The Week Ahead -- 4/27/11

Shooters news for the MN area 

Highpower

Rain, Rain go away!
Yes, I know that April showers bring May flowers, but enough is enough!

The forecast shows a possible  break in the weather for Saturday, Apr 30,  and this is great because NorthStar Rifle Club is hosting their season opening Mid Range Prone match for all who have been cooped up throughout the winter.  You will get a chance to exercise those itchy trigger fingers and shoot a 20 shot matches at 300 yds, 500 yds, and 600yds with iron sights.  There will also be a final 20 shot match at 600 yds and any sights can be used in this match. Two sighters and fouling shots will be allowed at the start of each match.
Click Here for match bulletin and entry info.
  On Sunday, May 1st, NorthStar will also be having a Mid Range team match, for all comers. Make up a 4 man team or call Capt. Bob to get on a pick-up team.  This is a fun match (not registered) and the idea is to introduce newer shooters to prone shooting and Palma style matches.  Nationally ranked coaches will be passing on their skills to each shooter on the line. 
  Bonus!-- this match will offer FREE AMMO and you can't get a better deal than that!
Click Here for match bulletin. 
   Note:  Time is short to enter this match---Call or msg Capt. Bob today!  dilligas@means.net 
Capt. Bob needs to know today  (Wed) if there are enough shooters to host this (Sun.) match.

From Capt Bob:

As of Mon. evening it's looking like a good chance of rain this coming Sat. for the MRP & F class match.  Sunday prospects look a little better for the team match if we get enough names. I still need at least 7 more shooters for this FREE AMMO match. Wed. noon is the dead line.

    I know it's a long drive to Red Wing for many of us, especially at 4 bucks a gallon.  So here is my plan.

    After the 7PM forecast is out Friday evening I'll send an email either way to let you know if it's on or canceled.  The experts are saying a 70-80% chance of off & on all day Sat. DO NOT head to North Star until you check your email AFTER 7 PM Fri.  Pass this along to your buds.

Small Bore news -
F-class and Senior Scope class are being added to Local small Bore Prone matches.
   See Post Below---

Two Weeks out:
May 7 --  Bob Hall Mem. 80 OTC at GRRC --  Match bulletin Click Here
May 7 and 8 -- Mid Range Prone at Lacrosse Rifle Club -- match bulletin Click Here
May 8 -- 300 m match at MRC

That's all Folks
Hawkeye
 

F-class and Senior Scope class added to Sm Bore match

F-class and Senior Scope class are being added to Local small Bore Prone matches.
    In many parts of the country, F-class shooters shoot alongside the sling shooters in their own class, trying to hit those little 10 rings with their sm bore guns out to 100yds away.  Scopes and rests are allowed in this class and if you have a hard time with Iron sights this is the perfect way to still be able participate in a great rifle match.
    In order to encourage more participation in local Sm Bore prone matches, these matches will now allow F-class shooters and Senior Scope shooters to compete.  Because many Seniors shooters have put away their match rifles due to failing eyesight and the inability to accurately use Iron sights,  we encourage Seniors come out and use "Any" sights for the whole match.
    So, all you F-class  and Seniors shooters out there will now have the opportunity to get in some great practice and competition starting with the May 15th 1600 sm bore prone match at the Mpls Rifle Club.    Click Here for match bulletin and entry info   
   So grab that Small bore rifle you may not have used in a while and give it a try.  There is a great group of folks at these prone matches and as we all know --  the more shooters the better the match! 

    The May 29th and May 30th 3200 Sm Bore Regional Prone Championship at MRC will also include F-class. Click Here for match bulletin

Small bore F- class rig at the WildCat Matches

John Andres Sm Bore rig

 Who will be the first to shoot a 1600 score in F-Class Sm Bore ?

The Week Ahead for Minn Area Shooters - 4/20/11

The Week Ahead for MN Area shooters - 4/20/11

Highpower
 This coming weekend, traveling shooters will be heading to the Eau Claire Rifle club for their annual season opening matches. Always well run, and a good time, these matches will consist of, as usual, a Mid Range Prone match on Saturday, Apr 23, followed on Sunday, Apr 24 with an 80 shot OTC match.  I don't have a match bulletin for these matches, but they are on the schedule (Click Here) and have been a tradition for many years.  Bring your best rifle and ammo as the the competition is always top notch at Eau Claire.

Upcoming Highpower matches
April 30 - NorthStar Rifle Club will host their first match of the season. This match will also be a Mid Range prone match to be shot at 300yds, 500 yds and 600 yds. and will consist of 2 sighters and 20 shots for record at each distance with Iron sights and then followed by another 20 shot match at 600yds with Any sights.  To See match bulletin  and entry info  Click Here
May 1 - NorthStar Rifle Club is holding a special match that is geared to introducing newer shooters to Prone mid-range and Long range Palma shooting.  "The purpose is to introduce potential new prone shooters to the Palma course. Several serious Palma shooters and others have indicated a willingness to loan their rifle to new shooters without a suitable rifle. This is going to be a laid back fun only match and score will not be sent in to the NRA"
  Now, What is so special about this match?   There is Free Ammo-- that's right -- Free Ammo!!!
This is a team match, so newer shooters can be coached. Make up a team and get your entry in or contact the match director to be on a pickup team.  This match is too good an opportunity to miss.  Capt Bob needs to know asap who will be coming --

From Capt Bob:

"The mini Palma team match is fast approaching on May 1 at North Star. See attached program. Thus far I have exactly 5 NAMES interested in being on a team.  As per the program the deadline for notification is noon April 27.  If I don't have enough shooters for at least 5 teams the match will be canceled.

Remember, you'll be shooting FREE 223 or 308 MATCH ammo.  I'll have my M1 308 available and my LH Palma rifle & LH 223 match rifle.  There will be a few other RH loaner rifles for those without either.  I'll even bring my AR15 if someone wants to borrow that.

NOON APRIL 27 deadline to contact me with your interest in being on a team. I'll email out the teams Wed. evening if we have enough for 5.

Capt. Bob"

See Match bulletin and entry info Click Here 

Small Bore
The next scheduled Small Bore match is a Conventional Outdoor Prone 1600 to be shot at the Mpls Rifle Club on May 15th.  These matches are shot at 50 yds, 50m, and 100 yds, for a total of 160 shots with unlimited sighters.  Click Here for match bulletin.
   Hope to see you there. Sm bore Prone is becoming one of my favorite matches, as I don't have to load the ammo and they are the best possible practice for Highpower prone matches.  Remember, almost all top long range shooters are also Small bore shooters. It's 160 shots a day with instant feedback on every shot -- and no target pulling! You can even shoot one of those .22 rimfire AR-15s for service rifle practice.  Those rifles can actually score fairly well. Wayne Ulrich shot an awesome 1548 score with one in the WildCat matches last year! That's pretty darn good with "battle sights".

High Power notes:
For a interesting read on the 6BRX cartridge, read this article by former USMC Team shooter, and one of today's top MR, and Long Range shooters-- Rick Curtis: 
"The Little Power House" -- Click Here 

That's all folks
Hawkeye

Prize Table winners from Western WildCat Matches

Check out these prizes given out at the Western WildCat Matches.  I won more value in prizes than the Entry fee, as did many of the shooters -- even though I was only 3rd expert.  This is a match worth shooting! Hope to see all you small bore shooters there next March.
Click Here for prize table winnings.

The Week Ahead for Shooters in the Minn. Area -- 4/15/11

The Week Ahead
Let's all hope that the weather moderates for Saturday, Apr. 16th, because it is a good opportunity for all of us that need some lessons in wind reading to attend the "Wind Reading Clinic" that will be taking place at the Elk River Sportsman's Club. 
   "The event will consist of (2) 20 shot matches at 300 yards, followed by a delicious lunch.
After the lunch, a wind reading/shooting clinic will be held both in the clubhouse and then at the 600 yard line of the club's KD Range. The instructors will be Steve Knutson and Rick Hunt, both coaches for the US National F-Class Team. This is a rare chance to learn from the best coaches in the country! The match will continue on the second day with (4) 20 shot matches at 600 yards."-- from Match bulletin.  Click Here for more info and Entry
  Saturdays shooting opportunities also include:
   1.  An 80 Shot OTC match at Mpls Rifle Club that starts at 0900 hrs. This is a 300 yd OTC match that will use targets reduced from 600 yds to 300yds for the prone slow fire part of the match.  Click Here for info and Entry
   2.  A Small Bore Offhand Match to be fired at Mpls. Rifle Club.  "There will be two courses of fire available to shooters. One is the 50 meter ISU course of 60 shots offhand with unlimited sighters, and the other is a Schuetzen course of 50 shots at 100 yards at a 25 ring "German" target. The ISU course follows olympic rules and the Schuetzen course uses Wyoming Shooting Union rules as a guide."  Click Here for more Info
   3.  A Mid Range prone 80 shot match to be shot at 600 yds--  at the Elk River Sportsman's Club. Click Here for info.

Small Bore News
From: Mark Schoess

  "GRRC will again be host to an Outdoor Smallbore Prone League this shooting season. You do not need a special rifle to have fun and compete! While NRA Smallbore rifle rules apply, most .22 rimfire rifles are designated as NRA Smallbore rifles.

 The league will consist of two separate matches; competitors can fire Match 1 or Match 2 or both. Match 1 will begin on Monday, May 2 at 1700 (5:00 PM) and will continue most Mondays, ending July 11. Match 2 will begin on Monday, July 18 at 1700 and will continue most Mondays, ending on Sept. 19. No league May 30, July 4 and Sept 5 due to holidays. Some in the league may opt to shoot on Tuesday mornings, these details are pending."  Click Here for more info 

Mark Schoess, cell: 651-357-4281, markschoess@yahoo.com

  
HighPower notes: 
F-Class practice will take place at Elk River Sportsman's club on Monday nights
Highpower Practice will take place at Elk River sportsman's Club  Tuesday evenings. 
High power Practice at GRRC is on Wed nights. 

Brass capacity Testing by -- Capt. Bob Peasley

From:  Capt. Bob Peasley:

     "Over the winter I started weighing brass into lots for better extreme spread control.  During those long lonely hours over the electric scale I wondered if it was really worth the effort.  Thus when it warmed up I began testing. 

       

April 8, 2011 was another dandy day to test some of the pent up ideas from a long lonely winter in Minnesota. It was 60 degrees, sunny and all bullets were moly coated, fired in a Krieger bbl. on a Stolle action. The bbl. has about 2250 rounds thru it at the start of testing. I weighed a bunch of 5 times fired WW brass over the winter and sorted into batches of about 1.4 gr. increments.  For reasons unknown to me I found about 10 pieces that were well above the highest average.  These 10 pieces averaged 171.5 gr. I picked 6 each of these and 6 of the lowest weight for testing. Results are shown below.

Read the results of Bob's testing--  Click Here

Hawkeye says:
   Over the years I have heard and read many opinions on case capacity vs velocity.  I have no doubt that there is a definite correlation between the two.  However, I am not so sure that there always is a correlation between the weight of the case and the capacity of the case.   Why not you say?
    Well, think of it this way.  Let's say you resize all your cases and then trim them to length.  You may or may not have taken off the same amt. of brass when you trim the neck to length.  So, therefore, even though the capacity may have remained the same from the shoulder down to the case head, the weight may no longer be the same for all the cases as you may have taken off a different amt of brass from the neck of each case, and then took off a little more when champfering the neck inside and outside.  
   Neck turning causes the same problem.  You won't take the same amt of brass off each case and therefore they will not weigh the same even if they have the same capacity.  Capacity equals internal volume, not weight. 
     Any other thoughts on this?   

Junior Olympic Rifle Championships Results

4 Minnesota Junior Shooters place impressively at 2011 National Junior Olympic Rifle Championships. 
From: Chad Danielson

               "Earlier this month 4 Minnesota juniors competed at the National Junior Olympic Rifle Championships in Smallbore and Air Rifle at the US. Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Emily Quiner (Brooklyn Park, MN), and Carmen Fry (Forest Lake, MN) represented Minnesota in both Women's disciplines. Emily and Carmen both competed in Women's 3X20 Smallbore, shooting 20 shots in each of the positions Prone, Standing, and Kneeling, which is shot two times for a possible 1200. Emily Quiner posted an 1152 / 1200, securing her a place in the final, and finishing 6^th overall out of 71 other female shooters.  Carmen Fry shot a 1094, for 47^th finish overall, in addition to winning the smallbore Bronze Medal in the J3 age category.  In the Women's Air Rifle portion female shooters shoot 8 standing targets over the course of two days for a possible 800 points.  Emily Quiner in Air shot a 781, again securing her a slot in the Air Rifle final and finishing 7^th overall over 126 other female competitors. Carmen Fry in Air Rifle shot a 746 placing her 5^th in the J3 age category and 86^th overall.  Emily Quiner also is currently in her sophomore year competing collegiately for Murray State University in Kentucky.

                For the Men's competitions juniors, Patrick Sunderman (Farmington, MN), and Alex Giesar (Coon Rapids, MN) represented the State in Mens Air Rifle, where competitors shoot 12 Air Rifle standing targets over the course of two days for a possible 1200. Patrick Sunderman posted an 1148 for a 5^th place J2 category finish and a 27^th overall finish. Alex Giesar put up an 1139 for a 30^th J1 category finish, and 42^nd overall. Men's Air Rifle saw 108 competitors compete in the event.

                In the Men's Smallbore competition Patrick Sunderman was the only Minnesota men's qualifier for the event, which consists of 60 shots in Prone, and 40 shots in both Standing and Kneeling for one day of competition, and repeated for a second day of competition, for a possible 1200 in the Men's Prone competition, and a possible 2400 in the Men's 3X40 position portion of the competition. Patrick posted in the Prone competition a total score of 1161 out of 1200, giving him a 13^th J2 category finish , and a 49^th overall of the 66 total competitors. In the Men's 3X40 position competition Patrick posted a 2242, placing him 9^th in his J2 age category, and 36^th overall. Complete results of all the matches can be found on the USA Shooting website at www.usashooting.com

                All junior competitors had to qualify through previous competition shooting a minimum qualification score to receive an invitation to compete out at this championship. All four above Minnesota shooters showed exceptional skill, and tremendous dedication in the accomplishment of even qualifying for the competition, as it is only each years top juniors shooters in the country who receive invites. Please be sure to congratulate these four shooters if you happen to have the opportunity to see one of them on a range during this upcoming summer shooting season."

Minn. Junior Shooters and their coaches should be proud of their accomplishments. They continue a long history of top notch junior small bore competition coming out of  this state.  Well done!

Results of April 10th 300 meter Minn. Championship at MRC

From: Brian shiffman
 It turned out to be a fine day for the match.  There was just a hint of a breeze when we got started at 10 AM which only picked up when most people were on their 3^rd string of 20.  Even then, it was not strong but it did catch some folks not looking.

Matt Busse shot with us for the first time and scored a 599 with 44 x's.  Mike Jones came in second with a 592 shooting a Les Baer AR-15 in .223.  Robert Smith was our only non-F-Class shooter and used an AR-15 to shoot Offhand for the match.  I'm still working out sight alignment so used front are rear rests but with iron sights.  Good iron sight Prone shooters can match most F-Class shooters.  Clearly I am not in that league.

The full results can be seen at http://www.edfpages.com/mgfc/results.php?match=4 

The next 300 meter club match will be held May 8^th.

Brian D. Shiffman  shiff004@umn.edu

Junior Shooter news

"Carmen Fry, with the Gopher Rifle and Revolver Club, earned a bronze medal in the 3 x 20 small bore National Junior Olympics match last week for the J3 (sub-junior) age group.  Centershots sent two competitors for this weeks boy's match."

 Renae Fry

 

Thanks Renae for posting this news.  We don't get enough news about our junior shooters. 

Eric Stecker Shoots First ever 200 yard rapid fire - By Rick Curtis

The Week Ahead - Shooters News for the Minn Area - 4/6/11

Spring is here and the Competition Shooting season has started.

This coming weekend
 

300m competition
From Brian Shiffman:
The April MRC 300 Meter match will be held this coming weekend, April 10^th with firing beginning at 10AM. We will contest in 4 classes, F-Class, Prone, Offhand and 3-Position.  Entry fee is $15 per shooter. I can almost guarantee there will be no snow that day, but, you never know; this is the winter that never ends and I'm getting more and more grumpy as this continues.

See you at the range.

The Fergus Falls Rifle Club is the scene of the 4 position Sm Bore State Championship.  The Junior 4P Matches start off the weekend's championship series on Friday, Apr 8th at 7pm. Saturday and Sunday there will be more Junior and Open class Matches to decide who is the position shooting champ for the year.  Click Here for more match and Entry information.

300 m State Prone Champ is Matt Griffin.   The 300 meter State championship was shot last weekend at the Mpls. Rifle Club's range in Anoka County.  The top prone shooter was Matt Griffin, who fired a 585/600.  No other information forwarded to me at this time.

Coming up
Two weeks is a busy weekend for both High Power and Small Bore shooters. Highpower shooters who want to learn more about the important skill of "wind reading" can sign up for:

Saturday's Apr.16th "Wind Reading Clinic"  to be held at Elk River Sportsman's club. 

      "The Elk River Sportsman's Club is proud to host this fantastic event.  The event will consist of (2)20 shot matches at 300 yards, followed by a delicious lunch.  After the lunch, a windreading/shooting clinic will be held both in the clubhouse and then at the 600 yard line of the club's KD Range.  The instructors will be Steve Knutson and Rick Hunt, both coaches for the US National F-Class Team.  This is a rare chance to learn from the best coaches in the country!  The match will continue on the second day with (4) 20 shot matches at 600 yards" ---Scott Olson

For Clinic program and Entry --Click Here

Saturday Apr. 16th  - There is also a match for Sm Bore shooters at the Mpls Rifle club.  This match will be the third in the series of MRC's Offhand champion series.  match program and entry -- click here

Saturday Apr. 16th  will  be the opening match of the  "Over The Course" competition season, with MRC hosting an 80 shot OTC match on their highpower range.  This match will be shot at 200 yds and 300 yds with reduced targets. There are both Service Rifle and Match Rifle classes.

 Match program and Entry -- Click Here 

Sunday Apr 17th -- following up the Mid Range Wind Reading clinic, Elk River Sportsman's Club is hosting an 80 shot prone match to be shot at 300yds and 600 yds with Any Rifle and Any Sights.  Entry -- Click here

Do you remember your "first time"  -- your first rapid fire match that is.

 We have here a short video made by Rick Curtis at last weeks Berger Bullets SW OTC Nationals. 

From Rick Curtis:

"I would like to point out that Berger's GM Eric Stecker, an active competitor in benchrest and F Class, bought a spacegun and all the gear to compete in this years match. Wednesday he sat down with Mid and Michelle and got some pointers on positions, Thursday he took the line for the first time at 600 yards and then Friday he shot his first ever across the course match. I caught up with Eric just before his first string at 200 yard rapid fire. Click
Here to see him in action."

  Turn up the volume, select full screen and enjoy Erick's first ever rapid fire string.


 That's all folks

Hawkeye

Garand Man Maury Krupp - Rick Curtis

At the Berger Bullets South West  OTC Nationals 2011,
Day Three  

Courtesy of Southwest Rifle Shooting by Rick Curtis

MN 300 meter Prone Champion

Just in from Morgan Dietrich:

Matt Griffin state 300M prone champ- 585!