CWSA Hanging Plate Match 03/25/07

Even the night before the match, no one knew if it was going to be a rimfire hanging plate match, or a round robin rimfire falling plate match. If it was raining on Sunday morning, we would go to the pin range and take advantage of our new shooting station and staging area shelters, and shoot a falling plate match. It the rain had stopped during the night and the range wasn't too muddy, we'd go to the 75 yard range and shoot the first CWSA hanging plate match of the year.

When KeeWee and I arrived, we could see that cars were starting to park at the 75 yard range, so a hanging plate match it would be! For such threatening weather it looked like we would have a reasonable turnout, particularly since it was early in the year. We had a number of new shooters, including Mac, Wayne, and Wayne's son Mike. (From now on referred to as "Big Mike").

We would shoot two classes, rimfire optical sight, and rimfire iron sight. Each shooter would shoot three six shot strings at each distance, 10, 15, 20, and 25 yards. The plates would be 4" diameter at 10 yards, 5" diameter at 15 yards, 6" diameter at 20 yards, and 7" diameter at 25 yards. You have six seconds to fire each six shot string at the plates. You get one point for each plate hit, for a perfect possible score being 72 plates.

Just as we started shooting, it started to rain. Not heavy, but wet enough that I put the camera away, rather than getting water into it. That's why there's no pictures.

By early afternoon we had all completed our shooting and it was time to add up the scores. In optical sight class, my unconventional Taco Grip and silhouette based stance lends itself well to this type , since speed isn't as much of an issue as is accuracy. I managed to pull off the win, followed by LouG and "Evil Al" in third. When was the last time you saw Al as low as third? Lou was having a good day, and managed to get a few more plates than Al. KeeWee and Rainy ended up tied. Talk about a close rivalry! At last week's falling plate match KeeWee outscored Rainy by one half of a point. Those two are always neck and neck.....

The big story of the day was the iron sight class. Big Mike, Wayne's son, had fired one round through a 9mm. several years ago. With the exception of some rimfire rifle shooting as a lad, that's his TOTAL handgun experience, except for last Thursday, when I took Mac, Wayne, and Mike to the range for a little handgun practice before the match. We went over some of the basics as to range safety, grip, stance, and so forth. Everyone shot 6 or 8 magazines full of ammo. That was it.

At the end of the 10 yard segment, I had a one plate lead over Big Mike in second place. After the 15 yard segment, I had picked up one one plate for a two plate lead. The tables turned on the 20 yard segment, with Big Mike hitting three more plates than I, to give him a one plate lead going into the final distance. It now boiled down to 18 shots from 25 yards to decide the winner, and I was one plate behind.

I had an exceptionally lucky run at 25 yards, (with me, iron sight class ALWAYS involves a lot of luck!) giving me just enough plates to pull off the win. Congratulations to Mike on a really fine day of shooting, and I can see that it's only a matter of time until Mike's going to be big trouble for the rest of us at CWSA!!

Everyone had a little bit of "First Match of the Year" problems, but everything went smoothly under the expert guidance of LouG, our shoot coordinator.

After the match, Wayne, Mike, KeeWee and I headed up to Oak Harbor for a good Mexican dinner at our favorite Mexican restaurant.

What a fun day!!

Wish you could have been there to share the fun................