Broome County Sportsmens Association Air Rifle Field Target  

Saturday May 8

BCSA 5/8/2021 Field Target Match Report

Another Season of Field Target in underway at BCA (Broome County Sportsmens Assoc. - Binghamton, NY). Our weather this year, just like the past few Springs has been very wet. There has only been a handful of days where rain hasn’t been in the forecast. The early forecast for Match Day was looking pretty good……BUT….as the week progressed, things started to look bleak! We looked for breaks in the forecast and spent 2 days prior getting as much done while we stayed dry. Late Thursday afternoon the targets were set, Friday midday the canopies were up and we were ready for the final prep on Saturday morning! Due to the not so friendly looking forecast, we sent out a mass email notifying our potential participants that the days festivities were going to be delayed by 1 hour and that sight-in would be at 9am. All weather forecasts were starting to come together and it appeared that by 8 or 9 am we’d be pretty much rain free

Starting late Friday afternoon and lasting to near 9:00am we had the heavy rain (0.75 “ to 1.0”) that was forecast and even wet snow flurries. My wife and I arrived early Saturday morning to get things finished up and see how things fared. The first order of business was the pulling of the 50 strings. While we were finishing up, our first two competitors of the day arrived, Brian Van Liew and Jim Danvers. After a little chit chat, both jumped in and helped finish the prep work.

Sight-in, registration, score card prep and the signing of waivers were all handled right at the ft range this time around. The rain had pretty much vanished by 9am! The day pretty much stayed overcast and cool. We did have a few stray sprinkles, but they didn’t amount to much or last very long.

Competitors started arriving a few at a time. We did have a bunch of cancellations, but 12 brave souls decided that they were coming no matter what!!! The layout for the match had 15 of the 30 targets beyond 40 yards (6 of which were beyond 50 yards) with 1 standing and 1 kneeling lane for a difficulty of 34.21T. There was a definite little tricky breeze at times. Dennis Himes commented after the match that there was a time when his wind flag was blowing one way and the pollen flying around out near the target was going the total opposite direction!

We had a couple of new visitors to our range even though the forecast wasn’t pretty. Chuck Senkus was able to join us for the first time at our range after a slightly extended hiatus due to a job change. Nic talked a fellow classmate into slinging some lead at those pesky metallic critters for the first time! Welcome Brian!!

We had 1 cold line to correct a string issue…………my fault! I replaced a string on Friday with a different one but didn’t verify that the quick connector was on all the way. No other issues after that and things went pretty quickly! This was the first time that some people saw some of the others due to the worldwide 2020 shutdown! There was a lot of catching up to do..

Once the rifle match portion was winding down and people were finishing, a bunch decided that they were taking off….totally understandable! When everyone completed the rifle match, there was more chit chat, goodbyes and then the remaining 7 of us picked up the (30) rifle targets and ran the strings for the (20) 10m/pistol targets. Thomas Himes took top honors for the day shooting an outstanding 57/60 in Hunter PCP. The next highest competitor was Brian Van Liew with a 50/60 in Open PCP. Seven of the 12 competitors were over 60% for the day. Not too bad since it’s very early in the season and the weather hasn’t been the best for people to be out practicing and the match schedule is just starting to ramp up.

We had 4 of us shooting the 10m/pistol match. For those curious as to the 10m thing, we are allowing shooters to compete with open sighted rifles in a current AAFTA allowed rifle position for fun. The only requirements are the rifle must have an unmagnified sight and be kept down around 7-8 fpe at the muzzle. Just a fun thing to get more people to participate during the pistol match. For this match, Eric Brewer and Brian Van Liew shot Hunter Pistol while Nathan Thomas shot more with his newly stocked Walther LGU to get more of a feel of the new set-up. I was the only one shooting 10m. There were others that were going to shoot 10m, but left after they finished the rifle match due to the chilly weather.

The pistol match consisted of a 40 shot match with 2 standing lanes! Yep, 8 of the 40 shots were standing! In the pistol battle, Brian was victorious with a score of 31, just 3 points over Eric’s 28. Both ended up with 2/8 on the standing lanes..

No cold lines during the Pistol match. The difficulty for the match was 32.62T.

At the conclusion of the pistol match……the 5 of us that remained all helped with the teardown then a little more chit chat before we parted ways.

Thanks to all that came out to play in what turned out to be a not too bad of a day. It was a little overcast, chilly with a high of 48 degrees, but the rain finally eased to allow us to get together!