CWSA First Ever Steel Challenge Match

Got back a few hours ago from the first CWSA Steel Challenge match in Coupeville, Washington. There was only enough range area to set up two stages, but with the fairly good turn-out we had and a wind that was chilly at times, that was enough for one day.

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Here's the first stage. Shoot all four white plates once, then shoot the yellow stop plate. Repeat five times. Your slowest score is thrown out ,and the remailing four are added up, minus any penalties for missing a plate or shooting the stop plate before hitting all of the white ones. From the left-most to the right-most plate was close to 90 degrees. For today anything under three seconds for five plates was fairly fast.

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Megan, a first year shooter with obvious talent, turned in a number of times close to three seconds! It's not polite to ask a lady her age, but I would guess she was somewhere around twelve! (If I've guessed wrong, I apologise!) Proud Mama and proud papa also were shooting in the match.

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The second stage was five circular plates, much smaller than on the first stage, at varying heights, but closer together. Since the plates were closer together, times were a little faster on this one.

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We had a good bunch of shooters down from the Custer club, including "Unbeatable Gerald", Kim, and Megan and her family, and another shooter, Tom, I think.

Lots of reasonably fast times were turned in, in spite of a number of us having never shot one of these matches before. Tom from Custer won the centerfire standard gun class, Gerald from Custer won the centerfire open class, our own "Evil Al" won the revolver class, and Gerald also won the rimfire optical sight class. I forgot to find out who won the iron sight rimfire class.

Most of the class winners won their respective classes fairly easily, but the rimfire optical class was extremely closely contested. Less that 3/4 of a second separated the total times of first through third, and that's for the totals of eight rounds added together per shooter!

"Evil Al" and I were in nearly a dead heat, with me narrowly beating his times on the first stage, and he narrowly beat my best times on the second stage. The difference between second and third was in the hundredths of a second, it was that close, but Al got me on this one! I even managed a 2.51 on one of the rounds, but that wasn't quite fast enough.

KeeWee shot steadily and basically mistake free, and ended up somewhere around fifth or sixth, I think.

Iron sight rimfire did not go well for me. I was solidly in the thick of it, although not up with the leaders, until I missed a plate that I thought I had hit, and hit the stop plate. The penalty was 8 seconds, which sent me clear to the bottom of the list. That single penalty adds anywhere from 25 to 40 per cent to your total score, basically eliminating you from the match.

It was a long day, and lots of waiting around to get in 30 or 40 seconds of shooting, but this was CWSA's first match, and the next ones should go much faster.

On the way back from the match KeeWee and I stopped at one of our favorite restaurants for dinner, then home.

I'm plumb wore out!