2017 was my 6th trip to the National Matches at Camp Perry. Back when I first started this blog, and shooting high power, I went for the games matches, however over the years my interests have shifted. 2015 and 2016 I shot more or less all the CMP rifle events at Perry. This year however marks the first time in 6 years I did not fire my M1 Garand at Perry, or any wood guns for that matter. This year I only shot the XTC Service Rifle Matches. the Hazzard Match, P100, NTI, NTT and NTIT.
It’s not that I don’t like shooting the Garand its just a matter of time and trying to focus on my shooting goals.
That said, it was a great trip. kicked off the weekend shooting the new “Oliver Hazzard Perry” (OHP) match. Which is Rapid Sitting, Rapid Prone, and 10 rounds of Slow Prone. The calendar originally had this as a 50 round NM course match but at some point it as shortened to this format. No one likes off hand anyway so this was a nice change.
My shooting buddy and I did great at this match, coming in top 50! Little did we know it would be down hill from there. We came back to the Camp Ground and plotted taking over the world over the next couple days.
I started out soggy in the P100 getting some of the jerky off hand shots out of my system. Then I managed to make a good wind call at 300… the wrong direction. I can’t use the excuse that the knobs go the other way, I turned the knob the way I intended. I just forgot my lefts and rights! at 600 I remembered how to shoot and posted a respectable 98.
NTI started out interesting, we only had 4 people on our FP as opposed to 6. So after pulling solo for the first two relays I ended up with a fair amount of down time throughout the match, which was nice.
Anyway off hand stared out with a 7 but, I shook it off and managed a 91, last year off hand was a disaster for me, so I was real happy with that as I dropped into sitting.
My sitting group was low by about 1/4 minute which cost me a pile of 9s. It wasn’t the end of the world, I was still in it as long as i “just shot my average” going back.
A bad wind call at 300 made the math get a little tighter rolling back to 500 down 22 was no fun. But my 600 yard performance has been pretty good lately, a mid 190s and a little bit of luck would have done it. But, despite opening with an X I ended up dropping a couple of 8s that were my fault and some waterline 9s that gave me a 190 in the end. So more or less i posted some mediocre scores, especially in rapids, didn’t give up, but ended with a 468, six points shy of the cut.