Ran some .22's

[Distant Thunder]

I'll put this in here to kind of close out my part of this thread. The match at Merrill, WI was today and I have to say it went better than I expected.
The official results will be out in a couple weeks, but I'll spoil that a bit here. There were over 20 shooters for sure, probably around 25. It gets a little hard to figure with some of the guys coming in late and a lot of names crossed out as people change the shooting order to get their spotters freed up for when they are shooting. I'm not sure how Mike keeps it all in line, but he does.

I arrived about 9:30 with shooting scheduled to start at 10:00. I looked over the targets and conditions. There wasn't much snow on the ground so the targets were paint florescent orange. A quick check said they were going to stay that way. I figured right away that there was no way I was going to see those orange targets with iron sights and I would have to go with the scope. The majority of shooters were scoped as well.

Just about every kind of .22 RF is allowed in this match and there are no limits I can see on sights or scopes. Bolt guns, leverguns, single shots and liners, if it's a .22 RF you can bring it to the line.

My rifle is 12 lbs. /- with the scope and seems a bit heavy to me for offhand. So, with the scope on and an unloaded rifle I checked to see if I could hold steady on the 50-yard gong before the match started. That wasn't happening! I tried different holds and nothing worked so I ended up back where I started for holding it and that's what I went with.

Thanks to Arnie I was 17th on the list. That would allow me to shoot and still leave for home in time to make it there before dark. At least that was the plan. As it turned out I stuck around to talk some more and watch a couple other shooters go through the offhand so I was late getting out of there. It was worth it to spend a little more time with friends.

When my number came up I went the first target, the 50 yard offhand gong, thinking I'm going to be lucky to hit maybe 2 of these. When the fire command was given I raised the rifle and took the first of two sighters. I hit it! Then I hit it again!. There is some hope here after all I thought. After my 10 record shots I had hit 8!

I used the Federal Champion ammo for the offhand. My thinking was that they'll shoot into 1/2" at 50 yards and they are high velocity, less time in the barrel. I need that less time thing because by the time my brain says, "Pull the trigger!" and my finger actually does something, well the sight picture can change a bunch. Less time in the barrel can only help shorten the whole chain of events leading to the bullet getting going down range. It seemed to work.

For the three remaining targets at 100, 150 and 195 yards I used the ELEY Target and that worked pretty well too. My only miss in the 30 shots benched was one at 150 yards. I don't remember which one it was, but I do know I was surprised when the shot went off early and then again when it missed off the edge at 10 0'clock. I just got a little too heavy on the trigger as I was lining it up, I thought I was lined up pretty well, but I missed.


So out of 40 shots I ended up with a 37. To say I was please with the way my rifle shot would be an understatement, I was thrilled! Arnie spotted for me and did a great job. He said on the last gong at 195 yards you could have covered my last 5 shots with a quarter.

This rifle has been a bit of work to finish up, mostly the extractor design and build, but it is so nice to finally have a .22 BPCR that shoots well. In the past I only had my Browning low wall and that never did as good as I wished it would. This rifle is going to be a lot of fun going forward. Life is good!