KRRC Fun Steel Match - 05/12/2007

It was WAY WAY too early, for me, a night person to start with, to drag myself out of bed and try to wake up enough to drive North to the Keystone ferry dock to catch the 7:15am ferry to Port Townsend. To make matters worse, now that tourist season is upon us, you have to be there an hour before departure to be sure you can get on the boat.

Fortunately we had everything ready to go the night before, and all we had to do was throw the gear into the van, pour some coffee into me, and hit the road. It was an easy 30 minute crossing to Port Townsend, then an hour's drive to the KRRC Range, crossing the Hood Canal floating bridge on the way.

LouG, who had planned on travelling with us was unable to go, as he'd had an allergic reaction to some new asthma medicine, combined with some hay fever, and wasn't feeling like doing much besides laying low for the day.

We met up with JohnD, the match director, and went through our shooter's meeting, where range safety and match rules were explained. Turn out was small, but the quality of shooters was apparent, with our squad consisting of JohnD, Dave, Jamie, KeeWee, and myself. Garrett and Daniel, two good shooting military guys joined in at the last minute. John, Dave, and I each entered two classes. I shot my High Standard optical sight .22 in Rimfire Open, and the Taurus 9mm. Econo Race Gun in Centerfire Open. KeeWee shot the High Standard 103 Sharp Shooter with a red dot sight on it.

The two military guys, Garrett and Daniel, had a bet going between them for a steak dinner and drinks at an upscale steak house, so they were both shooting their best!

KeeWee shooting stage 1, with Dave timing and John scoring.

The first stage called for four shots to the white plate, followed by one shot to the black stop plate. There were several sub two second runs. We shot each stage five times, and threw out our slowest run.

John turned in some excellent times. That's Dave running the timer.

Stage three was a more traditional falling plate rack, but you only had to shoot five plates, and rimfire did not have to knock them over.

Shooting to keep from having to buy his buddy a steak dinner!

The next stage was the fastest stage of the day, and possibly the most fun, too! Five shots as fast as you could shoot, into the single plate. Everyone really enjoyed this one!

Jamie seeing just how fast he can pull the trigger!

The next stage was perhaps the hardest of the stages, particularly considering the previous stage was pretty close to "Spray and Pray". Now the targets were MUCH smaller, and laid out so there didn't seem to be a right sequence to shoot them!

Dave blazing away, with John running the timer, and the eventual steak dinner winner watching.

The next stage was a product of John's "evil" mind, with every plate at a slightly different height, and different spacing between each. Not shooting over the top of the last plate was a challenge, to say the least!!

It's a LOT harder than it looks, once you try and hurry it!

The sixth and final stage arrived far to soon, as we were all having a grand time blasting away with great enthusiasm! This time we had five poppers, equally spaced, so you could get a rhythm going and just roll across them quickly. This was a little like shooting bowling pins, and KeeWee rose to the occasion, shooting some very good times.

Dave wraps it up, with Jaimie scoring, and John running the timer.

It seemed like the match went by quickly, but now it was time to give John a hand putting the targets away. The KRRC club has a John Deere flat bed 6x4 rig, and that makes the job ten times easier.

After the match we joined John at a local pub for a cool one and some after-match story telling. Since it was Saturday afternoon and we had a ferry to catch, we didn't have as long as we would have liked to just sit and visit. We climed back into the van for the drive back North up the Kitsap peninsula, across the floating bridge, then North again to Port Townsend and the ferry. I took a short nap waiting for the boat to arrive, then back across Puget Sound to Whidbey Island, and a short drive home.

It had been a long day, but we had a ball!