Shooters News for the Minn Area - Sept. 1st, 2015

*Cooler weather and fall matches coming!

Next weekend   
     Labor day weekend is traditionally scheduled for matches at the Eau Claire Rifle Club and this year is no exception.  A full weekend of rifle competition is on the schedule again this year.  This 3 day shooting extravaganza starts off on Saturday Sept 5th with a 600 yd belly shooting match for both sling shooters and for the F-class guys.  Competitors will go to the line 4 times to fire a 20 shot match with 2 sighters allowed.  In the first two matches optical sights are allowed, but in the last two matches Highpower shooters will use only Iron sights to test their marksmanship skills. 
     Sunday Sept 6th, the competition switches over to Position shooting and competitors will fire an 80 shot regional match course of fire. You know what that means ---  20 shots offhand, 2 ten shot strings of rapid fire from the sitting position, then 2 more ten shot strings of rapid from the prone position, and finally a little belly shooting in a 20 shot slow fire match from the 600 yd line.   
                Click here for Sat, Sun match bulletin
    On Monday Sept 7th, it's nastalgia time. It's a chance to shoot your M1 Garand during the morning in a 50 shot OTC match, and then in the afternoon you can dust off that wonderful M1A from your gun safe and shoot another 50 shot OTC match with that rifle.  Sounds like a great day to me! 
                Click here for match bulletin 

Last Weekend  

Brad Yliniemi

 The Offhand State Championship was held at the Mpls Rifle Club last weekend.  Shooters fired 5 standing matches from the 200 yd line and when the final scores were posted, Brad Yliniemi was crowned the State Championship Offhand shooter.  In 3 of the 5 matches, Brad shot Offhand scores of 195 or higher. That's some fancy shootin!!!!!!!!  

Sunday, May 29, a good number of shooters turned out for the OTC match at MRC.  In the first match, Brad Yliniemi continued to demonstrate the off hand shooting skills that earned him the state title the day before by winning this match and putting the competition by 4 or more points.  Dave Hotegaard, and Kevin Bangen were close but not close enough.  In the Sitting Rapid match it was G. McCarty took top honors with a nice 198 score and about half Xs.  It was all Kevin Bangen in the 300 yd prone Rapid fire match.  Kevin dropped only one point in 20 shots for a 199-6x.  Mark Rohmann shot a 197 just out X-ing Craig Bennis for 2nd. In the two Prone Slow Fire matches, Brad and Kevin traded wins, but Kevin missed only  two points in those 40 shots for record and went on to win the match with an impressive 980-39x.

*On the firing line Report* 
 Wisc. State Mid Range Championship
From: Erik Rhode 

Hey Jim,

I just got back from the 2015 WI State Mid Range Prone and F-Class state championship match.  The match was held at the Lacrosse Rifle Club, and Sandy Pagel & crew did an excellent job as usual keeping things moving smoothly. The range was full to capacity once again with 60 shooters, so moving smoothly is sometimes easier said than done.  Each of those 60 shooters fired a total of 8 20-shot matches from the 600 yard line to see who the top dogs were.  This was the WI state championship for both sling and F-Class, and the numbers broke down to around 35 sling shooters, and 25 F.  

   The weather was beautiful both days with temps in the upper 70’s, overcast skies and light winds.  Just the kind of forecast that can produce the kinds of big scores that LRC is known for.  While the winds were light, you still needed to pay attention.  Even in ideal conditions, 200’s are tough to shoot and there was enough to take you out of the 10-ring if you weren’t on top of it.  

  In F-TR, Dan Lentz’s 1590-99x left the rest of the field in the dust, and secured the top TR medal.  No one was surprised to see Bob Sebold’s 1596-108x at top of the F-Open standings, but it wasn’t as easy for Bob as he might have expected.  Iowa’s Ryan Pierce hung right with him until the bitter end, falling short by only 4 x’s for the weekend.  It was crowded at the top, as 3 more shooters were within 8 points of Bob and Ryan.  

   For the sling shooters reading this, your 2015 WI State Mid Range Prone champion is once again young Waylon Burbach.  Waylon’s excellent 1593-98x was good enough to successfully defend his rock-solid performance last year to repeat as state champion.  He might have to put an asterisk on the trophy this time though, as there were a couple of guys from across the river in Minnesota that had something to say about it!  

   I managed to put up solid 199’s and 200’s all weekend and finished the match with a 1595-97x.  Nothing to be ashamed of, and most years that score would’ve won the match.  Most years, but not this year.  This year, a guy named Matthew “Ice” Griffin rolled into Lacrosse planning to win, and was not going to take “no” for an answer.  On Saturday, Matt joined Jay Johnson in the 2015 “800 Club” by shooting a perfect 800 with 55 X’s(Jay’s 800 was fired on June 20, also at Lacrosse).  That put him 2 points ahead of me going into day 2.  On Sunday, Matt was darned near perfect again, dropping only 2 points and giving up no ground.  I lost 3, and everyone else lost that or more, so there was just no catching the Ice man.  Matt’s 1598 with 105 x’s was head and shoulders above the rest of the competition, and sent him home with the 2015 match winner medal.  I had to settle for 2nd place and High Palma rifle, as I was certainly no match for Matt this weekend.  The Ice Man was on fire.  

  I have to admit that it was somewhat gratifying to make the WI state champion settle for a 3rd place finish.  Does that make me a bad person?  Maybe if MN folks keep winning matches in WI, some of their shooters will start coming to MN matches to even the score.  Now that would be fun!  

   The full results were not yet posted when I had to leave, but I did manage to get the top 5 for all 3 categories below.  Congrats to Matt and all of the winners.  

   See you all in 2 weeks for the MRP Regional Championship in Duluth on 9/12 and 9/13!  

Best,   Erik Rhode 

       

Mid Range Champion Matt Griffin and Sandy Pagel

F-open final
Bob Sebold 1596-108
Ryan Pierce 1596-104
Jim Bauer 1595-104
Jeff Dick 1593-91
Earl Liebetrau 1588-93

F-TR final
Dan Lentz 1590-99
Brian Mudd 1557-47
Ian Klemm 1541-34
Ken Klemm 1540-37
Russ Stahl 1536-59

Sling final
Matt Griffin 1598-105
Erik Rhode 1595-97
Waylon Burbach 1593-98
Steve “Classic” Knutson 1592-90
Kyle Doney 1588-80

Notes:  
In last week's match report about the State Sm Bore Prone championship, I forgot to add in the last thing that I was going to say  ----  "Thanks George (Minerich) for putting on a good match!"   George spends a lot of time prepping the MRC sm bore range for these matches. The range is always in tip top shape when I go over there to shoot.  George deserves a lot of credit for all the improvements he (and others) have made to this range along the way. It takes a lot of effort to maintain all the targets, target frames, backers, wind flags, shooting house, supplies, and do the mowing, weed trimming, and cleaning up.  The guys that do all this work at all the ranges deserve our thanks.  Without their effort, we couldn't shoot!  Thanks folks!    

Two Weeks Out  
 Sept 12, 13 - High Power Mid Range Prone Regional at Northwestern Gun Gun Club, Duluth  - Click Here for Match bulletin     
 Sept 19, 20 - Two Day  EIC "Leg" Match at NorthStar - click here for match bulletin

That's All folks!
Hawkeye