Broome County Sportsmens Association Air Rifle Field Target  

Saturday May 12

BCSA 5/12/2012 Field Target Match Report

What a nice day for a field target match! After last month's mis-forecast by the weather guru's, the bright skies for this month's match were a welcomed sight. The morning started out in the upper 30's with a little bit of fog and little to no wind. As the morning progressed, the temperatures started to rise and the sun burned through the fog. By the end of the match, the temperatures rose to near 80 degrees and the wind was around 10mph.

We had nine shooters on hand for the match, and the bucket brigade was well represented! There were a couple more shooters that had planned on showing up, but had to sit this one out at the last minute due to various illnesses. We hope they all get better soon.

This match was a trial run of sorts. I pre-planned a 60 shot rifle match followed by a 40 shot pistol match. For the rifle portion, there were 10 lanes with 3 targets per lane. The shooting order was 1 shot on the left target, 1 shot on the middle target, 1 shot on the right target then repeat for a total of 6 shots per lane. Timers were used and the allotted time was 6 minutes per lane. Before the start of the match, I asked the shooters to keep track of the time they had remaining on the clock in order to see how this worked out. There was only 1 person who timed out on 1 of the lanes. Everyone else had well over a minute or more left on the clock, and nobody said the felt rushed. With our layout and running 2 man squads, we finished the 60 shot rifle match in about 2 hours.

At the conclusion of the rifle match, awards were handed out, we took a little break and a few targets were removed so that the pistol match could begin.

This was our first pistol match at the club, but definitely won't be the last. There are a few of us that would welcome more trigger time with our pistols! We have opted to run just 2 classes for awards at our club, a hunter pistol class and an open pistol class. Shooters are also allowed to shoot the pistol portion offhand with their rifles if they so desire, but there are no awards for this, only practice.

For the pistol match, there were 2 targets per lane with a time limit of 4 minutes. Again, things were mixed up again, and the shooting order was 1 shot on the left target, 1 shot on the right target, then repeat for a total of 4 shots per lane. Not one shooter timed out, and again, no one felt rushed. We ended up finishing the pistol portion in about an hour and a half.

All the feedback on our trial run was positive and we will continue to run this format for future matches.

Again, a great day for a field target match!!