Shooters News for the Minn Area - Sept 16th - 2014

Next Weekend
Beautiful fall days continue to present great shooting opportunities, and this weekend is no exception. Prone shooters have two great matches to choose from -- one on the North end of town and one just a few miles south of town.  That's right both matches are nearby the Twin Cities and easy to get to,  come on out and pull some triggers.

Highpower  
Capt. Bob and the crew are getting ready for two days of Mid Range match competition at the NorthStar Rifle Club just down the road (Hwy 61) on the way to Red Wing, MN. Both days offer matches for Sling and F-class shooters to try their skill hitting the middle the target in 300yd to 600 yd matches. Saturday Sept 20, the competitors will start off at the 300 yd line for the first 20 shot match and then move back to the 500yd line and the 600 yd line for the next three 20 shot matches. Traditional Sling shooters will use "Iron sights" in the first 3 matches and then switch to "any sights" for the last 600yd match if they choose.  On Sunday Sept 21, all four 20 shot matches will be fired from the 600 yd line, with two matches being Iron sight matches for the Sling shooters and two matches allowing the use of 'any' sights.  NorthStar is such a nice place to shoot a match, I am definitely planning to get down there on Sat to exercise my 6mBR and launch a few Berger 105gn Hybrids down range. Maybe a few will hit the 10 ring?
       Click Here for match Bulletin   

Small Bore
On Sunday, Sept 21 Elk River Sportsmen's Club , a few miles up Hwy 10, NW of the cities, will host the final Outdoor Conventional Prone Sm Bore match of the season.  This will be a standard '1600' course of fire, with shooters firing four 40 shot prone matches (8 targets of 20) at distances from 50 yds to 100 yds.

ERSC Ed Hassig SB Range

This sounds like a long match, but remember there is no Pit pulling, or changing of yard lines, so these matches take about the same amount of time as a Highpower match, or maybe even a little less. 
I'll be heading to this match on Sunday. I really like shooting at the Ed Hassig Sm Bore range (ERSC).  You shoot off a nice grass firing line under the shade of a row of mature Oak trees.  It's a nice place to spend the day prone shooting.  Chris Hazleton is runing this match so it's sure to be a good one.
   Click Here for match Bulletin 

Last Weekend 
OTC Match at GRRC last Saturday -- no news  
300 Meter  International Match  at MRC last Sunday  -- no news 

Full bore Match at GRRC last Sunday 

From Erik Rhode 
Hi Jim,
 The 2014 Fullbore 1-day is in the history books. Attendance was light, with 5 sling shooters and 2 F-Classers making the drive to Harris to shoot the match. I was one of those 5 sling shooters, with the other 4 being comprised of brave gunslingers from the Northwestern Gun Club in Duluth.
      It was a beautiful day to shoot - cool, breezy and sunny. It was one of those days when you could keep your shooting sweater on all day, and one of the F-class guys even told me that for once he didn’t feel sorry for us in laying in the sun all day in our leather coats! The wind was manageable, coming pretty steadily from the west and maxed out at about 5 minutes on the ol’ windage knob at the 1000 yard line if you were shooting 155’s. There were some light pick-ups and let-offs that kept things interesting for everyone.
     It was a good day to get solid zero’s and everybody had a good time. A few valuable lessons were learned: we were reminded of the importance of knowing your zero’s before starting to shoot, and we learned that 80 SMK’s pushed by 23.5 grains of Re-15 are pretty quiet by the time they get to 1000 yards. At the end of the day, I finished with the top score. 
     Special thanks to John Peters for stepping up and running the match on extremely short notice. I have shot 3 Long Range matches this season at GRRC, and John was working at all 3 of them. As we all know, at most gun clubs, 10% of the membership does 90% of the work. John is definitely in that 10% at Gopher. 2014 has been a transitional year for GRRC, and John has stepped up many times to fill in the gaps. Keep up the good work, John! Guys like you keep this sport in business. 
    There is one more Fullbore weekend on the schedule at GRRC the first weekend of October, and I would encourage everyone to come out and give it a try. There aren’t many match opportunities left, and there aren’t many opportunities ever to shoot at 300, 600, 900, and 1000 yards all in one day. Since it’s a 2-day match, it is enough to get a Fullbore classification from the NRA, if you are interested in collecting one more card for your wallet. 
    NRA Fullbore rules require shooters to use a .308 or .223 rifle with bullets under 156 and 81 grains respectively, but there was some discussion to allow an “open" class at the October match. I think this is a good idea, and would encourage more participation. Shooters using other calibers/weights wouldn’t be eligible for match wins or classification, but there’s still plenty of fun to be had. Hope to see some more of you next time! PS - No F-Class results. The 2 f-class shooters just shot for fun and did not turn in score cards.   
 Best regards, Erik Rhode

   Good Idea on that open class, Erik.  Matches need to be inclusive not exclusive.

 Two Weeks Out    
Sept 27 -  Mid Range Prone at Eau Claire - Match program click here
Sept 28 -  80 shot OTC at Eau Claire - Match program click here 
Oct 4,5  -  Full Bore long range at GRRC-- Click here for Match bulliten

Note:  I am going out of town next week and "Shooters News for the Minn" Area may not be published for a while. Shoot good have fun. 

That's all Folks
Hawkeye