KRRC Fun Steel 08/11/2007

It was a REALLY early morning on Saturday to go over to the Kitsap Rifle & Revolver Club's monthly Fun Steel Match. Normally I would catch the 7:15AM ferry from Whidbey Island to Port Townsend, then drive South to the Hood Canal Floating bridge, then South again to Silverdale, and from there it's only a few miles to the KRRC range. This Saturday, however, the 7:15am boat was canceled due to low tides, so KeeWee and I had to take a longer and more expensive route. From the South end of Whidbey Island we took the ferry across to the mainland, docking at Mukilteo. From there we drove South to Edmonds, and caught another ferry across Puget Sound to Kingston, a 30 minute boat ride. From Kingston it was roughly a 40 minute drive to the KRRC range. We made it just in time, but no time to spare!

The usual suspects were there, along with some new faces, too. After the shooter's meeting we broke into two squads, and set out to opposite ends of the steel bays, so those of us in the "Old Slow Guys" group wouldn't slow down the faster shooters. In our group we had KeeWee, Debbie K., Anthon, one fellow who I missed his name, John D., the match director, and I.

The first stage was three small "Poppers" type of targets, the one on the right and on the left were painted white from the circle part up, and black below the circular part. The center popper was black from the circle up, and white below. The course of fire was to double tap each outside popper on the white, then put one shot on the black part of the center popper. It wasn't as easy to shoot as you'd think when you tried to shoot it quickly! I didn't think I had done very well on theis stage, but everyone struggled with this one.

The second stage was a conventional falling plate rack with six plates. The course of fire was to knock over any five in any order. Rimfire only had to hit them, although they usually went down anyway. Even though I shoot falling plates at CWSA, I usually struggle at KRRC and miss a few, requiring a second shot. This time it went a little smoother than in the past.

Stage four was by far and away the most popular! A single 18" by 24" plate was perhaps seven yards in front of you. All you had to do was shoot it five times as fast as you can go. You'd be amazed how easy it was to miss it! KeeWee shot it in 1.86 seconds, and Debbie was just about the same, but I don't know her exact time.

The fifth stage - trickier than it looks!

Stage five was the Steel Challenge Stage "Pendulum". With the last stage being a "Fast as you can pull the trigger" stage, this one was a major change of pace. The inner two 10" plates were really easy to miss, being both smaller and lower than the two outside plates.

Stage six - John stays up late at night thinking up things like this!

The last stage was a masterpiece of design, able to bring a strong man to tears! The left plate wasn't too tough, but the next one was a little farther back, then the next one was smaller and even farther back, then a small one a foot lower so everyone would come across horizontally from the first three and shoot over the top of the fourth plate! If you managed to hit the fourth plate, all you had to do was hit the stop plate, but wait, where is it? It's WAY over on the right. In the picture you can see it over the top of the black barrel. The picture doesn't really show how much you had to swing to get to the stop plate. If you tried to cover the distance too quickly you'd skid past the stop plate before you got a shot off, and if you went too slow, you burned up a LOT of time getting to the plate.

Alas, it seemed that the match ended way to quickly, and it was time to pack everything back into the car and head to the 19th. Hole, a local pub with amazingly good hamburgers and fries, to add up the scores. With a little help from KeeWee, I ate an entire "Three Napkin Burger", 16 ounces of double burger with real cheddar cheese and everything else you could possibly want on a burger. Delicious!!

All too soon we had to hit the road back to Port Townsend to catch the ferry back to Whidbey. In spite of having to do some extra driving, we had a fantastic day with some great folks, got in a ton of shooting, and enjoyed ourselves immensely.

A big "Thanks" is in order to John for setting it up and running it, and to Debbie for adding up the scores.

If you enjoy shooting with a bunch of folks that take safety seriously, but shoot the match for the fun of the shooting, you should try to make it to one of the upcoming KRRC Fun Steel Matches, you can't help but have fun!

Note: If you are curious about the scores and stage times for the KRRC Fun Steel matches, Here's the scores page. The individual stage scores are the total of the fastest four runs out of five.