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.

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

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.

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.

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.‬”