We don’t often shoot a match at 100-yards on the really small reduced target faces, but the State 100-yard reduced range State Match is on Saturday, so we did shoot a 100-yard match as a warm-up for that match. Impressively, for a Thursday afternoon session, we had 14 shooters show up – so we had to run a nearly full two-relay match.
It was almost like we shot two separate matches. The first relay started out and pretty soon we had clouds and some rumbles of thunder, but no lighting. Then the rain started – just a mist at first and after a bit it settled into a steady drizzle. Several of us noted that during the week at Camp Perry we never got rained on during range time (even though we were drenched and drowned several other times) and once we got home we got our match in the rain.
During the first relay one of the resident groundhogs wandered out onto the range, so I called a cease fire to take care of the problem. Before my designated marksman was able to take care of the critter, another shooter took the shot and missed – but the beast knows he should look for another range to undermine.
Then, while we were doing the relay change, the sky cleared and shooters in the second relay had to deal with humidity from the rain and the sun in their eyes as it settled in the west.
The scoring rings on the 100-yard reduced targets are really close together, but we had some impressive scores posted. The top eight shooters were separated by only seven points. The top score was posted by Mike King with 489-18X followed by Mark Richard with 485-15X. Gary Mabis took third place with 484-13X just edging fourth place 13-year old Junior girl Aria Hobbs with a 484-11X. Great Shooting Aria!
We are starting the State Match season. The 100-yard State Match is at Fall Creek on Saturday, August 31st, the 300-yard State Match is at Wildcat Valley on September 6th and the two-day full course Championship Matches are at Camp Atterbury on September 13 and 14th. I encourage FWRR shooters to go and shoot at any of these matches. You will meet a group of people who share our interest in high power shooting and you will discover that the great majority of these folks really want to help new shooters improve their skills.
Our next FWRR match is on September 13th – I will give an excused absence to anyone who wants to go shoot at Camp Atterbury that day.