Tuesday, August 23, 2011

Shooters News for the MN Area -- Aug 23, 2011

The Week Ahead  
   This coming weekend has the Championship trail shifting to the North with the Prone Small Bore St. Championships to be held in Hibbing, Mn, at the the Hibbing Rifle and Pistol Club.  There will be matches both Saturday and Sunday (Aug 27-28), and each day will see the shooters facing off in prone matches to be shot on targets from 50 yds to 100 yds.  The four matches on Saturday will be shot with Iron sights and then on Sunday, any sights may be used at the shooters choice.  This will be the a great opportunity for all you northern Highpower prone shooters to practice for the 9/11 Mid Range Matches at NWGC.  Don't miss this opportunity.  St. Prone SB Champ  Match Bulletin (pg 8-10)  --  Click Here   

  For the Highpower shooter there is the South Dakota St Champ matches at Yankton, SD over the two day weekend of Aug 27-28. There will be a sporter rifle match on Sat, and Sunday is the State Champ match.   Click Here for match bulletin. 
   There also is a rumor of Mid Range Matches at Lacrosse Rifle Club this weekend, but I don't have a match bulletin to share.   

Last Weekend
Highpower
The NRA Regional Championships were held.  The contest was contested.  The shooters fired matches at 200 yds, 300yds and 600 yds.  The Champion was crowned after a tough match. Capt. Bob Peasley is the 2011 Mn Regional Champion. Capt. Bob fired good consistant high scores to come out on top and win the Gold medal.  While he didn't win any of the matches outright, he made no mistakes though out the day and had the most points at the end.
   Capt. Bob was just out Xed by Kevin Bangen in the Standing match.  Both had fired awesome 190 scores in that that difficult match.  In the Sitting Rapid fire match it was Dale Wickstrom that had just one more point that Capt Bob, and his Sitting Rapid fire score of 196 took that match.                At the 300yd line, it was
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Erick Rhode who dropped just two pts and won that rapid fire match with his 198 score.  At the 600 yd line it was the last chance for Capt Bob to take a match win, and his 196 score was again good for a 2nd place but again Kevin Bangen was just one point better and took the prone slow fire match with a 197.  Actually, the match wasn't just 1 point difference, Kevin drilled 14 Xs, while the next best shoot could only manage 6 Xs -- No, It wasn't even close.  Kevin won that match going away!
  In the end, it didn't matter who won each of the 4 matches, Capt Bob's solid performance in every match won the Day !
  Congratulations to Capt. Bob Peasley for winning the MN NRA Regional with the top score of 775-15x. 
  Other great scores were fired by Jim Schonke (763) who was in town for the next days very important Leg Match.  Dick Van Valkenberg might be close to earning his Master card if he continues to shoot 765s like he did in this tournament.  

  Click Here to see Capt. Bob fire his 200 yd Rapid fire match on the way to his Gold medal. It almost didn't go the way it was supposed too. 
From Capt. Bob:   "
As you could see by watching close I had a couple minor feed problems and had to double clutch a couple shots.  It was worse at 300.  I think I had about 1/4 second left after all 4 strings." 

Sunday
, was the big Service Rifle Leg Match. Mark Havlik sent in a copy of the results.  Thank You Mark.

                     Results of Leg Match:  >>>

It looks like Jim Schonke made his trip from Wisc. worthwhile by holding hard in the beautiful weather, and taking the Gold Medal and Leg Points with a well shot 475-7x.  I believe that Jim has traveled here before and taken home well earned Leg Points.  Jim should now have enough pts for his Distinguished badge or be very close to it.  Congratulations to Jim Schonke such good shooting.  Terry McDonnell was not far behind in 2nd place with a 469, but with only 14 shooters, I'm not sure if a 2nd leg was given for even that good score. Right behind Terry was Thomas Holm, and Dean Gillette both firing competitive scores above 465 and next in line to be taking Leg points from less practiced shooters.

   Mark Havlik has also sent in for us another excellent slide show, set to music, of the pictures Mark took at the Leg Match.  I have to say that Mark is getting very good at producing these moving slide shows and they are as good as any I've seen of shooting events.
             Click Here to view Mark's latest slide show. 

Small Bore
The last of Mpls. Rifle Club's summer series of prone small bore matches was held this past Sunday under Blue Bird skys, and with little wind to plague the assembled shooters.  It was to be a great day for most every body. The conditions meant that just about every shooter had a really good or great match to remember after.  In the end, it would be a battle between Metric State Champ and collegiate shooter Emily Quinar, High Power prone specialist Stacey Tamulinas, and all round High Master Steve Knutson.  The 50 yd match started with a light breeze from 8 o'clock, and Steve and Stacey cleaned both 20 shot targets, while Emile dropped one pt for a 399 score. Marksman shooter Julie Huseby was dialed in and fired a competitive 397 just behind Jim Biles for 5th place.  Next up was the Dewar Match and that meant first a 50 yd target and then a 100 yd target with the regular 20 shots on each.  Steve Knutson again cleaned both of these challenging targets for a 400-29x and now had a 1pt lead over Stacey, and 3 over Emily.   

   The third match would be the 100 yd match and since this was a " One Day Regional" course of fire, this match and the following 50m match would allow the use of "Any Sights".  I had shot pretty good in the 2 iron sight matches, and was down only 8 for the day, but I was having trouble with blurry eyes and would go to a Scope for rest of the match.  Jim Biles, Steve Knutson and others made the same choice. It was also a good day to test the inexpensive SK yellow box ammo with the light wind and  20 pwr scope to help out.  
  Two shooters decided not to use scopes --  Stacey and Emily.  Emily, because she shoots only iron sights in collegiate competition, and besides she just won the State Metric Champ with iron sights over the best scope shooters.   Stacey chose iron sighs because he wanted to shoot head to head with Emily and if either won the day, it would have been a fair fight -- not exactly mano a mano, but you get the idea. It was a good choice because the use of a scope did not help Steve in this match as he scored the same 397 as Stacey and Emily, but Stacey scored the most Xs with 25 and gets the win.  Jim Biles was just a pt behind and now only 9 down for the day.
  Now we were down to the last two targets to be shot at 50m.  The "meter" match is always considered to be the hardest match and so it is proper to make it the last match. it's easy to drop a bunch of pts in the meter match.    Steve K. was now ahead for the day, but only one pt over Stacey, and with only a 3 pt cushion over Emily.  Any one could win yet!   Two folks cleaned the first target of 20 shots. Stacey and my self.  Emily dropped a couple and was slipping away from a possible win. Steve K. shot a 199 and this meant that going into the last of the 8 targets shot, it was a tied up shooting match.  20 more shots on the 50m target would determine the winner.  First off the line was yours truly dropping 3 and posting a 397- good for 2nd in this meter match.  Then, Steve came off the line having dropped 3 more for a 396.  Stacey and Emily were taking their time and were the last shooters off the line.  Emily could not make up earlier lost pts, and posted a 396.  She would not win today.
     It was up to Stacey to take the win on the last shot or not.  Shoot a 10 and win the match out right on points or shoot a nine and risk being creedmoored by Steve on who shot the last x. 
    It was a 10 and Stacey wins this last MRC 1600 Sm Bore match, after a good battle down to the last point and the last shot.  What a great way to win the day.  Steve came in 2nd with a SB Master score of 1593-106x.  Emily was third.  Stacey not only won the match, but fired his first Master iron sight Sm bore prone score, shooting somewhere around 99.6% possible (1594-126x)  . 
  Everyone had fun, and it was a great day at the range.  Thanks to George Minerich for 8 hrs of range prep on Friday to make this match possible. 
 Complete Results: Click to expand

                              


Two Weeks Out
Sept 3        Palma at GRRC  -- Click Here for Program
Sept 3-5     Mid range and OTC at Eau Claire  -- Click Here for program
Sept 10-11 Mid Range prone champs at NWGC Duluth -  Click Here for program

That's All Folks!
Hawkeye

2 comments:

NWOshooter said...

Jim,

Is the "meter match" shot on NRA or ISSF targets at 50 metres?

Jason

Hawkeye said...

Jason,
When it is a NRA match, all targets are NRA targets. The 50m NRA targets is a little easier than the UIT target.