Fort Wayne Rifle and Revolver Club

Labor Day has come and gone – so even though the calendar hasn’t said “end of Summer” yet – unofficially summer has drawn to a close. Saturday September 10th was our last 50/80 XTC High Power Match of the summer and we could not have asked for a more beautiful day for a rifle match.  And, as is usual at the end of shooting season, we had some match conflicts with other Clubs and our attendance was down because we had five shooters from FWRR go to the Fall Creek Conservation Club for the Indiana 100-yard State Championship Match.  Nonetheless, we had nine shooters at the line for Saturday’s match.

We had a couple of special guests for the Match. Carl Johnson, an FWRR Distinguished Rifleman (Badge 2160) currently living in southern Indiana showed us that he still has the chops as he was the overall match winner with a score of 773-24X. Carl also had a personal best in Prone Rapid with a 200-11X and was the high Prone Slowfire shooter with a 196-8X.  Jim Schieltz made the trip over from the Lima Sabers – he had a rough day as he had ‘scope issues but before things went sour, he managed to shoot the top Offhand score with a 194-4X.  200-yard Rapid Sitting honors went to Mark Walters with a 197-3X. 

And, congratulations to Miss Mia King – one of our Junior girl person shooters.  This is Mia’s first season shooting high power and on Saturday she put together a score of 725-10X (90.6%), putting her solidly into NRA Expert territory and just into CMP Expert classification.

But, to match the high points of the day, there were several examples of how quickly things can change in high power shooting.  When we started the rapid fire strings, Gary Mabis found that his rifle would not strip rounds from the magazine – making it a straight pull AR-15 (a condition not conducive to shooting in a time limit).  After putting up great Offhand and Sitting Rapid scores, Jim Schiletz’s scope developed issues – shots that were called in the 10/X rings wandered out to the 7 or 8 ring.  Normally, we would blame this on the shooter – but not this time – it was an equipment issue.  The most baffling issue of the day was the disappearing bullets that Mark Walters was shooting. Mark was beating up the 10/X rings. He would fire a shot and it would not plot.  This might happen again on the next shot. We did some experimenting and the only explanation we could logically figure was that the bullets were blowing up as they went downrange – strange indeed.

We are going to shoot a fun match on Thursday afternoon, September 22nd after a quick practice session to get zeroes for .22 rimfire rifles.  The Juniors have wanted to shoot a Rattle Battle Match ever since they learned about it during their SAFS trip to Camp Perry.  We will shoot a mini-Rattle Battle that afternoon.  The Juniors have gotten fairly well organized (they’re doing it all themselves) and Captain King is assigning shooters, figuring out strategies and deciding how she is going to divvy up the 200-rounds of ammo allowed for the four person team for this match.  We are looking for an Old Coot Team to shoot against them, so if you guys want to shoot this match – I have a set of rules and you just need to figure out a Team.

On September 24th, we will shoot the Leonard Johnson Memorial Match.  This has sometimes been called “The World’s Toughest Team Match”.  Each shooter on two person teams will shoot 20 rounds with .22 rimfire rifles at 200-yards on the NRA SR-42 target, a reduction of the SR-3 target to simulate the 300-yard stage of the National Match Course at 200 yards.  Now, as if this was not already a hard enough target – shooters will move back to 300-yards and fire another 20-rounds each at that same target! It is a challenging match and it draws a number of shooters with unique rifles!

We close the high power season on October 9 with a 60-round Mid-Range match.  That match will start at 11:00, so if folks want to come from afar – they won’t have to start out at oh-dark-thirty. We resume Winter Offhand Matches on Saturday, November 12 with a 40-round offhand match.

Wildcat Valley Rifle and Pistol Club hosted the Indiana 300-Yard Reduced Course State Championship on Saturday, August 27th and the Fort Wayne Rifle and Pistol Club was well represented at the event.  Mark Richard, Mike Habel, Mike King and Juniors Marshall Rohrbach, Kileen Shaffer and Addiysn Shull made up the shooting contingent and Mike Grannis and Larry Beardsley were there as the support group.  Larry acted as the Range Officer for the match and Mike was the Statistical Officer as scores were tallied at match end.

The 300-Yard Reduced Course State Championship title was captured by Wildcat Valley Junior Madelyn Schnelle with an impressive 791-31X score.  Madelyn dropped 5 points in the first 10 shots in Offhand and then dropped only four more points across the rest of the match.

FWRR’s Mark Richard took First Master with 779-29X.  Mike Habel continued a season long hot streak taking First Expert with a 757-12X.  Marshall Rohrback came away with First Junior, two points behind Doc with a 755-12X.

Miss Addiysn gets the recovery and heart attack award for the day.  In her second string of prone rapid fire, she had a round mis-feed about halfway through her second magazine.  Addy racked the bolt, ejected the misfed cartridge and then finished off the magazine, but she was still one shot short of the ten shots she needed for the string.  Time was running out and the last round was somewhere underneath her. She rolled over on her right side (she’s a lefty), found the loose round, reloaded it – closed the bolt, got back in position on target and got off the final shot just as the last second ticked off the clock and I whistled “CEASE FIRE”.  She closed out her second rapid fire prone string with a 96-1X score!  GREAT RECOVERY Young Lady!

The next match in the Indiana Triple Crown of State Matches is the 100-Yard Reduced Course Championship at Fall Creek on September 10th and the series completes with a two-day dual 80-round tournament (1600 point aggregate) at Camp Atterbury on September 17 and 18.

The Fort Wayne Rifle and Revolver Club has been around for more that 100 years. We have evidence that hints that as far back as 1914 there was an organized group of shooters who later became the Fort Wayne Rifle and Revolver Club, but there is a surprising lack of recorded history. 

Reflecting that long history, on occasion artifacts occasionally show up that give us some insight into our ancestors.  Recently an old award plaque wandered into the Bruggeman Building (the mower house) that made us do some looking.  The trophy is “The Major John C. Houck Memorial Trophy”, presented by Lt. Colonel Sam L. A. Bowlin.

The trophy is a walnut plaque with a prone rifleman and a brass plate with names of individuals to whom the award was given. The trophy is in pretty good shape, but the shooter has lost the barrel of his rifle over the years.  It appears to have been intermittently awarded – there is not an award noted for every year.  It was first awarded in 1963 to J. H. Miller who scored 134 x 150.  This was probably a 30-shot match fired on the old 5V target.  By 1967 the match format had changed when Lynn Richter won the award with a 287 x 300 score, a 30 round match on the new 10X target.

By 1973 the match format had changed again when Lowell Black won with a 339 x 400 score.  The award stood vacant until 1987 when Mike Grannis won it with a 294 x 300 score (another format change, back to a 30 round match).  Mike recalls that the match was “ … kind of like a President’s 100 Match”.  The plaque was awarded to Mike Gingher in 1990 and last awarded to John Hoham in 1991.  Its whereabouts since then is a mystery until it showed up in the Bruggeman Building.

Now, who are the two individuals involved in the name and donation of the award?  As of now, we don’t know a lot.  We find First Lieutenant John C. Houck listed in the early 1920’s as a member of the Fort Wayne contingent of the Indiana National Guard and in 1925 there are records of him shooting in Indiana rifle and pistol matches with the Indiana Guard teams.  There is evidence that by 1945 he had been promoted to Major where he served the Philippines as a company commander.  The fact that the trophy is the “Major John Houck Memorial Trophy” infers that Major Houck had passed away some time prior to 1963, the date the trophy was first awarded.

Lieutenant Colonel Sam L. A. Bowlin is also a bit of a mystery.  Old records show him as the Post Intelligence Officer at Fort McClellan, Alabama in late 1942.  In 1965 he shows up in the Army Reserve Magazine as being on the Fifth United States Army Team that shot the first year that the Army Reserve was represented at the National Matches at Camp Perry.  We know from club memories that he lived down around Decatur – but not a lot more than that. 

The trophy will be mounted in the new clubhouse as a reminder of the FWRR’s heritage.

The Juniors finally got their chance to “Go Downtown” – try their hand at shooting 600-yards. 

It took us most of two High Power Shooting seasons, but we arranged a session at the Hillside 600-yard range.  They have shot a lot of matches at 200 and 300-yards, but I was curious to see how they would respond to their first try at shooting at a target over a third-of-a-mile away from them.  I was not too concerned about actual scores – we were not going to do a lot of knob turning on scopes – I wanted them to see that shooting at 600-yards wasn’t all that different from 300-yards – it just takes the bullet longer to get there!   

I should have known what was going to happen; I should not doubt this group of young women. I had them put their 300-yard zeroes on their rifles and then come up an additional thirteen minutes of elevation.  Most of them were on paper the first shot and after some sighting shots, they started a 20-shot string at 600-yards. 

When the smoke cleared and the brass was picked up, I was impressed by how well they did. Miss Mia shot the high score of the evening with a 176-3X.  It was a well centered group and it did not show the two-group tendency she has shown on 300-yard prone targets.  (She really did shoot 20-shots, I didn’t do a sighter conversion for her). Good job young lady! 

Miss Addiysn was close on her heels with a 175-1X.  Her group was well centered as well.  I kidded Addiysn that only six weeks ago she was killing antennas and sensors and now she is solidly holding the black at 600-yards, a lot of improvement. 

Miss Kileen shot a group about a minute and a half high with a 162-1X, but it was well centered and had it been down a bit it would have clustered in the black.  As I mentioned earlier, I wasn’t into a lot of knob turning for this session or we would have tried to move the group a bit.   Kileen noted that at 600-yards, it just takes a little wiggle to move things a lot. 

Mr. McKee, the Hillside Range Officer and an FWRR member, closed the day with a comment; “Beard, you have a bunch of good shooters there”. 

Way to go Ladies; you make us proud!

Saturday. August 13th continued our string of good luck days for high power matches.  It was overcast most of the morning, about 55-degrees at 8:02 when we sent the first shot downrange.  When we finished at 11:04, it was only 64-degrees, a very comfortable day for shooting.  Our ranks of shooters were thinned out a bit; we had five of our regular shooters call in sick (either with WooHooFloo or recovering from it) and two shooters decided that they wanted to  uphold the FWRR reputation at the 600-yard match at Atterbury .  Even so we had eleven shooters on the line and we had a good match.

It was Jim Jackson’s day; he took first place for the match aggregate with a 770-22X and he dominated both prone stages, with a 399-16X across both prone stages.  He dropped one point in the first prone rapid stage, cleaned the second prone rapid and then continued to clean prone slow with a 200-9X.  Congratulations to Jim for a great match.

Second place went to Mark Walters with a 758-24X – third going to a guest from South Bend, Pete Yarbro with a 751-13X.  (Pete is a guest, but not a stranger to us).   Mia King took advantage of a massive two-magazine  cross-fire to take top Junior with a 711-4X count to take the Top Junior place.

 Marshall Rohrbach, one of our Juniors, won the Offhand Match with a 188-1X.  Mark Walters took first for Sitting Rapid with 199-8X .  And, Jim Jackson dominated Prone Rapid (199-7X) and Prone Slow (200-9X) to take first in both matches.

We had an issue with slow target response in all of the rapid fire stages and after I got home and looked at some of the information stored in our line servers, I was able to figure out why.  I’ll try to be brief.  I can look at valid and invalid shots in each target log.  In the rapid fire stages there were many invalid shots logged in each string.  Our targets operate on sound – and yesterday morning was a cool, humid morning.  Sound carried well yesterday. Shots from adjoining targets were being logged, and the system had to decide if they were valid on-target shots or invalid shots. The system got overloaded and it took it some time for it to figure things out.  No shots were lost, but the slow response caused confusion with some shooters.

To prevent this from happening in the future, I will not simultaneously shoot adjacent targets on rapid fire strings.  We will shoot odd targets then even targets to prevent this from happening again.  I apologize for any confusion that was caused – we’re still learning even after operating this long with the system.  (Please, remind me of this in case I forget…).

Our next match will be on Thursday, August 18th – a regular practice night.  This will be an NRA National Match Course (50-rounds) fired from the 100-yard firing line on the electronic targets.  Just a caution, there may be a waterhole in front of the line, so bring bug spray for ‘skeeters.  This is a “No Match Fee” free match, but if you want scores sent to the NRA, please bring $5 for NRA processing fees.

ONE MORE THING … Saturday, August 27th will be the Indiana State 300-Yard Championship at Wildcat Valley.  It looks like we have a group of Juniors going down to shoot and it would be great to have a FWRR contingent there to take back 300-Yard Bragging Rights for 2022.

WOW!  While I was out playing around with the Juniors, I missed a heck of a match back here at home.

We had thirteen shooters come to the line for the July 30 Mid-Range Tournament.  It was a combined any-sight/iron-sight tournament and there were five shooters who chose to shoot iron sights in one or more matches.  SO – since I had promised to recognize iron sight shooters, I chose to make Iron Sight and Overall Match awards.

The Iron Sight Match was designated as Match 3 and five shooters shot irons in that match.  Iron Sight match standings were:

First:                     Mark Walters     192-7X

Second:                Dean Drews       181-9X (CREEDMOOR!)

Third:                    Mike Habel         181-2X 

Overall  Tournament Standings were:

First: Ron Dague          596-36X(CREEDMOOR! – again)    (Scope, scope, scope)

Second:     Jim Jackson         596-29X        (Scope, scope, scope)

Third:      Mark Walters     589-30X                       (Scope, scope, irons)

There were several  198’s and 199’s shot in individual matches. Ron Dague shot a 200-14X clean in Match 2 and and Jim Jackson cleaned his target in Match 1 with a 200-11X score.  It speaks very well to the quality of our shooters when both the iron sight and overall results had standings decided by X-counts!

Thanks again to Mike Grannis for doing the Stat Office and Admin duties and to Mark Walters for running the line and  shooting  at the same time.  It’s hard to do both things at once.  And, thanks to all of the shooters who made things run smoothly.           

The Junior High Power Shooters of Indiana were well represented at the USMC Advanced Firing School and the USAMU Small Arms Firing School.

FWRR Juniors, in purple and green T-shirts attended the Small Arms Firing School and other Indiana Juniors, in the red sweatshirts, attended the advanced USMC class.

FWRR Junior Marshall Rohrbach, second from right, shooting in his first match at Camp Perry finished 17th of 267 competitors with a score of 376-6X. By finishing in the top 10% of the competitors in this special EIC Match, Marshall earned 4 Distinguished Rifleman Leg Points. Way to go Marshall!!

The next FWRR competitor was Kileen Shaffer, 79th of 267 with a 357-3X. Addisyn Shull and Mia King rounded out the FWRR group with 176th and 220th places, respectively.

Probably more importantly, Col. Eric Andreasen – USAMU Coach for the FWRR Team (who just completed his tour of duty as CO of the USAMU) commented that they see a lot of Junior Teams when they run matches with the USAMU, but it has been a long time since the USAMU staff has seen a group as polite, respectful, courteous and attentive as our FWRR Juniors.

Congratulations to our FWRR Juniors and to all of the Indiana Junior High Power shooters!

FWRR Club Meeting
The next meeting of the Fort Wayne Rifle and Revolver Club will be held on Monday, August 1, 2022. Meeting Place: VFW Post 857, located at 2202 West Main Street in Fort Wayne. Meeting Time: 7:00 p.m. Agenda: Standard meeting format. In addition, Mike Grannis will be presenting some very interesting membership statistics. Food and drink are available at very reasonable prices before and after the meeting. Please make an effort to attend meetings, as a quorum is required to conduct club business. In June, poor meeting attendance prevented club business from being conducted. So, please make a special effort to attend the August meeting.

Omission
A list of members who participated in Cleanup Day activities was presented in the June newsletter. Three members were not able to attend in the morning. As a result, their names were inadvertently omitted from the listing. Those individuals’ names are: Stefan Ashtary, Mark Wager, and John Wassell. John’s grandson, Jackson, a non-member, also participated.

New Members
Please welcome the following new members who were accepted at the June, 2022 meeting; Scott Berning, a law enforcement officer who was sponsored by Tim Wunderlich, and Robert Klinkenberg, who works in the transportation industry and was sponsored by Doug Clark.

Newsletter Delivery
Approximately 80% of the membership receives the newsletter via email. Those members who have email accounts and who currently opt for postal delivery are asked to consider receiving the newsletter via email next year. Doing so will save printing expenses (newsletter and mailing labels), postage, envelope cost, the time and fuel spent traveling to/from the
printer, and the manual labor associated with stuffing, labeling, stamping, and mailing envelopes.

Maintenance Activities
Thanks go to Ted Smeltzer for mowing the ditch, to John Wassell et al for installing target frames in Pistol Bays 4 and 5, to John Halter for making improvements at the 300 yard benches, and to Gary Walker for weed killer application.

Reminders
DO NOT HANDLE FIREARMS WHEN PERSONNEL ARE DOWN RANGE! Proper range etiquette involves opening actions, removing all ammunition from firearms, and stepping away from the firing line. MEMBERS ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR THE BEHAVIOR AND ACTIONS OF THEIR GUESTS. Members may take a maximum of two guests to the range per visit, not counting family members. Do not take more guests and/or family
members than you are able to directly supervise. If your guests or family members are new to the shooting sports, it is strongly recommended that the member refrain from shooting so that all of his/her attention can be devoted to supervision.

Water obtained from the hand pump and the cistern are not potable.
Please make certain to close the outhouse doors and to lower the toilet seat covers.

Mowing Schedule
The 2022 Mowing Schedule is available on the club’s website. The mowing dates that are scheduled to occur before the October meeting are: 7/27, 8/10, 8/24, 9/7 and 9/21. Dates are tentative, depending on weather and ground conditions. Mowing times vary according to volunteer availability. Efforts will be made to provide mowing date and time updates on
the website. The Main Range is closed during mowing and other range maintenance activities. Pistol Bays 4 and 5 remain open during mowing. It is recommended that members check the website for updates before traveling to the range.

Range Officer (RO) Reports
ACPDL
Tim Wunderlich, reports that he has received many favorable comments regarding the recently-installed, covered firing points in the Pistol Bays.

High-power (HP)
FWRRC ran its second-annual, three-day, Mid-summer Madness Tournament over the period June 17th-June 19th (late Spring?). The tournament included a 50-round National Match, an 80-round Regional Match, a 3 x20 Midrange Match, and the Mike Gingher Memorial M1A Match. The 50-round National Match was won by Mark Richard with a score of 490-19x. The Regional Match was won by Mike King with a score of 785-27x. The Midrange match was won by Geoff Branson who shot a 599-36x. (Geoff only dropped one point.) Geoff’s daughter, Emma, who happens to also be John Halter’s granddaughter, shot an outstanding 594-26x in the Mid-range Match. Emma is a junior girl. Three generations of the Branson-Halter family were represented at the matches this year.

The Mike Gingher Memorial M1A Match was won by Mark Walters with a 363-1X. The first aggregate winner was Mark Walters (2216-35x). The second and third aggregate winners were Mark Richard ( 2201-72x) and Ron Dague (2119-47x), respectively.

The High Junior aggregate went to Kileen Shaffer (1703-32x). The High-Junior Midrange Match high aggregate went to Emma Branson (594-26x).

The Indiana Junior State HP Rifle Championship Match was held at the FWRRC Range on July 16th. Last year was the first time that the championship match was held at the FWRRC Range. Match results are as follows.

Junior State HP Rifle Champion: Madelyn Schenelle with a score of 489-16x. This is the second consecutive year that Madelyn has held the title.
Second Place: Emma Branson. Score: 475-11x.

Class Awards
High Master: Colton Eads. Score: 473-10x.
Expert: Marshall Rohrbach. Score: 467-4x.
Sharpshooter: Kileen Shaffer. Score: 440-3X
Marksman: Emma (Sandbagger) Branson. Score 475-11x

Stage Awards
Standing Slow-fire: Marshall Rohrbach. Score: 92-0x.
Sitting Rapid-fire: Madelyn Schenelle. Score: 100-4x.
Prone Rapid-fire: Emma Branson. Score: 99-2x.
Prone Slow-fire: Madelyn Schenelle. Score: 196-8x.

The details of this report were provided by Larry Beardsley. Larry and several others are responsible for wonderful Junior participation. Thanks go to Mark Walters who provided a hot lunch and to Mike and Glenna Grannis who served as Statistical Officers.

USPSA
No report.

For Sale
Members who wish to sell shooting-related items may send ad information to Marty Didion at martindidion4@gmail.com. Ads must be received three weeks before meetings in order to appear in the next newsletter.

There will be a meeting of the Fort Wayne Rifle and Revolver Club at the VFW/American Legion/Marine Corps League facility at the end of West Main Street in Ft. Wayne at 7:00 on Monday, August 1.

Our last meeting was a dud because we did not have enough members to form a quorum and we could not conduct business or receive discipline and officer reports because of that.

Make time in your busy schedules to attend this meeting.

Our June match was remarkable for its beautiful weather, but the July match started out like a typical Camp Perry day.  There was a steady downpour at the appointed start time, so we waited a bit to start setup. The rain slacked up, we went downrange to set up targets and the downpour came back with a vengeance – drenching us as we set up targets.  But, by the time we finished, came back up and had our safety briefing – the rain had stopped.  By the time the second relay came to the line the sun was shining and it turned out to be a very nice day after all.

The second relay is just finishing their Offhand stage as the sun breaks out.

We had seven shooters turn out for the match – there were a number of schedule conflicts that kept the entries lower than expected and high gas prices also kept some shooters away from the match. We had an impressive showing of parents and grand-parents for the match; the ability to watch shooters in real-time on the Silver Mountain target system makes high power shooting a more viewer friendly activity as spectators can watch a shooter’s progress shoot-by-shot.

Madelyn Schnelle, who recently went Distinguished, took the Indiana Junior State Championship for the second consecutive year with a 489-16X score for the 50-round National Match Course.  Emma Branson took second place with a 475-11X closely followed by Colton Eads with 473-10X.

Class awards were:

High Master    Colton Eads                 473-10X

Expert             Marshall Rohrbach      467-  4X

Sharpshooter Kileen Shaffer              440-  3X            

Marksman      Emma Branson            475-11X

Stage awards were:

Offhand          Marshall Rohrbach        92-0X

Sitting Rapid   Madelyn Schnelle       100-4X

Prone Rapid    Emma Branson            99-2X

Slow Prone     Madelyn Schnelle       196-8X

In the afternoon fun match, Juniors were teamed up with “old coot” shooters to form two-person teams. The team of Madelyn Schnelle and John Halter took the top spot with a team score of 197-5X. It should be noted that the high score in that match was shot by Colton Eads as his last match with us before he leaves for Texas A&M this fall – a 100-3X clean at 300-yards on the miserable MR-63 target.

While the attention was on the shooters, the match was made a success by the folks who helped in the background.  Mike and Glenna Grannis acted as our Stat Office – doing their usual fantastic job of keeping all the numbers and dollars straight.  Mark Walters (assisted by Marty Didion) did a great job putting together a memorable lunch and our range crew had the place looking like one of the better golf courses – not a hayfield with a bunch of targets set up in it.  Thank you to everyone who stepped up and made it a great day.

Our next match is a 3 x 20 round Mid-Range tournament on July 30, so keep that on your calendar.