Seattle Rifle & Pistol Association match on 2/21/10

[Jason]

I've had a lot of people asking about our matches and our range in Machias, WA, so I thought I'd finally get around to taking the time to post some info and pictures. First, SR&PA is a private members-only club that is open to the public during competitive events (which happen every weekend day) and weekend hunter sight-in sessions in the fall. The basis of the club membership is competitive shooting, whether it be rifle, pistol, shotgun, or archery. It usually takes about three years on the waiting list to get in, but it's worth it. Having a base of competitive shooters with passion for their games makes it a lot easier to get them to come out on work days to take care of the place. We shoot the smallbore standard and hunter matches on the third Sunday of every month other than June, September, and October. We shoot the smallbore and pistol cartridge cowboy and hunter pistol matches the Saturday before, which is usually but not always the third Saturday. Here's the web address for the club with directions to the range. The picture on the website has Shakes in the foreground with Byron spotting for me in the background.

http://www.seattlerifle.org

As I had promised a few people, I took some pictures at our match yesterday. I was hoping to take a lot more but my daughter took my request to "take pictures while I shoot" a bit too far. She took a picture of me every single time I shot for the entire first match and ran the camera battery down. We have a 40-shot standard rifle match followed by a break for lunch and then a 40-shot hunter rifle match. I live a couple miles from the range and it was 28 degrees (F) when I left home to head to the match. That's really cold for here and we only had about 15 shooters venture out, including a few new shooters. It was a beautiful day, though, despite the cold. Here are a few shots of the match.

First, here's a shot of where most people spent any time they weren't shooting during the morning match. We had that wood stove blazing.



This is a shot down the firing line in front of the stat office. To give you a reference point to the photo above, you can see the left end of one of our rifle racks in the top photo and the right end of it in this photo. We have a pretty nice covered firing line with smooth, flat concrete and benches that we can move out of the way for other types of matches.



This next shot is facing back down the line the opposite way as before to give more perspective on the length and design of our firing line. The guy with the black jacket and red hat is standing right by the rifle rack in the previous two pictures. Also to the right there is the green mobile timing and announcing stand. It's wired up with a timer and microphone so that it can be used for all of the multitude of matches that we have at the range.



That's Kevin, the guy who runs the smallbore silhouette match, standing in the stat office getting everything going for the day. This is the guy whose contact info it shows on the NRA site for our club matches in case you want to put a face with the name. He's done a wonderful job of getting quite a lot of people hooked on silhouette shooting and is a really good shooter.



This is a shot of the chicken rails with sight-in board and swingers that we use to sight in before the match. We put two people for each animal per relay with 10 animals (two banks) each, letting 8 people total per relay shoot. We're currently evaluating building multi-level rails to accomodate more shooters concurrently. I'm hoping by summertime that we'll have enough shooters that we'll have to build the new rails to keep the number of relays down.



Here's a closer shot of the rails that we use and chickens on them. Hopefully you can see the pads on the rails that are the same size as the feet on the chickens. We have these on all of the rails and it ensures consistent placement of the animals. You might also notice that the range is perfectly flat and is enclosed on every side by tall, thick trees. This is my excuse for not knowing how to shoot in the wind. We hardly ever have much at all. If you want to test how accurate your rifle really is or finish your grand slams, this is the place to do it.



Here's one of a monstrous pile of photos that my daughter took of me while I was shooting. Yep, it was cold.



I'll try to get more pictures during and after the matches next time. I'll just have to keep the camera out of little 9-year-old target setter hands to do it.

Ok.. let's see some pictures of other ranges and matches. Competition season will be cranking up soon and I'd love to get some ideas for improving our facilities and making our matches even better!

[lone ringer]

Jason, it would be rather easy to accommodate more people if you guys go to resettable targets because you would only need 5 per bank instead of 15 per bank, plus you would not have to go down as often and could shoot twice as much in the same time.

[Jason]

Thanks, Tony. We're not sold on the resettable concept and are just starting to investigate new designs for our rails. I have to confess that I'm a bit of a purist and would rather watch the animals fall away (which sometimes helps in judging where they were hit) than just roll backward.

[lone ringer]

Jason, I understand what you are saying but anybody that has shot resettables for a long time like me can tell you why they are so much more convenient to use. Among the things I like about them is that their action when falling is a lot slower than the other targets and you can see the hits before they go down. I will not try to convert you, suffice to say that most SB ranges in Mexico and there are a lot of them are the resettable kind.

[Bob Mc Alice]

An enclosed firing line, heated shelter, range surrounded by fir trees and generally calm conditions all the time??? You guys got it made. With no berms behind the targets , it must be difficult for the spotter to call misses.

It's nice to see that some of you are shooting matches this time of year. We have lost so many matches to bad weather this winter I have lost count. And this Sundays SB at Aurora is questionable. Yet another weekend snow storm is being forecast. Maybe they will get it wrong this time.

Thanks for sharing the photos, Jason.

Check your PM.

[Jason]

Thanks, Bob. It definitely does make calling misses more difficult, but that's the price we pay for not having a dedicated silhouette range. We haven't lost any matches this year due to weather. We had a couple last year that didn't have enough folks to show up to have a real match due to bad weather, including 2ft of snow on the ground at one time. This year, we haven't had more than two days in a row with any snow on the ground yet. It's not too late, though. We've gotten snow as late as early June before. On, and our range is not totally enclosed. We have to shoot out one side of it.

[mordecai]

Jason, it would be rather easy to accommodate more people if you guys go to resettable targets because you would only need 5 per bank instead of 15 per bank, plus you would not have to go down as often and could shoot twice as much in the same time.

Who's got pictures of the resettable they can post??? I'd really like to know how they work. I've seen a few models over the years but I'd be curious of the options available...