(SOOO many photos!!!)
This past weekend we had the first Duncan AZ match on Tom H's beautiful Gila river bottom property. Lots of great fun and I'm going to break it down in the following manner:
When Tom offered to share his property with us for a match, a large part of the excitement was the ability to camp, primarily because of the cottonwoods that would offer us nice cool shade. I heard somebody comment that it felt at least 10 degrees hotter out in the sun than it did under that refreshing shade, and I agree! It was around 90 degrees both days, but sure didn't feel that bad when under the shade. Tom and Rex did an outstanding prep job, brush hogging the weeds in the camping area, as well as making paths. I'll let the photos do the rest of the talking.
Silhouettes
Friday evening we had the silhouette match. Simple rules: any field target position, 20fpe limit, a bank of pig, turkey, ram, chicken, chicken at each of 40, 50, 60, 70 yards. Shoot through twice for a total score of 40. 3 shooters at a time. 12 contestants chose to throw their hat in the ring, and man o man was it a challenge this time! Due to the forecasted winds, Rex had decided to back down to 40, 50, 60, 70 yards b/c the initial plan was 50, 60, 70, 80!!! We ended up dealing with winds that were in the 25-30mph range, and quartering away from us, wind roughly coming from about our 7-8 o'clock position. The firing line for the silhouettes was in about the only opening in the northwestern strip of cottonwoods, and the wind was coming out of the northwest. It essentially created a funnel, sandblasting the shooters. The really wild thing was to walk out and reset the silhouettes between heats and not feel hardly any wind downrange! It was a challenge. The trick seemed to be to figure out how much to hold off and whether or not the pellets were lifting for that particular instance of wind. And that was best done by correlating hold and impact points on the big ram. It was a bit of a mental game to hold THAT much off to the left of the animal and will yourself to pull the trigger. It was gnarly. Gnarly indeed. But very fun!!!
Dinner
After the silhouette match concluded we were treated to a dinner of pit bbq, salad, potato salad, and dutch oven rolls. And all of that was topped off with dutch oven fruit cobbler and vanilla ice cream (anybody that was considering attending the match missed out on just the dinner, not to mention the shooting and camping). Tom and Norm very graciously prepped all of that for us and it was much appreciated. I commented that it was plenty to let us have a match on his property, but to go and feed us too?!?!? Very nice of Tom. THANK YOU!!!
Field Target
Saturday morning we had the main event. We ended up with 14 shooters here, 3 different sets of fathers/sons, which I thought is kinda cool. I would have bet money that the Troyer was up around 35 from just seeing and shooting the course, but it worked out to a Troyer 32. The hardest two far targets were a 3/4" kz @ 33 yards for a T of 44 and a 1.5" kz @ 55 for a T of 41.3. The hardest near target was a 1/2" kz @ 18yards for a T of 36. There were 8 targets with T's of 35 or more. So it worked out well for a course for multiple first-time shooters, enough low T courses for them to get a feel for knocking some down, but also enough high T's to keep the more experienced shooters engaged (and to prevent clean scores!)
The wind was much more calm for the field target match, I'd be surprised if even the gusts got past 10-12mph. While there wasn't much of it, the wind came from every direction. The cottonwoods were doing their thing and it was an almost surreal experience to have it snowing cottonwood cotton all around us. It was very interesting to shoot through a match in the cotton flurry, watching it drift to see what the wind was doing. There were a couple instances where the cotton was going one way, and a held up reset string was going the other way so it was a bit tricky to get a read on how much and which direction to hold off to account for the wind. All part of the challenge and fun.
See next post for continuation (AGN only allows 20 attachments per post)
This past weekend we had the first Duncan AZ match on Tom H's beautiful Gila river bottom property. Lots of great fun and I'm going to break it down in the following manner:
- Camping and the property
- Silhouette match on Friday evening
- Dinner
- Field target match on Sat morning
When Tom offered to share his property with us for a match, a large part of the excitement was the ability to camp, primarily because of the cottonwoods that would offer us nice cool shade. I heard somebody comment that it felt at least 10 degrees hotter out in the sun than it did under that refreshing shade, and I agree! It was around 90 degrees both days, but sure didn't feel that bad when under the shade. Tom and Rex did an outstanding prep job, brush hogging the weeds in the camping area, as well as making paths. I'll let the photos do the rest of the talking.
Silhouettes
Friday evening we had the silhouette match. Simple rules: any field target position, 20fpe limit, a bank of pig, turkey, ram, chicken, chicken at each of 40, 50, 60, 70 yards. Shoot through twice for a total score of 40. 3 shooters at a time. 12 contestants chose to throw their hat in the ring, and man o man was it a challenge this time! Due to the forecasted winds, Rex had decided to back down to 40, 50, 60, 70 yards b/c the initial plan was 50, 60, 70, 80!!! We ended up dealing with winds that were in the 25-30mph range, and quartering away from us, wind roughly coming from about our 7-8 o'clock position. The firing line for the silhouettes was in about the only opening in the northwestern strip of cottonwoods, and the wind was coming out of the northwest. It essentially created a funnel, sandblasting the shooters. The really wild thing was to walk out and reset the silhouettes between heats and not feel hardly any wind downrange! It was a challenge. The trick seemed to be to figure out how much to hold off and whether or not the pellets were lifting for that particular instance of wind. And that was best done by correlating hold and impact points on the big ram. It was a bit of a mental game to hold THAT much off to the left of the animal and will yourself to pull the trigger. It was gnarly. Gnarly indeed. But very fun!!!
Dinner
After the silhouette match concluded we were treated to a dinner of pit bbq, salad, potato salad, and dutch oven rolls. And all of that was topped off with dutch oven fruit cobbler and vanilla ice cream (anybody that was considering attending the match missed out on just the dinner, not to mention the shooting and camping). Tom and Norm very graciously prepped all of that for us and it was much appreciated. I commented that it was plenty to let us have a match on his property, but to go and feed us too?!?!? Very nice of Tom. THANK YOU!!!
Field Target
Saturday morning we had the main event. We ended up with 14 shooters here, 3 different sets of fathers/sons, which I thought is kinda cool. I would have bet money that the Troyer was up around 35 from just seeing and shooting the course, but it worked out to a Troyer 32. The hardest two far targets were a 3/4" kz @ 33 yards for a T of 44 and a 1.5" kz @ 55 for a T of 41.3. The hardest near target was a 1/2" kz @ 18yards for a T of 36. There were 8 targets with T's of 35 or more. So it worked out well for a course for multiple first-time shooters, enough low T courses for them to get a feel for knocking some down, but also enough high T's to keep the more experienced shooters engaged (and to prevent clean scores!)
The wind was much more calm for the field target match, I'd be surprised if even the gusts got past 10-12mph. While there wasn't much of it, the wind came from every direction. The cottonwoods were doing their thing and it was an almost surreal experience to have it snowing cottonwood cotton all around us. It was very interesting to shoot through a match in the cotton flurry, watching it drift to see what the wind was doing. There were a couple instances where the cotton was going one way, and a held up reset string was going the other way so it was a bit tricky to get a read on how much and which direction to hold off to account for the wind. All part of the challenge and fun.
See next post for continuation (AGN only allows 20 attachments per post)
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