Tuesday, September 15, 2009

The Week Ahead -- Sept 15th 2009

Shooters
The Week Ahead

This is the weekend when all the bragging rights are on the line. The two biggest matches of the year are on this weekends schedule. NorthStar Rifle Club will be the site for the rescheduled NRA Regional OTC championship on Saturday. On Sunday it is Club vs Club in the hotly contested Mid Range prone Team Championship. This year there is more interest in shooting for Club vs Club bragging rights than ever before. With a new format that encourages shooters to shoot for their "home" team, and not some "intra-club Lightholder, or Association all star teams", each club will have a much better chance to put their name on the Team Trophy. Clubs are taking this match seriously this year, with GRRC rumored to be sending 3 Teams, Elk River bringing 2 teams, and even Mpls Rifle Club is sending a team of 300 meter experts. Will the hard-holders from Northwestern Gun club, or the always powerful NorthStar team be able to defend their past championships--- We'll see. Eau Claire National Rifle Club,--bring your best!
Are you going to be there shooting for your club? I hope so.

But First
It's not often that I Iike to get extra early (0500 hrs) to go to a rifle match, but when there is a chance to get up north for the day and shoot a good match, I'll make the sacrifice. So with the range at Hunter Lake on the radar I was crossing the St Louis River in Cloquet Saturday about an hour after sun up. It was a misty scene with mirror smooth water--what a sight. When I crossed again up near the range---Well, see the picture on the blog. I guess us Norwegians just like smell the pine trees and lakes once in a while.
Northwestern Gun Club was hosting the 9/11 Patriot's match -- 2 days of prone shooting and a good tune up for the MR club championship coming up. Saturdays course of fire was all at 300 yds, with 2 iron sight matches and 2 any sight matches. The morning fog caused a short delay till the targets could be seen, but by 10 o'clock the first relay was on the line and the match was on. Stacey Tamulinas showed that he hasn't lost anything since his success at the Canadian Nationals by hammering the X-ring 16 times in that first iron sight match and going clean for the first 19 shots when he proved the old adage that "8s happen" and left the line a couple Xs ahead of Dave Salo with 198 scores and a pt ahead of Elliot Zunich at 197. In the 2nd iron sight match Stacey made up for his only bad shot so far and fired a 200-15x getting a couple pt jump on D. Salo but right behind were Larry Miller and Mark Rohrman with 199-10x. In the first Any Sight match both Dave S. and Larry M. shot clean and this put Dave up by one over Stacey, with Larry down by 2 and Elliot and yours truly now 5 pts back and losing traction. In the final any sight match Larry M. would not be denied and again shot a clean 200-13x to Stacey and Dave's 198s. but this good shooting would only manage to tie Dave's 793, and Dave Salo's 42 Xs beats Larry's 37 Xs for the Win. Stacey T. landed in 3rd place 1 pt back, with a monstrous 56 X count on that 2 in x ring. Amazing! In the Master class John Andres finished with a 199 and Omer Hamer finished with a pair of 199s--John taking the class win over Omer and Elliot by just one pt.
Sunday saw another short fog delay before the start of the 500 yd matches -- a good time to ck out the competition and chit chat for a while. Good Eyes and a tenacious hold saw Stacey take the first Iron match on a 199-9 score but only 1 ahead of Phill Klanderud's 198. The 2nd Iron match shuffled things up a bit, with Larry miller clawing back to go one up on Stacey with a fine 199-6 for the conditions, but not good enough to stay with Phill K. who was now down only 5 and leading into the scope matches. In these last two Any sight matches, Larry Miller never gave the competition a chance --shooting every one of the 40 record shots in to the ten and x ring. Both Omer Hamer and Stacey shot one of those matches clean, but a 398 or 399 never beats a 400, and Larry Miller takes the day with a 794 to Stacey' 791 and Dave Salo at 788.
So the competition was very tight for the two great days of matches at Northwestern Gun Club. Larry Miller takes the 1600 two day agg. with a 1587-72. 2nd was Stacey T. with 1583-91. Omer Hamer squeaked out a Master Class win over John Andres by only Xs as both shot 1567s.
In the ever more popular F-Class, D. Zeffke pretty much had his own way all weekend over the 6 other F Troops, ending up both days a little ahead of Ron Berg and Gary LaValley and taking the two day agg.
Pictures of this match are posted Above:

Small Bore
I received a nice note from Canadian Shooter interested in attending some of our matches.--

"Hawkeye,
I stumbled across your blog looking for info on rifle shooting in Minnesota. I shoot ISSF smallbore prone and live right across the border in Fort Frances and I’m thinking of getting the paperwork so I can bring my rifle into the U.S. and compete next year. I was going to drop down to Hibbing to see the state championships a couple of weeks ago but I’d just gotten home from the Canadian nationals so had a largish “honey do” list to work through first. J
I’ve visited the MSSEC and check out the MRRA website regularly, but – until I found your blog
– don’t really know how else to reach out to Minnesota shooters. Any suggestions?"
Jason Jarvis thejarvisfamily@vianet.ca
Fort Frances, Ontario

Jason is on the list of match bulletins now and we hope to see him sometime next summer, and he has been invited to center fire matches at Northwestern Gun Club in the future. He might also be a good 300m recruit. Brian?

300 m Shooting
"The MRC 300 meter club match was held Sunday, September 13, 2009. There were 5 competitors and Chuck Diehl breaking in barrels of two guns. What a wonderful day to shoot. Calm, sunny and comfortable in the air-conditioned shooting house; outside it was also calm and sunny with temp at high as 76 but with humidity in the 80’s, at least.

The results can be seen at http://www.edfpages.com/mgfc/results.php?match=9

Kurt Kisch came a bit late but managed to beat everyone even though he was handicapped using iron sights. He beat F-class shooters (of which there was one…me). He kicked butt shooting a 6.5-308 thingie.
I shot about my average for my Savage box stock .223 even though I shot fast but had good sight pictures through the scope and I felt good. ..........
The next 300 meter club match would normally be on October 11, but, this October 11 will be=2 0the state 3P match at the club so there will not be a club match. All you 3P shooters should come out for this major match. More to come a bit later. "
Brian Shiffman

F-Class at Elk River
"Hello,
Wanted to let you know that F Class in Elk River ends on Sept. 14th-Monday. 6 months of fun is coming to a close.
Sincerely,"
Lisa Olson, Corresponding Secretary, Elk River Sportsman's Club

Note: Gary LaValley, Mfg. of the excellent Phoenix Precision rifle sights, has posted a couple vidoes on his web site featuring local shooters, and the our Elk River Range. Gary, you are making us all look good. link: http://www.phoenixprec.com/

News from other matches last weekend
Wahl Classic Rifle shoot --- No news
Bald Eagle Sportsman's Assoc. CMP match -- No news

The Week Ahead

Saturday Sept 19 -- NRA Regional at NorthStar Rifle Club -- program link in schedule below.
Saturday Sept 19 -- Free Pistol 50m at MRC
Sunday Sept 20 -- Mid Range Prone Team Championship at NorthStar Rifle Club
MR match program: http://www.scribd.com/doc/19334030/Mid-Range-Team-091

note: A change has been made to the team match program due to an printing error----

From Capt. Bob
"I discovered this error at about 2 AM this morning when I woke up in a cold sweat and realized I had shown the entry fee of $28.00 per team. It should have been $64.00 per team or $16.00 per shooter. Even at that it leaves little for awards & club income."

Bob, We'll come anyway.
This is a big weekend of shooting in MN--- See you all out there! Support your club rifle team!
Hawkeye

PS-- The blog is getting hits from all over the US and the World. The pictures of our local matches are being seen by many interested shooters. You're all looking good out there.

Minnesota area is a great place to shoot! Our local ranges are the best there is.

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