1000 yd World Championship

[Don McDowell]

Yessir, I've never been there but by most accounts Ben Avery is a pretty big place.

[Gunlaker]

I may be off base, but I'd think a world championship would involve those that placed well at a regional competing against others of the same at a national championship for the right to compete against the likes of different countries.

In the end I think you'll see that the top five guys are exactly who you expect them to be :-).

If there were qualifications required it would certainly eliminate me, as we have no regional matches up here in Canuckville, at least not BPTR. The only regional matches I've shot have been in Wyoming and Colorado :-)

Chris.

[desert deuce]

Every journey begins with the first step.

Every competitor has a first match, after that they look forward to the next match.

Bruce, I tried to tell you last year that if you wanted to shoot The Cup you needed to do it NOW.

Possible to shoot with world and national champions at this match. Also possible to shoot with a first time shooter. Everybody's got to start somewhere.

The Ben Avery Range has 100 firing points, faces north and the wind flags are high enough to be of some use.

AND, for you purists, nobody says you have to use/have a spotter. You can shoot without one if you so desire.

[Gunlaker]

Zack it's interesting that there are paid target pullers. I'm assuming that most of the paid pullers aren't shooters. Are they generally pretty efficient? With only 1.5 minutes per shot, and the amount of wiping I do with my paper patched bullets, waiting on a target to come up isn't fun :-)

I imagine that you'll be there? I will be, if I can figure out how to get there reasonably. It'll just be me and a tent, unless I can find firearms friendly motels in Oregon, and California. My wife's little camper would have been nice as I could carry groceries for the whole trip and not have to leave my rifle in the Jeep to shop.

Chris.

[desert deuce]

Hi Chris, yep...slow target pulling has both won and lost major matches for me. Lost them when I had the slow puller and won them when I didn't.

Luck of the draw. It is always amusing that the worst pullers demand the best target service and then there are those I would rather not have pull my target at all.

The problem with this World Match is the target pullers are aliens. In fact I hear they are border jumpers from Canada.

Soooo, guess we will just have to wait and see.

Shot a few at 1,000 today at Ben Avery with the new smoke pole. Fantastic conditions and results. Too bad you were not here to enjoy it.

[Kurt]

Shot a few at 1,000 today at Ben Avery with the new smoke pole. Fantastic conditions and results.

That's kinda like laying a bone on your dogs nose making him wait for you to say take it.

[desert deuce]

You catch on quick.....

[Kurt]

I have patience like my blond lab had with the long shoestring drool strings hanging off his jowls.

[desert deuce]

Here doggie, doggie....

Well, first of all........I did a poor job of putting the new #112 MVA Windgauge front sight on so I had to move it over two and one half lines on the front sight vernier to get in the black with the rear MVA #103 sight on zero. Can you believe it, it was calm enough at 1,000 yards yesterday starting out to get a dead wind zero? After that everything was 1-2 minutes either side of zero. Sun was so bright I needed sun glasses but don't have any with the right prescription in them.

Imagine this...there you are in prone, round chambered, rifle on the sticks, you look up at your wind arrow and the piece of flagging tape on the nock of the fletched arrow is motionless. You look through the scope from 1,000 yards, boil on the face of the target, all flags down range are dead still, drooping down. You shoot, the smoke obscures the target to the extent you can't define a bullet strike but through the smoke you can see the target go down. Comes back up with tail lights.

Puller says on the radio, "I think you were high."

Had to stop at this point and apply some more sun screen lotion and adjust the sweat band to avoid replying on the radio.

Of course it was quite cool for Phoenix, about 72 degrees when I uncased the new rifle.

Ooops, there I go again, getting ahead of myself. Let's see, where was I ?

Oh, Yeah !

I had some odds and ends loads, mostly clearing the brass to start the new shooting season. All were D.T. Designs Money 45 Cal mini 4 groove, 535 grain, 1x16 alloy with Pope #3 Lube, either 75.0 or 75.5 3F Swiss (3 different lots), F150M, avg MV 1304 FPS, ES 5, a wad stack. GM super secret experimental 34" cut rifled barrel with a D.T. Designs 45-90 Money Chamber. Wiping two fairly wet arsenal patches with 1x10 Water Soluble Oil on a Tipton poly brush.

(Get bored shooting a 44-90 or 100...they shoot too good. No fun.)

Anyway....It took three rounds to figure out the front sight needed to be moved and after that three to get on paper as I was a few minutes lower by guesstimate than I thought was about right, so, then I make a SWAG and Drag on the windage and elevations screws on the rear soule and BINGO, ten, nine, nine, ten, ten, miss? (6 O'clock), 8, 8, ten, ten...after that the next two loads drifted a bit lower but the smoke pole seems to be doing just fine.

Both the 8's were at two, made no change to the sights and shot two ten's. Such is Ben Avery.
No explanation or even a guess at the low miss. Likely shooter error of some kind, like maybe loose grip, improper breath control, cheek weld or poor follow through or any combination thereof. Doubt it was rifle or ammo because I was getting strong dragons blood in the freshly extracted cases and absolutely no leading whatsoever.

[Kurt]

Sounds interesting Zack.
Yeh, the .44-100, .44-90, .44-75's are boring maybe it's the butt ugly naked DT designed bullet that plowed the dirt up You will get it worked out. Sounds like you got a good start.

I just got a new reamer made this summer in a .45 caliber believe it or not and I been looking for a barrel maker that will make my super highly classified barrel combination I want, but having a hard time finding one that will tool up for this job.
After Christmas I will load the gypsy wagon and head down to Cactus land for a while as long as this weather holds. I don't like driving on black ice anymore pulling something.
Don't know yet where I will drive stakes in the ground to keep the wind from blowing me over when I get down there.

Kurt