At a smallbore match this weekend I was shooting rams. On the fifth target I nicked it. It moved ever so slightly but stayed. I turned to my spotter and asked did you see that? As we were talking and before time elapsed the target fell. This was between 10 to 20 seconds after the shot. There was no wind or bullet deflection from another bank.

How would you score it?

At the Georgia State Champioships this weekend I asked the same question to some of the seasoned shooters. Their answer is reasonable time, and the definition of reasonable time is ______ "Please fill in the blank".


Please enlighten us....

As I know it, animal 1-4, if it is hit you have until you fire your next shot for it to fall, on the last animal my best guess is that you have to your time runs out. It would be an x.

I would count it as a hit. Sounds like you moved it just enough to have its center of gravity right on the edge of the stand, with it falling off of there very slowly. If you can be reasonably sure that no one else hit it, it was your 5th animal and time had not run out, then it counts.

Hit. Similar things happen to everyone and we call them "Crowd Pleasers".

powding,
I have shot enough with you to know that you would do the right thing even if no one else was watching. So if you say you hit it and it fell, regardless of the time it took. I would feel more than assured that you hit it.

Now on the other hand you can always do as your namesake did and Cope it

Dawg, why did you have to bring up the namesake? It was a hit on the rams, the condidtions were unique to say the least and btw 20 seconds Ron is almost 10 percent of the time alloted to shoot so I suspect it was much shorter time than that.

Mary

Same thing except the Ram turned on the stand and did not fall but when I went to reset it was down. I asked if I should count it and was told to do what I thought was right not that one more Ram helped my score overall It did make me wonder how those types of hits that eventually fall are to be scored. Seems like as long as the target falls before the time expires on the round it should count.

Dee

No seasoned shooter am I, but if it falls before the next shot or before time's up, I think it'd be a hit (Heck some days if I spray enough dirt at them to topple them I take it as a hit!! ).

Now ask me about the 4 chickens I hit on the wrong bank last month......I knock down #2,3,4, spotter says "are you shooting at the right bank?" so I saw no, and shoot #5 down anyway. I was a bit tee'd off. I knocked down more than my personal best that match, but scored less than the same.

But that does bring up a thought......on the HP rams, if their foot is knocked off the stand, but don't topple, I've been told that's a hit.
What about the little guys, I saw a SB ram knocked off its footing, but didn't fall last match as well........we didn't score it as a hit.

Heck, I'll go against the grain - only because that's the story of my life...

I read "reasonable" amount of time to indicate less than a few seconds, meaning time enough for gravity to act before a gust of wind does.

The one thing I like about this sport over others is its ability to be fairly black and white in terms of scoring - no calipers or other such subjectiveness.

There were two really odd hits this year.

A moved when it was hit, paused long enough for me to lower the rifle, and then fell. No wind, no other shots, just a pause while he thought about it, I guess.

Number two was at Benton in a match early this summer. They went to the extra effort of welding foot pads to the top rails for the targets to stand on, and the shot knocked the critter off the pedestals and it just lay down on the rail. Iy didn't fall off the rail, just off the pedestal, and I wasn't entirely sure how to score it. Since the animal was down we took the point, but I've never felt entirely comfortable about it.

Our rules are simple. If the animal falls to the ground or would have fallen to the ground had there been nothing but the stand that its feet sit on there, then it's a point. That means that if it's partially or totally lying on the rail and would have fallen had the stand just been a stick in the ground with the flat stand on top of it, then it counts. If you somehow knock it over but it's still on its stand, then it doesn't count.

There are times when targets that are placed on a rail with pads specially chickens and pigs that are moved off their pads sideways and onto the rail by fragments of bullets that hit other targets on the same rail.

I have seen people take credit for those targets even though there were not visible marks of hits on freshly painted targets. In my opinion the pads should be placed high enough to prevent stuff like that from happening.

Raton has gone as far as placing metal in between individual targets to prevent bullet fragments from knocking down adjacent targets.

If a point is questionable, I defer to the spotter, another shooter, or the match director. Their consensus and respect is more important than the point.

BlauBear wrote:If a point is questionable, I defer to the spotter, another shooter, or the match director. Their consensus and respect is more important than the point.

Amen.