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It was an absolutely gorgeous day for the
last match of the year. Low 70’s and sunny made us think it was more
like early summer rather than mid-October. We also had the largest
turnout of the summer with 21 entries. I want to thank everybody who
showed up to shoot. I hope you had a good time. At the last match,
hardly anybody hit a hostage, so I said that I was going to add more
hostages to make it more of a challenge. I know for a fact that it was
more challenging, since all but three shooters hit hostages at one time
or another. There were a couple of shooters who should seriously adjust
their windage due to the fact they shot one hostage multiple times
during one of their runs. I was starting to get horse from yelling
"HOSTAGE" every time they hit one. Thankfully it was all in
fun, and the only bad thing that happened was that they added ten
seconds for every hostage hit.
Ryan Johnson came in first on the Main Event
with a time of 88.77 seconds for his two timed runs. He was one of the
people who made it through without hitting a hostage. Great shooting
Ryan. Brad Barnaby, who came in second place, was another one who didn’t
hit a hostage. He was only 1.5 seconds behind Ryan. Talk about a close
race. Better luck next year, Brad.
On the El Presidente, the shooter who came out
on top was Gary Rollenhagen. He made it through his two timed runs with
a total of 20.86 seconds. Excellent shooting Gary. Dan Shultz came in
second place, .53 seconds behind Gary. You can’t get much closer than
that. The one thing that was kind of interesting was that the top four
places were shooters that didn’t miss any of the targets on their
timed runs. I keep telling folks that if you slow down just a little bit
and watch that front sight, you will get a good score. This kind of
proves my point. A fast miss won’t help as much as a slower hit.
Again, I want to thank everybody who came out
to shoot this summer. I hope you had fun. We try to give you a different
challenge every match, while keeping safety as our number one goal. If
some of you thought I was a little hard on you regarding safe gun
handling, I want to stress that 99.9% of all accidental discharges are
not accidental. The doofus, who was holding the firearm at the time of
the discharge, had his or her finger on the trigger when it fired, as
opposed to placing their finger outside of the trigger guard. Also, if
somebody was shot at the time of this discharge the muzzle was obviously
not pointed in a safe direction. If you come away from these matches
learning nothing but these two safety rules, I will feel that I have
accomplished a lot besides giving you a fun venue.
Everybody have a safe and enjoyable winter, and
we hope to see you April 11 for our first match of 2009. I will put an
article in the March issue of the newsletter and in our web site to give
people a heads up. I want to thank everybody who helped out with the
matches this summer. Especially, I want to thank Denny Nelson, Rick Heyt,
and Neal Downer. Without them we could not be able to put on these
matches.
If you have any questions or comments you can
contact me through my email at pl8shootr@sbcglobal.net.
Safe shooting, and focus on that front sight.
Chris Hackett
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