Saturday Activites at Dalton Range – All Matches Start at 8AM
| Date | Match |
|---|---|
| October 13th | John C. Garand |
Only two activities remain in Springfield for the 2007 shooting season. A couple of other out-of-town matches also happen in October.
Our Fall John C. Garand Match will be at 8am on Saturday October 13 at the Dalton Range. I encourage you to pre-register. Forms can be found on the web page at www.swampworks.com
Steve Milholland will run the last of the matches at the Springfield Benchrest Club in Billings on Sunday, October 21, beginning at 1 PM. These matches are run exactly like our club matches.
The Joplin Rifle and Pistol Club will hold its John C. Garand Match on Saturday, October 20. This is a 35 shot match (slow prone, rapid prone, and standing, plus 5 sighters) shot at 200 yards. It starts at 9am, and you should be there by 8 or 8:15.
Then, on Sunday, October 21, Joplin will hold its last NRA highpower match of the year, an 88 round match (20 shots at each stage plus 2 sighters before each stage). It begins at 9am; be there by 8:30 to register. After the highpower shoot, they hold a 20 shot (unlimited sighters) any-sight .22 match-shoot from any position or off your elbows on a bench. If you just shoot the highpower match, you can make it to Billings in time for the match there. If you stay for the .22 shoot, there isn’t enough time.
And finally, this Saturday and Sunday is the Missouri 600 yard championship (this used to be called “long range,” but it has been re-classified by the NRA as “mid-range.” The Bucksnort Shooting Club still calls it the Long Range Championship.) The Saturday match was full by the first week of September, so if you haven’t registered, you won’t shoot on Saturday.
But the match on Sunday, October 7 is the one I want to talk to you about. This is a team match with coaching. We set up 4-man teams and all shoot together. There’s no pressure and you get help from your coach. It is a wonderful way to get an introduction to long range shooting. You can shoot your own rifle or you can borrow one of mine, and I will provide the ammunition. If you leave Springfield at 4:30am you can be to the range by 7 or 7:15, which is plenty early if we know you are coming. Or you can stay overnight in a motel. There is a Super 8, a Comfort Inn, and if you want to save money, Charley’s Motel (it has had a few different names over the years, but it is the one Les likes to stay at.). If you have been thinking about going, please call or email me for directions 862-8618.
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Note from Swampy: Sorry for not getting this posted before the Missouri Long Range (600 yard) Championships actually occured. I received this letter from Bill just a couple days before I left for the event and never even read it to see that his notice above was in it….. Sorry again.
BTW… there is an addendum about the event below Bill’s letter…
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John Daley of Pittsburgh, Kansas won the raffle for the Springfield, and Steve Kemm is currently taking tickets for the M1 Carbine. Now that the CMP is selling a few, these have become real collector’s items, so be sure to get in on the action.
As you know, we have 2 more Garands and a Springfield yet to raffle off. It will be a busy Spring.
One suggestion that has been made is to raffle off some equipment such as a stool or a spotting scope. Although there isn’t enough time to get this done before the end of the season, perhaps we can raffle off a stool at the January dinner. We usually have our annual business meeting sometime after Christmas, and we hold it as a dinner at the Heritage Cafeteria. We’ve had about 30-40 people each year, and if we could sell that many tickets at one sitting, we could raffle off a wheeled shooting stool in one night. Let me know what you think.
Mike Thorn says he had 2 people to help at Great Outdoors day, but he couldn’t remember their names. I’m sorry to say that Mike; don’t want to embarrass you. But it is important to recognize the people who came out and volunteered their time on a Saturday when they could have been doing something more fun. If you were there, please let me know who helped so we can formally recognize and thank you at the Garand match.
On the other hand, we probably will not participate in the Great Outdoors day again. It is traditionally held on the 3rd Saturday in September, and Kansas has traditionally holds their Service Rifle Championship on this weekend. Many of us wish to attend that match. There have been years when I have stayed behind to run Great Outdoors Day, and I should have this year, because we really need to have at least 6-8 volunteers for an event like this. It’s my fault for obligating the club, but based on prior years, I thought this was a no-brainer. I was wrong. If I won’t stay behind and run participate, I can’t expect others to do the same. Frankly, I think it is a dumb time of year to hold an outdoors day. It’s right in the middle of both hunting and shooting seasons, and I would like to be doing both of those. Have you ever noticed how boat shows and home improvement shows are held in the winter?
Nonetheless, Mike and the boys talked to a lot of people, supervised a bunch of shooting, got a lot of fresh air, and slept soundly that night. I’m sure we will get a couple of new members out of the experience, and a big “Thank You” is due to all those who helped.
Finally, Kent Ward make up a bunch of color brochures for the club, and these were quite popular as hand-outs. Thanks Kent.
In 2007 we did not hold any events solely for juniors, largely because participation in the past has been minimal. Nevertheless, it is critically important to our sport that we recruit young folks to shoot with us. We have a couple of young folks now shooting with us on an occasional basis, and if anyone can help out with expanding our junior program, I would appreciate it. Three things need to be done, as I see it. You may be able to think of more.
First, we need to identify and recruit young folks to shoot with us. If you have ideas on how to do this or energy to help out, it would be greatly appreciated.
Second, we need to have matches, with prizes, for juniors only. We can easily do this at the range in Miller. It’s about a 45 minute drive from Springfield, we can reserve that range for the whole day, and we can choose which days we want, unlike the Dalton Range. We can also start matches at a time other than 8am, which does not seem too congenial to the sleep habits of young folk.
Third, we need to provide coaching, encouragement, and shooting outside of the Saturday match environment. Although this sounds a bit pretentious for a club that currently has no juniors shooting regularly, I think it is part of the problem. I would like to set aside a regular time and place in the Springfield area where we could shoot air rifle and work on shooting skills indoors. Call it an indoor range if you like, but a large room or basement would work just fine, and limiting it to air rifles should help ease the anti-gun prejudice or safety issues. A room of about 30′ x 30′ would be adequate. Larger would, of course, be better. If anyone can identify a place where we can make this happen, please let me know.
Feel free to contact me when you need to re-supply your ammunition locker. Prices will remain the same: .30-06 is 25 cents per round, green-tip .223 is 15 cents, and 55 grain .223 is 10 cents. We have lots of .30-06 and a couple of ammo cans full of .223. I’ll bring extra ammo to the Garand match, as I think folks will want to lay in a supply for the winter.
From the short term perspective, this year is almost over, and it has been a very successful year for our club. Participation is at an all time high, and club membership is quite robust. We will have our business meeting in January, and I’ll give you the statistics then, but you all should be proud that you’re making the best rifle club in Southwest Missouri happen. I personally would like to see more of our members travel to the out of town matches and become seasoned competitors, but that is a personal issue and decision. I firmly believe that friendly competition heightens the experience of shooting, and the more you compete the more you enjoy it, and the more you enjoy it, the better you shoot. It’s never too soon to be thinking about Camp Perry.
Long-term issues that you need to roll around in your head this winter are the usual: what can we do to increase junior participation; what can we do to enhance the shooting experience on Saturday mornings; what other things should the club be doing, either to make this a better club or to make this a better world? Those are the main things I think about every winter: how to get juniors into the sport, how to improve the matches, how to improve the club, and how the club can help improve the world.
You’ll hear me say this many times, but let me put it right here, right now: this is a club, not a company. One person does not run the club, nor is it run by a committee. It is run by its members. It exists only because its members want it to. It can only do what its members want it to, and it MUST do what its members want it to. Similarly, it will only do what its members do; it’s that simple.
The point of this is that the off-season is a time for reflection and re-dedication, or maybe just a chance to watch football. Whatever. It is a time when you might give a little thought to what changes you might want in the Osage Orange Sharpshooters. Maybe you’d like changes to the matches. Maybe you’d like more or fewer matches. Maybe you’d like us to be involved in some charitable project. Maybe you think we need new personnel running the show. Maybe you’d like to be an officer in the club. You think about it and you decide.
We have a bunch of new members shooting with us this year, and it is easy for a new member to get the idea that one person (or maybe a couple) run the club. Although it may look that way at times, it shouldn’t be, nor is it. This club will do whatever you want (assuming enough people agree with you). We have generally submitted proposals involving money to a voice vote of members present, and we sometimes have significant discussion or even vote down a proposal. That’s democracy, and this club is a democracy. So be ready with any suggestions you have, and be ready to volunteer to do something for the club.
Finally, the winter is a time to set goals for yourself. You will not become a better shooter without practice, and I feel that winter practice is even more important than summer. It is truly amazing what you can teach yourself about shooting from the standing position by shooting an air rifle in your basement. It has become addicting for me. I now own 6 air rifles, 4 of which are match-grade, and I love to shoot them. Sometime this winter I will put out another edition of my writings on the standing position, and I’ll include some information on air rifles.
A frequently asked question in the club is can I make a match-grade AR-15 from an off-the-shelf one? The answer is, ‘yes, but its probably better to just buy the match-grade rifle.’
To convert a stock AR-15 rifle into a match-grade rifle, you will need at a minimum a float tube ($150), and a new trigger ($120). You will probably want a new barrel ($200) and new front sight ($50) too, and I would recommend that you have half-minute rear-sight clicks, which may require modifications to your current sights ($75). You can buy the best match upper for about $700 from White Oak Armament, and you can buy a Rock River National Match Lower from a gun shop for about $325, and it already has the trigger installed. Now, if you have an old beat up rifle with a shot-out barrel and munged up sights in the basement, it might be worth it (that is to say, just a lower and an upper you want to use and throw the rest away). But if you have a fairly nice AR-15 you bought in the run-up to Y2K, you could get $500-800 for it at a gun show, and you would be money ahead to do that and put the cash towards a match-grade rifle. And you would be foolish, very foolish, to buy a regular AR-15 and try to build up a match rifle from it. It will cost you about twice what buying the match rifle new would.
Yes, I know you can build or add things to a pre-existing rifle one step at a time, and it seems like you’re saving money. We did that with Joe Huftless. We installed a float tube, new front sight, and a new (used) barrel. He still has a used barrel, full-minute sights and a crummy trigger, but at least he’s shooting.
Any questions?? Contact… Bill Corcoran (417) 862-861 or send me an email
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The 2007 NRA Missouri State 600 yard
Highpower Championships
Oh Boy…. What an event !!!
Two days of 600 yard shooting. Four 22 round strings on Saturday in the individual Championships and two 22 round strings in the Four Man Team event on Sunday.
As usual, this is the ONE BIG event of the year for the Bucksnort Range at Marshall MO. The matches in the Spring and Summer can have as many as 50 competitors from Missouri and nearby states, but the Fall 600 yard Championships always fills up the range. Range capacity is about 76 shooters (Divided into four relays on 19 target positions)… and we had that this last weekend. All of the “walk in” competitors were turned away. Match Director Dale Strannigan said that advance entries were full up by Sept. 10th.
Four members of the OOS managed to get their entry form in before the cutoff….. OOS Pres Bill Corcoran, Les Welch, Alex Belt, and yours truly. Gerry Averett had sent in a form but had it returned with a note after entries were closed out. Gerry decided to go up anyway with his camper on the off chance that there would be a drop-out and he could get in. As luck would have it that’s exactly what happened. He and I arrived at the Bucksnort range about 10 PM on Thursday evening. First thing Friday morning Dale came out of his RV, saw Gerry, and asked him if he brought his gear. Dale said that another shooter had called late the previous evening and said he was stuck in Pennsylvania on a job and could not be back to shoot. Gerry got his spot.
Many shooters had elected to come up a day early and use Friday as a sight in, practice and “kick back” day. We sure had beautiful weather for it… even if it was a mite warm. By mid-afternoon the rest of the OOS contingent had arrived and had gotten in a few rounds downrange to verify zeros. Everyone felt they were ready for the big Saturday match.
A 600 yard event is normally done in 4 stages. The first two are “any” sight… and if you have a match rifle with removable sights, most shooters elect to install a scope for these two stages. The other two stages are “irons”… and no optical devices are allowed. Because of the low light early in the day, the “any” stages are shot first, saving the “irons” for later, when the light on the targets will be better for that sort of thing.
If, like me and the other OOS shooters, you prefer to shoot your Service Rifle (The M1 in my case. Bill, Les, Alex, and Gerry were shooting AR’s.) instead of a Match Rifle, then you are stuck shooting irons the whole match. If I read the score boards correctly about 40% of the field was shooting Service Rifles this day. There were a few M14’s as well as many AR15’s. So far as I know, I was the only M1 shooter.
About 60% however, were shooting some pretty fancy Match Rifles…. three way adjustable buttstocks, hang weights, moveable front swivel, cuff slings, exotic cartridges, sights that cost more than my first two cars (combined), gold plated stereo speakers, ivory inlay kitchen sink…. and barrels with bloop tubes that reached half way to the target.
Bucksnort has a rep as an “easy” range to shoot 600 because it does not get much wind. Saturday was an exception. Wind was “up our backs” out of the South for most of the day at around 15 mph. Fishtailing was common, with rapid switches that caused many an 8 or 9 out to the right and left. You really had to be on the ball, watching through your scope for changes in mirage, movement of grass and bushes, and impact dust direction.
Many shooters also reported uncalled “mystery shots” that went high and low as well. It was surmised by some that the sharp ground rise in front of the number boards (Which are about 40 yards in front of the targets) was causing the ground surface wind to do a “jump and roll” right in front of the targets… sometimes carrying a bullet high or low at the last moment before impact.
It was a nice day to shoot… but many competitors were having a rough time. The first few relays to shoot seemed to go well. Many shooters posting some nice scores. Bill and Alex both came in with numbers in the mid 190’s. I’m not sure what Les fired but I remember Gerry telling me he’d had a bad go with his eyes fogging out on him. I managed to get on the board with a 195-10X. Pretty good for an Expert M1 shooter in a field of Master and High Masters shooting AR’s and M14’s.
By the time the second round of relays was finished it was obvious from the stories being told back and forth that the wind was causing everyone some fits. It was pretty erratic and unpredictable. You really had to be on your toes watching for changes. I managed a 191-6X. Not too bad but I was hoping for better. Never heard what anyone else from the OOS shot but after the first relay I figured that at least Bill and Alex were on top of their games.
Come the third round of relays and things are just as bad if not worse. Lots of “I tanked” stories floating around from the other shooters. Still no word from any of the other OOS guys but I squeaked in a 192-8X. Still not as good as I’d like, but still OK considering the cantankerous wind conditions.
I was on 3rd relay and as the rotation had it we were the last relay to shoot in the match. By this time I’m just hoping to post a respectable score. For some reason things just “clicked” for me at this last call to the line. About 2/3′rds of the way through the 20 shots I realized that I had only dropped about 3 points. Hey… unless I do something stupid in the next 6 shots I can really post a nice final string.
As luck would have it, I did drop one more point…. ending up with a 196-5X.
While cleaning up my firing point after the match ended I added up my total score in my head and came up with 774 and 29 X’s. Not bad… MAYBE that’s good enough to take the Expert Class. Will find out later in the evening after the scores are added up and posted on the “Wailing Wall”. I just knew, though, that in an event like this it would be one of the Top Dog shooters in Master or High Master Class that would be High Service Rifle shooter for the day.
Right after this I and the other OOS shooters gathered under the awning around Gerry’s RV for some downtime in the shade, a few cold brewski’s, and a Bull Session. Everyone seemed happy that the match was over. It was pretty much agreed that everyones score was down from normal, what with the really screwy wind conditions. After a bit everyone decided to adjourn the meeting and head into Marshall to the Pit-Stop BBQ and an early Supper…. Les Welch’s favorite re-fueling spot while in town.
Les, Bill, & Alex hit their vehicles and headed out of the range. Before getting in Gerry’s Suburban for the trip to town I made a run to the range head. Just before I went inside I was stopped by Greg Meredeth, a really nice guy and one HECK of an M14 shooter. He sticks out his hand to me, grins and says, “Congratulations”.
A little taken aback I ask, “What for”??
Greg says, “You just shot High Service Rifle”.
I go, “HUH!!??? You are kidding… Right”??? My knees went a little weak at that point.
He says, “You shot a 774″???
I go, “Yeah”….
He says, “You won High Service Rifle”.
I say, “Wow. Never thought I shot better than you Masters today”.
Greg said, “Well, you held it together. The rest of us fell apart in the wind”.
Fine praise from a really nice guy and a really good shooter. I was pretty much in a daze for the rest of the day. It still took a couple of days to sink in that I was now the NRA Missouri State 600 yard Service Rifle Champ for 2007….. and did it with an old obsolete M1 too. I guess there is still some “kick” in the old warhorse.
Sunday’s Four Man Team Match was kinda’ anti-climactic compared to Saturday. Les, Bill, Alex and I formed an OOS Team. Gerry was picked up by another team that was short a man. Only two 22 shot strings to this match instead of four. We were finished by around 12:30. I don’t know how the OOS team finished in the standings as we all headed to the four winds after the match ended. Conditions were pretty much the same as the day before, so I’m pretty certain that most scores were a bit lower than usual….. I know mine were. I think I shot a 193 and a 189.
Oh well….. It sure was a fun weekend, regardless of the wind. Those of you who have never tried shooting on the “long line” don’t know what fun you are missing…..
Best to all,
Steve Milholland aka Swampy