CWSA Hanging Plates & Pin Shoot

Once again it's been a busy weekend, with a CWSA Rimfire Hanging Plates match on Saturday, and a Bowling Pin Shoot on Sunday. The Weather was perfect both days, with scattered clouds in the morning, and clearing off and sunny in the afternoons.

Hanging Plate matches aren't quite the pressure cooker that pin shoots are, as you aren't shooting head to head, but are taking turns shooting at the plates. Although you are required to get six shots off in six seconds, that seems downright leisurely compared to pin shooting or falling plate matches. KeeWee shot perhaps her best score ever in the Optical Sight class, good enough for third place. We all had a good time, and no one really worried too much about scores.

Sunday was the CWSA Bowling Pin Shoot, and those ARE adrenalin laden matches. It's two tables out of three, head to head, and loser is out! No Second chance to redeem yourself. The first round match ups are determined by shooting four tables of pins against the clock. Your slowest time is discarded, and the remaining three are totaled to determine your first round opponent. The fastest against number two, number three against number four, and so forth. No easy first round match ups!

In Centerfire Optical Sight and Centerfire Iron sight I got eliminated in the first round. Things were not looking good, as my qualifying times had been right near the top in every class, but that meant I was matched with someone really fast, usually "Evil Al". The third class up was Revolver, and both Evil Al and Tony (the two fast guys) had both had problems in qualifying, and I ended up with fast time, although it was far slower than they usually shoot. Once again Al knocked me out in the first round, although I was close enough that if he had made any mistakes I might have had a chance. He didn't make any mistakes. Score so far: Three classes, three first round eliminations. Next up was Big Bore Revolver, where everything had to be a .44 or larger. The class also limited you to only six shots per table, so speed was still important, but accuracy was really important, too. Unfortunately we only had two shooters in the class today, Al and I. We decided to shoot 3 out of 5, instead of 2 out of 3, just for the fun of it. Al's .44 Magnum loads were a little light and they weren't getting the pins solidly off the table. My .480 Ruger loads were getting the pins emphatically off the table, and I ended up doing a little better than Al, mostly because of the loads, rather than shooting skills. At least I wasn't "Two and Out" as the trend had been so far!

Next on the schedule was to change over to the bowling pin tops for the two rimfire pistol classes, Rimfire Optic, and Rimfire iron sight. With the relatively small turnout, we only had two shooters in Rimfire Iron sight, Randy N. and I. Randy and I have had some really close matches in the past, and today was no exception. Today was my day, as I got a couple of fortunate rolls and managed to squeak by for a narrow win.

In Rimfire Optic sight qualifying I was clearly having problems hitting anything with my regular long barreled High Standard. I wasn't shooting accurately, and I wasn't shooting fast, either. If you are really accurate, you can get by being a little slow, and if you are really shooting fast, you can tolerate a little inaccuracy, but I couldn't find either speed or accuracy. I ended up matched against Al in the first round, and once again he dusted me off pretty good! I had also entered my S&W 422. For some reason it seemed to be working better than usual! I won my first round match up, and then ended up back up against Al, the same Al who had just blown my doors off when I was shooting my "Fast" gun, but now I was using my "Slow" gun.

One of the things that makes pin shooting so much fun is the unpredictability of the pins. Once they've been shot up a bit, you never know what they are going to do. If you hit them exactly center mass, they usually go off the table, but if you are off just the smallest amount, they might just tip over, or jump sideways and knock over another pin, or go spinning across the table giving you a moving target to chase! Sometimes you will end up with pins tipped over and lying all over the table, one giant mess, often called a "Train Wreck" for obvious reasons.

I figured all I could do was try to shoot as cleanly as I could, try to not beat myself, and if Al had a good run, I was toast! If Al had a bad run, anything could happen. On the first table Al got a trainwreck, and I was able to win the table. To my amazement, the second table went almost the same, and Al got a second crop of pin tops that just wouldn't cooperate. I had managed to eliminate Al with my slow gun, after he had wiped me out solidly when I was shooting the fast gun! That's what makes pin shooting so much fun, you just never know what's going to happen!

Meanwhile, KeeWee had been cruising along with solid shooting, and came up against Rainy. KeeWee and Rainy both shoot just about the same, and one week one will beat the other, and the next week they will trade places. Their matches are usually really close. This was KeeWee's week to shine, as in the semi-final round the two of them met again. KeeWee won the first table. The video below is their second table to decide who moves on to the finals.

This is what club shooting is all about, two evenly matched shooters each giving it their all. KeeWee put this round solidly in the win column.

That put KeeWee and I in the finals.

KeeWee: "Don't forget who does the cooking........"

Mr. C. "Don't forget who does your gunsmithing....."

KeeWee: "Fair enough....."

I shot the best I could shoot, and she shot well too, but I managed to sneak away with the win. We ended up first and second, how cool is that!