The 2018 NW Regional Championship shot at the Deep Creek Range in Missoula, MT is in the books. The weather this year played a large role in the outcome of the iron sight match with rain coming in early Saturday morning forcing us to use white targets for Saturday and Sunday's Iron Sight matches. Friday was pretty nice for the Scope Match with light wind and mild temperatures.
I tried something different this year where the NW Regional Championship because I have always struggled with a three day match, historically being one day of scope and two days of iron. The first year I ran the NW Regionals I was approached by the late Bob Hightower who would drive all the way from California to shoot in our match but was only able to shoot one day, about maybe switching to one day iron sights and two days of scope. As I only had the one day scope, two day iron option, that was just the way it was then but it always made me wonder if I could help make the match better by figuring out some way to make it more "worth the trip" for a scope only shooter. Not long ago there were no scopes being used and all matches were shot with only iron sights. But with the advent of period scopes being allowed, older shooters have been shooting longer and better as a result. But, historically, iron sights have always reigned king and still gets two thirds of the matches given a three day match.
But today, many matches have more scope shooters than iron sight shooters. Our monthly matches routinely have more scope than iron sight shooters especially on days with low visibility. And I was wondering if I allowed shooters to choose their aiming device how many would choose scope over iron if not forced into shooting iron sights by the match director. So this year, I allowed a shooter to shoot either one day scope and two days iron, three days of scope, or three days of iron. The NW Regional Championship was still one day scope, two days iron, but if you chose one of the scope or iron sight options, you would shoot in that venue over three days but you would also be part of the one day scope Regional Championship on Friday if you chose scope or you would also be part of the two day iron Regional Championship if you chose three days of iron sights. That way, you could participate in the actual NW Regional Championship as you chose but could still shoot all three days with whatever sights you wanted. If you chose to switch sight options outside of this (as one shooter did because they started shooting iron sights on Saturday but gave it up on Sunday and switched back to scope) we didn't have an award for your shooting efforts but if you shot one of the three options given, we provided awards and recognition. The most comprehensive awards were given for the normal NW Regional with awards given for 1st B, 1st and 2nd A, 1st and 2nd and third AA, AAA, and Master shooters along with women, junior, senior, and super senior. I lumped all shooters into each catagory of three day scope or three day iron and gave 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place for each three day venue. We had ten shooters shoot three day scope and two shooters shoot three day iron sights. With a total of 39 shooters on Friday (37 scope and 2 three day iron) and 49 shooters on Saturday and Sunday (38 iron sight shooters and 10 three day scope shooters and one shooter that switched from iron sights on Saturday to Scope on Sunday) the numbers were pretty even.
For the Friday Scope match, scores ran pretty high with Darrell Smithson shooting a 35 with five chickens and all his laydown targets. Dave Eichenlaub was right behind with a 34 shooting six chickens and all but two rams on his laydowns. John King was third overall with a 32 shooting five chickens and shooting all but three rams on his laydowns. Fred Kase and Howard Smith shot 31's in the master class as well as Dave Heninger and Charles Cummings in the AAA class. Some great shooting!!
Saturday, as previously mentioned, started out with rain beginning in the middle of the night and we woke up to dark berms and drizzling rain. We were pretty sure that was going to be the case and had changed the range over to white targets and it was a good thing. The rain kind of suppressed the winds, however, and made for a pretty good day of shooting as long as you dressed warm. The Deep Creek Range has a large covered shooting line and cleaning area as well as having young target setters so the shooters and their equipment were able to stay dry. Johnny Spratling and Howard Smith tied for the overall with 31's and Johnny won in a shoot-out. Charles Cummings was third overall for the day with a 30. Dave Eichenlaub also shot a 32 with his scope as he was shooting three days of scope.
We held our potluck barbeque Saturday evening and Mike Venturino acted as M.C. and gave out door prizes from our gracious friends in the shooting world as well as my wife donated another quilt this year for donation. We would like to thank all of the folks that donated prizes as our shooters appreciate them and it adds to the atmosphere around our match. We all ate too much and enjoyed the prizes immensely!
Sunday was still somewhat rainy so we still had the targets turned to white. There was fog in the valley behind us and up on the ridge ahead of us but the range looked pretty clear with virtually no breeze. We started the match and after the first volly on swingers, the fog decided to role out onto the range, something I have never seen at Deep Creek. So the mixture of the fog with the black powder smoke drifting slowly down range, the white targets almost disappeared. With the exception of a couple of scope shooters, most iron sight shooters only got a few sighters downrange. I was spotting for Mike Venturino and after his second sighter that I couldn't see we figured out that I was spotting on pigs and he was shooting on turkeys. He got one more sighter downrange but I didn't see it either. He didn't shoot anymore for score and waited until the second bank of animals, where he did manage to hit two turkeys before the smoke and fog got too bad. Interesting first relay!! Luckily, the fog drifted away and a mild breeze came across the range for the following relays and visibility greatly improved but the first relay sure got the short end of the stick for sure. Had I realized that we could have waited a half hour and not have had to deal with the fog and smoke, we could have waited, but with it being Sunday and everyone always wants to leave as soon as possible in the afternoon, I decided to start when I did...
Some great scores were shot, however, with Howard Smith shooting a 33 (five chickens but dropping on turkey and one ram) and two 29's were shot by Darrell Smithson and Dennis Mitchell. John King also shot a 32 with his scope in the three day scope group shooting just two chickens but all his laydowns.
The Overall winners in the NW Regional Iron Sight Championship was Howard Smith with an aggregate of 64 and Darrell Smithson and Johnny Spratling tying for 2nd/3rd with 59's and Darrell winning in a shoot-off.
First, second, and third Masters were Steve Neustrom, Dave Heninger, and Mike Venturino. First, second, and third AAA were Dennis Mitchell, Del Niemeyer, and Charles Cummings. First, second and third AA was Cody Voermans, Amber Spratling, and Diana Mitchell. First and second A was Ryan Trickett and Tim Galligan. First B was Kaid Buls.
First, second, and third Three Day Scope winners were Dave Eichenlaub and John King with a aggregate of 93 with Dave winning by animal count. Third place went to Ivan Dice with an aggregate of 85.
And the winner of the Three Day Iron match was Mike Otterberg with an aggregate of 69.
The scores can be seen here:
Friday Scope Match:
http://www.mtbpcr.com/2018NWRegionalScopeFinal.pdf
Satuday and Sunday Iron Sight Match:
http://www.mtbpcr.com/2018NWRegionalIronFinal.pdf
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