World Championship Steel Challenge - Part Two

Before we conked out for the night Wednesday night we picked up a few breakfast rolls and so forth at a nearby Food Mart so we'd have something to eat before heading out to the range. We also picked up some bottled water and Gatorade. It was going to be hot! Good thing we did, as it was definitely hot and dusty.

After a good night's sleep and some breakfast rolls, we loaded our gear into PT-Banana and headed for the range. According to our shooting schedule I was to report to Stage F at 8:30 for the first stage "Five To Go". We wandered around a bit, and then finally found the stage and I put my gear on the table as the other shooters in my squad arrived. We were going to have nine shooters in our group.

Rather spectacular scenery as a backdrop for the individual stages. I wonder how many cowboy Western movies were filmed in this valley?

My squad. From left to right, me, Paul, Doug, Mike, Eric, Hawk, Linda, Chase, and Rich. A lot of really good shooters in this bunch!

Last minute preparations prior to starting the shooting.

Thank goodness each stage had a tent to protect us from the sun!

Five To Go. Shoot each of these four plates once, in any order, then shoot the stop plate, (not shown in this picture) on the right. What could be difficult about that?

Doug Shooting Five To Go.

We had each been given eight two part score sheets, one for each stage. I turned in my score sheet to the scorer, and the shooting order was set. We had a short rule review by the Range Officer (R.O.) for the stage, and then he called the first shooter to the line.

Five To Go isn't the easiest, and it isn't the hardest, so it made for a good first stage to try and get into the swing of the match. I tried to shoot it fairly conservatively and try to not make any major blunders. My score was OK, but nothing to write home about. I missed one plate that I thought I had hit, then shot the stop plate, incurring a 3 second penalty. Fortunately you shoot the stage five times and one score gets thrown out, so the penalty was discarded.

After you finished shooting you initialed your score sheet and they kept one copy and gave you a copy. Once everyone had shot, it was time to head out to the next stage "Speed Option". Speed Option was a little bit harder, but still one of the stages I should be able to shoot without too much trouble if I stuck to what I could do and didn't try to shoot faster that I can shoot.


Speed Option. Three round plates on the right, one round plate on the left, and the rectangular stop plate all the way back.

I could see that I was having a little trouble with timing, as you shoot the plates while the gun is in motion, not stopping to actually take aim at each target. I had three OK runs, one not very good at all, and a run approaching ugly. Fortunately the ugly one got thrown out, but the one poor one stayed in the score book.

Mr. C. shooting Speed Option.

Speed Option had not gone particularly well, although I have shot this stage in the past and done much better. The other shooters in my squad well all shooting great times. I was struggling, and I had to be careful I didn't dig myself a big hole and jump in! The next stage would be interesting, as it's a stage I've never shot before, so just about anything could happen, and I knew that Mr. Murphy and his law were just around the corner........

....... end of Part Two.