The Week Ahead and MN Long Range State Championship -- Results (1000 yd and Palma)

Shooters News for the MN area - Aug 2, 2011     

 The Week Ahead

With the weather being forecast for warm and a little humid this coming weekend, the best choice of matches to shoot might just be to head to Northwestern Gun Club for this weekends two days (Aug 6-7) of OTC Highpower matches.  Saturday, Aug 6 th is OTC and Sunday, Aug 7 th is a Mid Range Prone match.  Yes, its time once again for the "Poor man's Camp Perry" on beautiful Hunter's lake.  I have been going to these matches for many years and they are always some of the best of the summer.  Click Here  for a Match Bulletin.
   If you need to stick closer to home, there is a great Championship match to shoot nearby. Dust off that Sm Bore match rifle and come to Mpls Rifle Club, both Saturday and Sunday (Aug 6-7), for the Prone Outdoor Metric St. Championship. Yup, it's all belly shooting - 160 shots each day to test your skill on those pesky little international metric targets.  This match is also the F-Class Championship for Small Bore, and Seniors shooters are encouraged to come and shoot with a scope in all matches.    Click Here  for match bulletin
  On Sunday, Aug 7th, there will also be a 300 m match at MRC.  Prone or 3P shooting on those sophisticated electronic targets.  This is cool stuff. If you haven't shot these 300m computer operated targets you've missed some fun.
    So as you can see there is a little something for everyone, and you can shoot both days or just one day at either of these two matches.  See you out there -  let's pull some triggers.  

Last Weekend  
The Minnesota Long Range State Championship -   1000yd and Palma took place last weekend at GRRC's long range shooting facility near Harris MN.

Steve McGee, renouned rifle stock builder from Kansas, fired an awesome 592-36x in the Minn. State Long range championship to take the match win on Saturday.  Steve started out by winning the Any sight match with a 199 and never looked back, following that with a 194 and another 199 in the two iron sight matches.

  Jay Johnson, MN resident, won the State champ trophy and came in 2nd overall with his great effort, scoring at 589-24x. I believe that this is Jay's first major Long Range win.  Congratulations to Jay and Steve for surviving the rain storm, and very hot humid weather while posting these top scores.  Jay has a Master Classification and had to out-shoot 10 High Masters to win this Championship.

  Just one point behind Jay was Stacey Tamulinas, and Shirley McGee. Both of these hard holders posted 588s with Stacey taking that 3rd place by only a few Xs. 
  Erick Hazelton, a junior Small bore shooter who just returned from a successful trip to the Nationals at Camp Perry,  fired an inspired 195 in the first match with his newly rebarreled Rem 700 in .223 cal. Even though Erick lost a rd in the final match, his mature performance put him on the top of the Ex class for the day.  I think we'll be seeing more of Erick in the winners circle not too long in the future.
   In the F-Class division , Adam Shidla also came out of the Expert class to wrap up the overall F-class win by posting a 579-20x.   Also drilling xs and 10s on those 1 moa targets was Scott Brabec, who took 2nd place honors (570-6x).  Remember that the 10 ring on the F targets is only as big as the X ring on the Iron sight targets !  Great shooting guys!

Click Pict. to expand

 --Complete results of Saturday's
1000 yd Minn. State Championship:  
   

Photo from Capt Bob

  Saturday and Sunday results:              Incl.  Palma Champ. --

The Palma Championship was shot on Sunday and again it was Hot and Humid conditions.  Hot or not, it was a new day and a new match to win.  3 shooters took the lead after the first stage shot at the 800 yd line. 3 shooters who fired exactly the same score -- 150-11x for the 15 record shots. That's perfect scores and 70 % Xs. Brian Mrnak, Stacey Tamulinas and Robert Mead set the bar right a the top to begin this match and showed what it would take if you wanted to win.

How hot was it?

  Moving to the 900 yd line, it was Larry Miller, Steve McGee and Jay Johnson who fired the clean 150 point scores and showed that they were not out of the competition yet and would go back to the 1000 yd line ready to win the match.    Only one pt down on the leader board are Stacey, Larry, and Steve.  
  1000 yds is a long way away.  I can hardly see the targets that far away.  The shooters in today's match not only could see those tiny targets, but they were putting a lot of shots in the middle -- in the X ring.  Stacey and Steve fought it out to the end, and at the end they again ended up with identical scores of 149-6x. Tied for the match win  - nope!   Brian Mrnak had fired a clean 150 to take the 1000 yd stage.  Stacey and Steve were tied in points total again for the over all match winner. Both had fired 448 for the day and it would fall to Stacey's count of 27 Xs to earn him the 1st place in this State Palma Match.  
   The High Resident  score was fired again Sunday by Jay Johnson, and you can see Jay had a pretty good weekend. Jay Johnson is the Mn State 1000 yd, Palma and Long Range Championship and he now has the trophies to prove it!
  In the F-class, John Andres combined scores for the two days good enough for him to win the F-class championship. Steven Winzelman was only a few pts. behind in this class. 
 It was also nice to see our friends, Frank Fisher and David Simonsen come over from Wisc. to shoot some long range. 
  Shirley McGee fired match fired scores that were competitive in every match and ended up High Woman for the championship. 

Champions !

 From: Capt Bob

The 2011 3 gun match winner is Steve McGee from Salina Kansas standing on right. His wife Shirley is high woman in the middle. Junior Erick Hazelton standing on the left. And finally kneeling on the left is Stacey Tamulinas, Jay Johnson then Rick Severs -  winner of the F class Palma match.  
All state champions have been updated in my records.                

More Notes:

From:  Capt. Bob    

 "Those of you at the 1000 yard match last Sat.  no doubt recall I had ammo trouble in match 2  and quit. I stopped shooting after 5 record shots in match 2 iron sights.  I was holding SOLID 8 ring elevation with the 6.5X284 ! Last summer, my load of 50.0 gr H4350 & 142's shot 10 shots in under 2" at 600 yards with a .050 jam.

I blew 1 primer Sat. and the load was not that hot last year.

I loaded the last 150 rounds out of a Sierra box (142 gr.) early this summer.....same data but .025 jump.  I kind of remember seeing that a few of the rounds seemed to be taller in the box but didn't think much about it.

Monday morning I started checking seat depth and discovered as much as .032 difference base to ogive between bullets.  So I pulled the 2 bullets with the biggest difference.  Lo & behold the long one weighed 155 gr & the short one was 142 gr.  I have NEVER owned a 155 gr. 6.5 MM in my life which means the damn things left the factory that way.  I kind of recall having elevation problems last year but not near that bad.  Last year I was jamming .045, so even a 142 would have had a little jam.  When I shortened the jam to .025 this year it got real ugly.

So the moral of the story is if something don't look right it's probably NOT!"     

Two Weeks out
Aug 13 -  From Capt. Bob -- I just received confirmation that Jerry Johnson will run a 9AM (stat orifice closes at 0830) $5.00 practice MRP at 3, 5 & 600 on Sun. Aug. 14 at North Star.  Depending on turn out it might be a 2 relay, score in the pit, no award, gone by noon 30 event.  


Thats all folks!

Hawkeye