The Week Ahead -- Shooters news of the Minn Area - May 19th

The Week Ahead
This week Palma shooters are in town for a Midwest regional training session of the US Developement Team.   GRRC, at Harris, MN is hosting this Long Range training session on its 800, 900, and 1000yd firing lines Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. I believe that local top ranked Long Range shooters Bill Lair, Stacey Tamulinas, Steve Knutson, Morgan Dietrich and others will all be participating. Shooters will be evaluated on their ability to hold good water line elevation at these long ranges, while coaches will be evaluated on being able to keep their shooters centered up with good wind reading skills. Top shooter/ coach combinations will see the wind coach positioned close enough to the shooter to be the one that operates the wind knobs on the rifle sights. Shooters shoot, -- coaches turn the knobs. This kind of trust by both members of the team are necessary when at 1000yds a wind change of only a couple mph, means more than a foot displacement of the bullet on the target. GRRC gets gold star for having such a quality facility that is capabile of hosting this event.

This coming Sunday, May 23, all shooters are invited to enter and participate in the Wadekamper Mem. Palma match, the last event of this Long Range weekend at GRRC. This open match will be 15 shots plus sighters at each distance of 800, 900 and 1000yds. This event is open to F-Class shooters. Get those long range rifles out and come to GRRC and shoot some Palma.

Click here for Match Program

Last Weekend's Matches
The Service Rifle Clinic -- . See following post.

The Leg Match
The match I have been looking forward to for th past few weeks, was the Leg Match. I like shooting Leg Matches--I always have. There is a lot of good reasons to enjoying Leg Matches.

1. Intense Competition. Leg matches are the most important matches for most Highpower shooters. Most of us start highpower and shoot our first matches with a Service Rifle. After we make Expert, we see that we might, I repeat, might get good enough at this to earn a Distinguished Rifleman's Badge and we Start entering Leg Matches to try and get some of those oh, so elusive Leg Points. Leg Points becomes the Holy Grail of our shooting careers. To earn that Badge............ So Leg Matches become Important and the competition is stiff as the top shooters will travel and try to earn points out of State.
2. Short and Sweet. Leg matches are only 50 shots. 10 shots Standing, a string of 10 shots Sitting position rapid fire, another rapid in the prone pos., and then 20 precision shots medium range from the prone pos.
3. No sighters Its a true rifle man's match--- first shot counts, no sighters. You learn your Zeros when you can't count on sighters.
4. Shooting Service Rifles --  It's more fun shooting service rifles than match rifles. There are just less things to adust, or misadjust on a service rifle. Just pick it up and shoot it --as is. Yes, the post front sight is a little harder to see, but I really only see a disadvantage in the longer range prone slow fire. I just find it "easier" to shoot service rifles than match rifles even though I lose a few pts.
5. Friendships Leg match shooters tend to participate on Service rifle teams (to get more practice) and team shooting makes for long term frindships from sharing experiences.

I knew that I had a good chance in this Leg Match to place if I just had a good day. I would also have some competition from Capt. Bob for "high senior" and the usual friendly rivalry between Larry Weidell and myself to see who would beat who that day. Larry and I have been shooting against each other in Service Rifle matches for about 10 years now and are usually separated in scores at the end of the day by a point or two. Last year, he beat me in every match. Well, that was last year. This year it will be different.

I was 1st relay, so I was first up to shoot 200yd standing, and it did not go well. I called the first shot a good solid nine at 3 o'clock, but it came up a 7 at 3 and I was down 3pts. I ck'ed the windage knob to see if I was off 1 revolution--nope. Ok, make no correction but fire a better 2nd shot. I called the 2nd shot a scratch 10 at 3, but again it came up an 8 out the right. I was down 5 pts in two shots, but I knew that the sight was set right and only came over 1 click, and glad of that because 3rd shot went to left, a nine. I finished with 10s but only a 91 total. I thought that I had shot good enough for a better score, Larry Weidell shot a 94 and led the pack, 3 ahead of me, 1 ahead of Jeremy Harrison, and Phil Klanderud at 90.

In the Rapid fire Sitting match that followed, I was hoping for my usuall 98, but good visibility (a sharp bulleye and sight), and a good position got me a clean 100 all grouped just left of the Xring -- 1x. Larry dropped 6 pts, Phil lost 4, but Jeremy Harrison dropped only 2 shots out of the ten ring and took the lead going back to the 300 yd line by one x over yours truly, both down 9 pts total.

The Prone rapid fire match was pretty even. I lost only one pt to Larry W. and still led him by two. Jerremy Gained one pt, while Phil lost one. Larry and Jerremy had 97s, Phil and I had 96s. I'm usually happy to take 96 in the 300yd rapid match. A 6 inch ten ring is not easy to hit at 300 yds as some people might like to think it is.
It was anybody's match to win at the 600 yd line. The light was good, but the wind was swirling around just enough to confuse the flags and most of the shooters. It was not my best performance. I kept hovering around the 10 ring, but here were too many 9s just above and below the ten ring and in 20 shots I lost 14pts -- about 4 below average. Over all I was satisfied. I had shot a 473 -- a respectable score for a senior citizen service rifle shooter. The others also had their long line problems and no one ran away with the match. I had beat Larry Weidell by 1 pt,(finally) on the last shot of the day by shooting an X.  I had snuck ahead of Capt. Bob for the Old Guy honors,  Won a Silver Medal,, and again had a great day shooting a Leg Match. Life is Good !

Jerremy Harrison won the Gold Medal at Sundays GRRC Leg Match.

Shooters trying to earn points towards the lifetime achiement award of a Distinguished Rifleman's Badge shot 50 rds for record with service rifles Sunday afternoon. Shooting 3 positions and at distances of 200 to 600 yds, Jeremy (previously Distinquished) scored a 475 and the top prize, with Jim Evenson getting the Silver (473), and Larry Weidell taking the Bronze with a 472.

Phil Klanderude was the top non-Distinguished shooter and thus won a leg and 8 pts after five 2nd place finishes over the last few years. Congratulations to Phil, it was a well earned award.

Pictures of the leg Match --- Click Here !



Small Bore
Results from this past Sundays's 1600 prone outdoor conventional Small Bore match at MRC were not forwarded to me in time to be posted here.
Two weeks from now the Sm Bore Conventional Prone Outdoor Regional Championships will be held at Mpls Rifle Club. These are both 1600s with the Iron sight match being Saturday, and then the Any sight champ match being on Sunday. I will shoot the Saturday match and bring back some pictures. 2 day Sm Bore Prone Regional Program --  click here

Two Weeks out
Plan ahead, as there are 4 very good shooting matches planned for the Memorial Day Weekend. There are two highpower events, and two Small bore prone matches. NorthStar Rifle club has a weekend of Highpower which includes a Mid Range Prone match on Saturday, then, on Sunday, the much anticipated warm-up Over the Course team match.. Mpls Rifle Club has both Sat. and Sunday Small Bore Conventional Prone matches -- Regional Championships.
I'll have to make choices as I would like to get to all these matches. First Priority is the Team warm up match-- I'll pick that for Sunday, and though I hate to miss an enjoyable leisurely Mid Range prone match, I want to catch one of the Sm Bore Regional matches, so I'll be at MRC Saturday for their 1600. I've had a couple good Sm Bore prone scores recently, and am looking forward to the next 1600. My discussions with German Salazar about the importance of getting the rear sight closer to the eye and using smaller rear apertures seems to be making quite a difference for me. Look out Expert class.
More on the Team warm-up match---I know that Gopher has got a couple of good teams ready to go. I think that Gopher has a good chance to win this match this year. I haven't heard about the Duluth Guys or the Elk River guys, --- last fall they had a good iron sight team and a good F-team for that prone match. I hope that all the shooters that want to participate in this Team match get to their High Power director so the Clubs can pre-register if possible. Team shooting with coaches is very beneficial to all up-coming shooters. So-- get on a team and we'll see you there.

Saturday May 29th -- Mid Range Prone at NorthStar   Click here for Program
Saturday May 29th -- Small Bore Prone Regional at Mpls Rifle club   Click here for Program
Sunday May 30th -- The warm up Team Match   Click here for Program
Sunday May 30th -- Small bore Prone Rgional at Mpls Rifle club