Category Archives: Service Rifle

Last Stand in Dixie: Last XTC Matches of 2016

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Ok,  I suppose Delaware is not technically Dixie but it is south of the Mason-Dixon line and Camp Butner is for sure, so close enough.

To wrap up the 2016 Service Rifle Season GTB shooting team headed to Camp Butner for the NSSC NC Championship and EIC.  The NC Championship was a 1000 agg on Saturday. It was a beautiful summer day. Well, summer for us Yankees I assume, high 70s is what they consider fall in NC. 

During the 1000 agg I cleaned 300 for the first time! 

The rest of the match was fairly lackluster including a hot mess at 600.

The EIC the next day started out soggy off hand. I worked to make a come back but couldn’t quite make it. I ended with a 469 which wasn’t awful but a good 10 points below the cut.


Looking for some redemption the next weekend I drove down to the beach for Bridgeville’s last 800 agg of the season. My new Nightfore service rifle scope had shown up while I was at Camp Butner and this was its first trial. 

The match went well and was a nice end to the season. I posted a decent high end Master score and cleaned sitting for the first time! The new scope worked very well.  I’m looking forward to putting it through its paces next season.


Don’t worry this isn’t really the end of the season, there are still a couple wood gun matches left, maybe some rimfire, and of course hunting season!

Bridgeville July 800 Agg: Shooting Master Scores

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The National Matches are just around the corner! I go to Delaware fairly frequently in the summer, for surf fishing, but this weekend I left the Rod at home and brought my service rifle down for an NRA 800 agg.

The weather was hot and the air thick with humidity. We ran two relays and scored in the pits. Which can be a bit tricky but the match runs fast.

I started out strong shooting “fast and angry” off-hand. Posting a 186.


I’ve been working on sitting and it seems to be paying off as I posted a nice pair of 99s. I seem to have a habit of pulling one low right when I forget to breathe.

Back to 300 I dropped 3 points in rapid prone I was happy with my groups. I Made a windage change between strings but couldn’t keep all 10 in the 10 ring in the second string.

Back at 600 I came close to my personal best and posted a pair of 96s for a 192!

The 8:00 8 was a sighter the 12:00 eight was pulse, heat, and fatigue late in the second string.

I managed to post a nice score on the high-end of Master keeping my streak going!

Thanks to some advice from others at York a few matches back I made some changes to my sling and now pull it almost all the way into my armpit. This has really been working nice as the sling doesn’t fall down my arm mid string and stays nice and tight.

Win at York Riflemen

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I had a long weekend of shooting on the books but the weather did not cooperate. The EIC and the 3×600 matches at New Holland  were canceled and so was the walk and paste at Kimberton.  The show still goes on at York Riflemen, so I hauled across the River for their 800 agg.

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It was overcast with a bit of fog but the rain stayed light.  There were two relays so we scored in the pits. I was up first.

I have been shooting fast in off-hand lately and its been working for me. I shot 22 rounds off-hand in around 12 minutes and posted a 185. A seven I did not call surprised me a bit, in reviewing the video i should keep an eye on my follow though.

Rapids went well. I shot fast again in sitting, on purpose. I’ve been trying to strike a balance between pacing fast enough to have enough time to establish NPA after dropping into position for CMP matches, and not spraying all the rings of the target with wild shots.

Sitting

I took my time in rapid prone and made a pretty nice group. A little to the right next time.


Slow prone went well enough that I was surprised to learn turn I came in first! This means a fair bit to me as I’ve been shooting a couple times a year at York for a few years now, I have learned a lot from the shooters there.

With some luck this might be the score I needed to get a new classification card. We will see what the NRA has to say in a couple of weeks!

Movin’ on up: Matches at New Holland, Kimberton and York

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In the run up to the CMP eastern games I shot a series of matches over two weekends.

First the season opener NRA 800 Agg at New Holland.


With the exception of a saved round in sitting due to a round that turned out to have some moisture in it, this turned out to be a great match for me. I shot slightly better than my average which should have been enough to earn an expert card!

Kimberton NRA and Garand Matches.

Back at my home club for the first NRA service rifle match of the year. This was my first match at this club with my new 2016 service rifle. It is a reduced course 100 yard 600 agg on a dark range which really gives the scope an advantage as it’s easier to see. I posted my first master scores and I was most proud of a pair of 99s I posted in slow prone on that tricky MR-31 target.


York Rifleman Spring Garand Match and 500 agg. 

Despite all the travel games I’ve been to York Rifleman’s Garand matches are some of my favorite.

I have been to every garand match at York since 2012 and I’m happy to report I finally made the medal cut. It was a close one due to a bad LC round (At least that’s my excuse) but it felt good to break the York curse!

 



NJ State Championship and New Holland: 168 Rounds in One Weekend

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In my excitement after shooting the NTI and P100 at Perry, I signed up for a series of  late season XTC and EIC Matches. This weekend I scheduled an aggressive line up: a NRA 800 Agg at New Holland, a match behind enemy lines in NJ for a Governors 10 Match (P100 format), and a EIC match right after. These were also the first matches with my new White Oak A4 sporting a Geissele MK7, but more on that later.

New Holland 800 AGG

It was a beautiful almost fall day for the NRA match at New Holland . Off-hand went well. I don’t mean to jinx it but I’ve been hitting the low 90s pretty consistently now in with the black rifle. While this is no high master score, its a big improvement from where I was last year (70s).

Sitting went well. The first string I was a little low. Turned out my “come ups” were a little off from practice. Two more clicks fixed it for the second string. Well mostly fixed it.  I let the rifle slip during one of the shots and shot a “96 the hard way”, 9 in the 10 and 1 in the 6 ring. Whoops.

Rapid Prone was better than it had been for me in the last 800 Agg. I need to focus on slowing down a bit. At the next match I am going to start using my timer.

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Back on 600 again I creeped up a bit. I am weakest on the 600 yard berm and I need to work on that.  In the Garand games matches I used to think I was pretty good in prone shooting but the 600 has been humbling.

In the Pit

In the Pit

NJ State Championships and EIC match at Cumberland Riflemen 

At 3 am the next morning the alarm went off and I drug myself out of bed and headed behind enemy lines for a long day of shooting in NJ.

First was a Governors ten match which is a “presidents course”  thirty rounds: 10 off-hand, 10 rapid prone, followed by 10 slow prone. It was a good chance to check my zeros. I ended up bringing my off-hand zero to the same 8 clicks as my sitting zero and brought my rapid prone zero up another click.

The wind was whipping to my 8:00 for the 600 yard stage. I ended up with two minutes of left wind by the end of the stage. Since I was using this as practice I didn’t take any wind on my first shot just to try to learn how to handle conditions like that.

600

EIC Match

The EIC match started immediately after the Governors match and things were running a little late so we skipped the brief break and got right to it. I was able to crack 90 in off-hand with a little luck. I dropped a couple of 8s and then spent some time surrounding the 10 before I found the middle.

 

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Sitting went well. l I had a bit of a windage issue in the Governors match but corrected for it in the EIC. I slowed down a bit in rapid prone but still bounced a little. Back on the 600, the wind had stalled out. I did better, or at least good enough. I still need to work on the back 20.

In the end I made my goal which was to crack the 450 line, which is the cut for CMP’s EIC achievement pin. It was a great match and Cumberland Rifleman is a nice club. This was probably the most fun I have ever had in New Jersey. Next weekend I am off to Maryland’s State Championship and EIC match to get back at it!  Just in time to avoid the Philadelphia area “popemageddon.‬” 

 

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