Category Archives: Kimberton Fish And Game

Summer Slump: August 600 AGG at KFGA

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OK, it’s not that bad I just thought it would be a catchy title. Due to a conflict, I had to take a month off from the Garand Matches, but I was able to make my clubs NRA service rifle match this weekend. It was an absolutely beautiful day for shooting, high 70s sunny, with a light tail wind. It really is much nicer to shoot when the weather is comfortable.


I started off strong in off-hand, and was able to crack the 90s on the first 10 rounds. However, I had one too many 7s in the last 10. I am really starting to get comfortable with off-hand. I don’t mean to alarm anyone but it’s becoming my favorite string.  I’m doing a better job calling my shots. I knew  both of those two out of the black were trouble as soon as they left the barrel. For XTC I am working with my data book and documenting my call for each shot. Perhaps if I can call some of these before I pull the trigger I can keep more points.

I am happy with sitting. The light was changing during the string of fire. I’m blaming the vertical stringing in my otherwise nice group on that.

I still seem to be in a slump for prone. For rapid fire I was too low and pulled some rounds right. The former I am still going with the weird light at Kimberton, the latter I need to work on cutting out some of my slop in rapid.

Slow prone at Kimberton is challenge due to range conditions especially this time of year. For most of the string it was dark down range with a bright sun on the firing line. This makes seeing your shoots difficult and at least with my old eyes the halo on the front sight can get aggressive. I sooted my sight again before the stage and still had issue with the halo.

In the end I was about to squeak into the bottom end of expert class scores but not where I wanted to be to pull my scores up enough from last month’s 86% to get an expert card. There are 3 NRA matches left at KFGA and one at New Holland. I’m going to have to cram to get that last fraction of a percentage point in time to make expert by the end of the season.

July 2015 Service Rifle and Garand Matches at KFGA

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Freshly back from Camp Perry, I headed out to my local club for High Power and a couple of Garand matches.

High Power started off poorly. I was on the end position which had a slightly obstructed view of the target and ended up dropping a miss early in off hand. Unfortunately, the rest of the match didn’t go much better. I seemed to be off in my windage and didn’t correct for it in time. The excuse I’m going with it’s difficult to see the 22 cal holes with the dark range conditions.

I was back at it Sunday with the Garand. It was seasonally hot and sunny. I had signed up for two matches. I started out strong with the first match beating my personal best in slow prone with a 99! KFGA tends to be bight and sunny on the line and dark down range so typically my prone scores end up a little lower here, compared to other places, perhaps I have over come that, or the light was better this month. 

Rapid prone came out well and, dispite some slop in off hand, I was able to tie my personal best with the Garand! 

  

For the second match, I was hoping to shoot my carbine, but I forgot my magizines and wasn’t able to scrounge up any from the other shooters. This turned out to be for the best, as I was able to top my personal best with the Garand by 6 points for a 279! I wasn’t quite able to top my performance in the prone stages in the first match but I still did well.

In off-hand, I really took my time with each shot and ran out the clock. I told myself not to break the shot untill it looked like it was going to be in the black, and it worked out for me. I broke 90% in off hand which is good for me.
  

In this second match, I was able to keep all but 3 rounds in the black, two eights in rapid, and one in off hand. What that tells me is that working on taking my time on each shot, getting the right sight picture every time and focusing hard on the front sight even in off-hand has been helping. 

On the other hand, it tells me is I need to focus on applying these same fundamentals to the rapid strings.  Looking back at my numbers I swing high and low in the rapid stages acoss platforms. I need to find a sweet spot between taking my time with each shot and not saving rounds, especially with bolt guns.  

 It was a great weekend, especially with the Garand. Now that I’ve shot within a handfull of points of the gold medal cut, I’d like to see if I can bring one home from either the Western Games this fall or the Eastern Games in the spring.