| I have to
thank my friend and fellow shooter Bill Barwick for tricking
me into going to the match yesterday. I had a last minute
change in plans and was able to go to the match but thought
it was at 100 yards. Actually, Bill neglected to tell
me that it was at 300 yards, Im sure that was intentional.
Either way, I went to the match and enjoyed the experience.
I definitely struggled with the distance and the conditions
but have provided pictures a couple of the targets from
the match. The targets are so large, that it is difficult
to get the entire target and still have the bullet holes
big enough to distinguish. I have provided the pictures
anyway and hope that you can see them. The match was at
Maineville in Pennsylvania, a long drive to make on a
regular basis. I preloaded all of my rounds the night
before and was up until 10:00 doing so. Got up at 3:00
am and met Bill at 4:00 for the ride up. We had a nice
drive up and even stopped for Breakfast at a diner close
to the range. When we got to the range, I was most impressed
by the number of benches and the size of the range. I
had never even been to a range where there were distances
greater than 200 yards, much less prepared to shoot at
that distance.
Bill and I shared a bench since I dont have any windflags
yet. We set out his windflags at a couple of different
yardages but only had 3 flags to use. We set up one
flag close to the bench to see the effect of the wind
up close and then set the other two at 200 and 275.
The 2 further flags could be seen in the scope under
the target. Bills flags are the type without a daisy
wheel and he has 2 ribbons hanging from the vane one
light ribbon on the top and one heavier on the bottom.
I need to save up and get a nice set of flags for myself.
I had no idea on how much elevation I needed to add
to my scope for 300 yards. I looked for a shooter on
the line that was shooting a PPC with a leupold scope
and asked him how many clicks I would need to add in
elevation to get me on the target. He gave me a starting
point of 10 clicks and I clicked my scope up and was
ready to give it a whirl. During the open range, a guy
on the bench next to me with a spotting scope (hunter
class shooter) volunteered to spot for me to get me
sighted in. I shot my first shot with no luck neither
of us could see a hole (It turned out later to be low
right and in the black). I added 2 more clicks of elevation
and got on the target but out to the right. I shot a
couple of more shots until I had my scope set for both
vertical and horizontal. I then tried to shoot the x
and shot an X on my first shot. I couldnt even distinguish
the hole from the dot in my scope. The spotter told
me to shoot another and then another. I could see the
hole getting bigger. He encouraged me to put 2 more
in to finish a group. I got the 4th shot
in the group and lost the 5th out to the
left. The only regret that I have is that I shot all
of my warm-up shots on the same target, but here is
the group at 300 yards. There are four shots in the
10-ring and one a little to the left.
That was a confidence builder for me and maybe even
gave me a false sense of confidence. I had a good condition
that hung around long enough for me to get off 5 shots
but was rushing and probably had a gun handling error
on the last one.
I then shot the warm-up match and ended up with a 48
and no xs.
Same thing on my first two matches, I shot 48s again
but still no xs. My 3rd match was my personal
best and was a 49 and 1x. The picture of that target
is shown below. I then followed up that with a lowsy
performance in the 4th match which turned
out to be a 46 1x. Through the first four matches
and the warm-up, the worst targets that I had shot were
9s. In the last match of the day, I shot a 48 with
four 10s and an 8. I also picked up an x. I totally
missed a switch in the wind and the bullet got blown
big time. I was trying to run a condition and had already
gotten off 3 nice 10s and an x when I shot the 8. I
was disappointed in myself for doing so, but managed
to shoot the last target as a 10.
I ended up in 8th place out of 13 shooters
with a 239 and 3xs. It was a great opportunity for
me and probably taught me to appreciate shooting 100
yards. I gained a lot of confidence in my gun and got
to see what it was like to shoot 300 yards with the
PPC. I had posted all of my targets in this document,
but found it to be too large and felt it may cause some
people some problems loading. I had intended to put
them all on but the targets are so big that I was forced
to cut down on the size. Below is a picture of the best
target that I had shot all day: 49 1x.
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