Last year, 2025 – several people asked me to schedule a pop-up 3 x 20 Prone Match at the end of May. We did that and had a pretty fair turnout so I added this match into the 2026 schedule.
Wow – did that added match turn out to be a real crowd pleaser. Registration started out fairly slowly and I had some concerns about shooters showing up – then the flood started! By Saturday morning we had 37 shooters registered. Normally we have nine Silver Mountain electronic targets and we can handle 27 shooters in a three relay match. I didn’t want to go to four relays, so we started borrowing electronic targets.
This isn’t a Club Meeting – it is the group of shooters for the Saturday, May 30th Match!
Gary Mabis volunteered a ShotMarker for the high end and the four Palma rifle shooters took that as their firing point. That gave us places for 31 shooters. Jim Jackson and Mike King had their SOLO Silver Mountain targets in their trucks and they set up on the low end of the line and volunteered to help shooters with the SOLO setups – giving us room for all 37 shooters who had signed up. This was a first for FWRR – twelve active electronic targets on line for a match – and all of them fully occupied by shooters. I cannot recall a day when all twelve targets have been in use – even back in the “walk and paste” days. Thanks to all of the folks who showed up with spare targets!
What a beautiful day – great light, almost no wind and all 12 targets ready to go!
And the shooters came. We had Palma rifle shooters, we had a solid contingent of Match Rifle shooters and we had a great crowd of Service Rifle shooters. We had visitors from Toledo and Port Clinton. We had Junior Shooters from the Concordia Lutheran High School rifle team join our own Juniors for a total of eight Juniors in the match.
The day was beautiful; bright, clear, comfortable temperature and maybe a minute of wind from 9 o’clock at the most. We started a bit late at 9:11 AM – it took a while to get everyone set up on the servers but once we got started the match went right along. We shot this as an infiltrate match; as a shooter finished their string of fire another shooter moved into the open position and started their string. Shooters moved on and off the line smoothly, we had no rifle malfunctions and we had no issues with the electronic targets. We were able to fire a three relay 3 x 20 match and finish up by 12:45 in the afternoon – things went very well. Someone commented; “It almost looks like we know how to run a rifle match.” I’m not going to make that claim – it just sets us up for a jinx next time.
Some shooter comments:
From a visitor: “This is like shooting on a golf course.”
Another visitor: “If you lose brass on this firing line it’s because you are too lazy to look for it.”
And yet another: “One of the smoothest run matches I’ve shot anywhere.”
A full firing line; a Match Director’s dream
We had shooters in Palma, Match and Service Rifle categories. In the Palma category, Joe Bakies shot the top score with a clean 600-46X, followed by Tom Bonner’s 593-34X. Mark Walters took the top slot in Match Rifle with a 593-21X. Jim Jackson was second with 590-30X and Ron Dague was third with 575-13X.
The largest category was the Service Rifle group. John Sheaffer, a visitor from PFW ROTC, was the top Service Rifle shooter with an impressive 594-31X. Shooting his last match before he sets off to the Indiana Law Enforcement Academy, Marshall Rohrbach was second with 590-29X. The Stevens’ from over around Toledo took third and fourth – Mark with a 586-18X and Ashley a single point behind at 585-13X. The top five Service Rifle group was rounded out by Mike King, with a 583-26X in spite of a crossfire in the first match. (Of course it was a 10). Miss Aria Hobbs was the high Junior, finishing just behind Mike as sixth of the 21 Service Rifle shooters with a 581-18X.
We are looking forward to our next series of matches, the Mid-Summer Madness Weekend. The weekend starts on Friday afternoon, June 19 with a 50-round match (4:30PM start time). On Saturday June 20 (9:00 AM start) we have the Indiana Junior State Championship Match as part of an 80-round match in the morning. We have the awards for the Championship Match and lunch – then we will shoot a Garand, Springfield, Modern Military Match in the afternoon. Finally, on Sunday morning at 9:00 AM we finish up with another 50-round match – just about as much shooting as you can do in one weekend this side of Camp Perry or Camp Butner.
Watch for notices and sign up early!