Riverbend Gun Club (GA) Club match March

[ScottD]

The first match of the year was contested today...boy can we pick'um. The temperature at the start of this event was a balmy 36F and dropped from there (to 31F) Now, I know you northern guys think nothing of this, but us thin skinned southern boys are contrary to such weather.

Seven shooters showed...and they all stayed. This is not a stab at the highpower guys, but the rumor is they also had a handful show for a match at River Bend today and seeing the weather upon arrival.....well they went back home. Wimps

Wind -- we had some today - 10-15 mph to start 17-20 mph toward the end, plus gust. The wind speed was not really the problem, the problem was the fact that the 20 mph wind was constantly switching. Rarely would a line of flags all show the same direction. Several of us went with the normal method of "run and gun" only to realize that you may get 2 shots off in a condition, but no more. There were groups at 200 yards over 3 inches. When a shot at 200 happened to go into the same hole, you were left wandering if it really hit the paper at all.

Wind chill was about 25F.

Snow...yes it did snow, quite hard by our standards - sometimes mixed with rain and sleet, but mostly snow. Guess what? A 20 mph headwind in the snow does bad things to scopes making difficult to see.

Tuners... I shot a tuner today for the first time. It is a standard Jackie Schmidt tuner 5.5 oz. The best part about the tuner was that I got to pre-load. Loading in 25F windchill is not fun - I spent most of the time in the heated scoring house. How did the tuner work? I shot about 6 sighters on the first target (200 yards) and had about 3/4" of vertical. I turned the tuner out 1/4 turn and never touched it again.

So here are the figures:

200 yards

1st place Scott Dittman .4384
2nd place Dave Rabin .5751
3rd place Tom Dulaney .6098

small group Dave Rabin .507

Then we shot 100 yards

1st place Scott Dittman .3088
2nd place Dave Rabin .3256
3rd place Bill Dittman .3994

small group Bill Dittman .203

Grand Agg

1st place Scott Dittman .3736
2nd place Dave Rabin .4504
3rd place Tom Dulaney .6257

Production class was won by Bob Eikenberry shooting a .223 Savage with a grand agg of .6933....on a day like today, that was a tremendous achievement.

So, we look forward to April, warm sunshine and light winds. April will be a score match - I can promise with almost certainty that the weather will be much better.

Scott Dittman

 

[TomD]

In an effort to retain at least some pride in my shooting ability though at the expense of my mental ability, I'd like to note that my .6 agg included 3 inches in penalties for a crossfire and in addition a slamfire that had the misfortune to actually hit the target somewhere. My theory is that you will make a certain number of mistakes in any given year and it is best to just get them over with.

Below, Bill Dittman sets out flags while surrounded by white flakes (not Riverbend members)

Riverbend member tries to hide. At 32 degrees and 20 mph winds, it was bad by Georgia standards.

 

[crb]

I was telling my wife about the conditions and the "2" and "3" groups as in "2." and "3." . Tom's 3" of penalties just leveled the playing field.