points of light with an dimmer arc between them. Cleaning reduced it somewhat but it’s still an issue, and it makes the dot significantly less usable at a distance. I’ll give it another go but my guess is I’ll be replacing it.

In the interest of variety I purchased some Hexmag Series 2 magazines and so far they’ve been a disaster. The first one wouldn’t even seat in the magazine well, although an hour or so later it magically started working just fine. The second one seated, but then I experienced over a half-dozen failures to feed, sometimes back-to-back. It provided some good hands-on practice clearing jams, but didn’t instill a lot of confidence in the product. Fortunately I brought my usual Magpul PMAG Gen M3 Window magazines and those performed flawlessly. I’m a fan of the appearance of the Hexmags as well as the texture, but functionality trumps everything.

I have bushy eyebrows. They tend to rub up against the tops of whatever glasses I’m wearing, mucking them up. This isn’t usually an issue in the short term, but when you’re constantly pushing your safety glasses up to look through binoculars and then lowering them again, the lenses get blurry real quick. I need to start shaving them down a bit. Fortunately I learned from my backpacking days to keep a box of individually-wrapped Zeiss lens wipes in my truck, and now I have a dedicated box just for my range bag.

Speaking of lenses, my safety glasses (which aren’t range safety glasses, just something I grabbed out of the garage) have thick ends which makes them both uncomfortable to wear under earmuffs as well as breaks the earmuff seal, reducing their effectiveness (you notice the difference pretty quickly when it happens). This seems like it must be a common problem with a common or obvious solution.

I brought 90 rounds loaded into mags and figured that would be more than enough, so I neglected to bring my Maglula loader. This ended up being a mistake because I shot through almost all of my ammo and I had to hand-load the FTFs back into the magazine after they started piling up on the table. You should always bring a loader!

What’s Next

Activity-wise, I think the top 2 things for my next trip to the range are:

  • Zero in the iron sights (which requires the sight/gas adjustment tool)
  • Switch the gas regulator to subsonic mode and shoot some heavy rounds

I bought a pair of ESS Crossbow One shooting glasses, which feature super-thin earpieces designed specifically not to interfere with earmuffs. They also come with a headband to keep them from getting knocked off my head as I’m constantly shuffling things around. Very, very excited to try these out.

I believe I either need to figure out a way to keep the tools necessary to adjust the gas block attached to the rifle itself (a keyring through the sling hardware might do the trick), or I need to double down on one type of ammo and forget about adjustment in the field.

Lens wipes and other things generate some trash. I’ll start bringing a couple zipper bags or similar to keep my station garbage-free.

A dime would be nice to have for making adjustments now that I’ve lost all of the little caps with the built-in adjusters for my Romeo. Or maybe a small screwdriver.

Given that I forgot both the gas adjustment tool and the mag loader, I think a range day packing checklist is in order.

Shooting gloves? I do recall thinking I should probably have hand protection at one point, and I think I threw on some nitrile gloves when I was doing some cleaning. But reducing recoil impact is probably the number one reason. Another purchase to research.

Also, I should probably check the bulk ammo websites and decide on what kind of round I’m going to be using, based on availability. I wouldn’t mind picking up 1,000 rounds of subsonic and just committing to that.

Finally, while I use a Sightmark red laser boresight for initial zeroing (although, it would have been nice if I’d remembered it this time around), it occurs to me that a permanently attached laser might be nice as well. A Viridian green hand stop laser with Picatinny adapter is just $200.

The End

I hope you enjoyed my first foray into a new blog topic. I’m hoping to get back out to the range at least once more before the snow hits this year.