Today was our BPCR silhouette match, shot using Wilton rules which means shot what you brung, smokeless is okay and the bench is also okay. I used my .32-40 High Wall, breech seating with the new deep hole eyecup I made yesterday. The eyecup definitely worked great. Both the front sight and the targets were sharp and clear. But the conditions wreaked havoc today. Fresh heavy wet snow, about 8 inches deep covered the range. Trying to see .32 caliber holes in the snow was a challenge at best. My 86 year old partner, looking thru a Kowa struggled to see the missings and walk me in. But when the mirage would clear, holes would appear and I managed to shoot 9/10 pigs. And the one miss was a Homer Simpson moment when I forgot to lock the rear sight before shooting that shot. Turkey were a worse struggle to spot for and I ate up a lot of sighters. I managed to hit 7/10 turkeys. Rams at 500 was almost impossible. You could barely see the hits on the target. But, a buddy had come up to watch and got on another scope and helped Steve spot for me. I was hitting the target, but Steve could not tell where. Paul looks and says I put 3 shots into about a 3 inch group in the top of the horn!!. Yikes!! Cranked my sight down and left and managed to put 9 shots for score on the rams.
I was expecting chickens at 200 to be a walk in the park. Gun was warm, berm was closer so walking the rifle in on the target should be easy. Yeah, right. I got 4 chickens. We actually thought I had gotten 5, but when I went down to look at the target, I could only find 4 hits. Damn!
But, as usual, still a fun day. The deep hole eyecup worked as it was supposed to. Rifle seemed to shoot well. Not really the right day to truly tell. Light was going up and down and the vertical stringing followed the light perfectly. But it was subtle since it was a cloudy day. I was so engrossed in holding on that grain of sand in my front sight that was the target that I was oblivious to the changes. And my partner was working so hard to see my hits that he forgot to call the light as well. Truly a good learning day for both of us.
I heard a lot of guys grumbling during the match. We were not the only ones struggling to see the misses in the snow. It appeared that some never got on target at some ranges. Today was the first time since my old BPCR days shooting prone and offhand that I used all 60 rounds for a 40 round match. It was work for sure. But a labor of love, right?
