Another Fun Day at the Range!

Today was even a nicer day to be at the range shooting than was yesterday, with no wind and warm sunshine. I got to the CWSA silhouette match a bit early so I could watch the rimfire rifle shooters go at it. That also gave me time for a relaxed cup of coffee, sitting in the sunshine, and taking life easy!

The CWSA rimfire silhouette matches use 8.5" by 11" paper targets each with 5 black outlines of pigs, chickens, rams, or boars, depending on the distance. You take 15 shots, 5 at each outline, from 10 yards. The next target is tacked up, and the target stand is moved out to 15 yards for another 15 shots. Then the third target is put up, an the target stand moves to 20 yards for 15 more shots. Finally, the last target is put up and the distance goes out to 25 yards for the last 15 shots.

Each hit on one of the "critters" counts as one point, so your score is the total number of hits out of the 60 shots fired. Since speed is not a factor, the single shot Thompson Contenders with a telescopic sight are the handgun of choice.

Since this is a club level match, most shooters were just shooting their favorite .22 pistol for the fun of it. There were only two Contenders with scopes today, and since I was shooting my High Standard bowling pin race gun with an unmagnified red dot sight, I figured I'd see if I could make the Contender shooters sweat a little, even if the results were pretty much a foregone conclusion.

After the closest target, I was only one point behind the leader, but as the targets moved farther out, my scores progressively dropped. To Dennis, however, with his Contender, the distance didn't seem to make much difference, and he pulled farther and farther away as more targets were shot.

When the final targets were shot and the scores added up, Dennis was in a league by himself, with a score of 45. I managed to hit 31, good enough for a distant second place! Far better than I expected. The rest of the scores were only a point or so apart on down the list, so a lot of decent shooting was going on today. Dennis, with his scoped Thompson Contender was on form today, and he probably would have won regardless of what he was shooting!

Even if you don't have a chance, it IS fun to try and sneak up on them once in a while!