I am proud to announce that my rise to stardom was a very fast upward spiral and lightning speed downward. I shot par for the coarse but did not win nothing, in fact, I did not even come close. I has a disaster on Saturday afternoon during the .22 event. "The Gunny" did win the .22 event in his class.
I shot a 40 X 60 in the pistol caliber event using the 25-20.
I shot a 37 X 60 in big bore with the Mod. 71
I shot a 15 X 60 in the .22 event but..................I have an excuse to which you all may learn from. While practicing the night before, I shot up a couple of hundred rounds of range pick-ups from Targetmaster in the Mod. 39 Marlin with ballard rifling from 1947. The ammo looked OK but many were old and tarnished. Towards the end of practicing, I noticed I was not hitting anything but I put it off to being tired and worn out, so.....................
Who cleans a .22 bore before a match?? That's a bad thing to do as we need fouling, so.............After the pistol caliber match and after lunch we were starting the .22 event so I got out my freshly purchased CCI mini-mags, which by the way, are proven in my Marlin. That's the same combination I used to take first place last month in the Pa. Regionals.
So..............I start out on 100 meter rams and get 6 out of 15. I could not believe it, but I put it off to having an "off day". Then.............I got 2 out of 15 chickens. By then my butt was burning up especially with Gunny laughing at me. I began to think it was the rifle but nooooooooo..........it must have been me.
So.............I get to the 50 meter pigs which are the easiest and I got 4 out of 15. My hold was perfect and the dang bullets were going high, low, right and left so by then I knew it was the rifle so in between relays, I took it apart, looked down the bore and presto.............a near smoothbore for half the length of the barrel. The junk ammo coated it's copper plating in the grooves and something I did not know is that OLD copper plated .22 ammo will coat your bore and destroy accuracy. I scrubbed it out with brushes and showed my friends the proof of chunks of copper and lead or I would never would have lived this one down. Whew! My huge ego was at stake here.................saved by the patches, but................................
I had more than one person come up to me and said, "YOU SHOULD HAVE KNOWN BETTER TO SHOOT THAT JUNK IN YOUR GUN". Yea, I guess so.
But we still had lots of laughs and loads of camaraderie. It was nice to hook up with far away friends, like Mark and Vicki , Jack XXX and his better half, Rick G and his crew, and many more good people who I don't even know their names. I always feel at home with the "gun crowd". ,Heard LOTS of neat and legal "on the beat" stories from a retired Philly cop. --------------------------------------------------------------Sixgun
This is a picture of Gunny unloading my gear into my tent while I am relaxing...see the boots?
This is another boring picture of what we shoot at.
Ha! I made my very own trophy, very similar to the ones that were given out.
Did not do so well on taking pictures over the weekend so I'll introduce you to "Twinkles", the cat from hell.
Oh well, there's always next time, ...and at least you did save some bucks on your accommodations.