Kitsap Fun Steel Match - 03/08/2008

The shooting season is now well underway (Yeah, Joe, I KNOW you guys in Idaho shoot steel all Winter in the snow) and this past weekend was a "two-fer". Saturday I was off to Kitsap Rifle & Revolver Club for their monthly fun steel match. Thanks to John, the match director, it was both well run and challenging.

Stage One - The wide angle lens makes it look shorter than it actually was. The right-most target is just barely visible over the shooter's right shoulder.

The basic format was very similar to Steel Challenge rules. We had 25 entries, so we split up into two squads of eight shooters, and one squad of nine. Each shooter would shoot each stage five times against the clock. The worst time was discarded, and the four best times totaled for the shooter's score for that stage. After everyone had shot the stage, the squad of shooters moved to the next stage.

Stage one was a very fast stage, and a good one to get warmed up on. Stage two was a 6" falling plate rack where you had to knock down five plates against the clock. Stage Three was an 18" 24" single plate at ten yards (I think). This stage was how fast can you shoot the plate five times. This stage has always been everyone's favorite. One match last Fall John left the "Drag Race" stage out and there was almost a lynching! Fortunately he promised to bring it back for the next match. I have to admit, it's one of my favorites, too, but you'd be surprised how hard it is to miss the plate when you are shooting as fast as you can go.

We had a total of six stages, so everyone got in a lot of shooting. We had two new shooters visiting from the Gig Harbor club. They both shot very well, but Rob was something to watch. He was having a good day and he was making it look easy, even though he was shooting a .45 1911 with iron sights. Optic sight rimfire shooters are always the fastest, but Rob managed to turn in the second best score of the day, beating out all but one of the open rimfire shooters. At Kitsap the rules dictate that the overall match winner always goes to an iron sight shooter, and Rob ran away and hid score-wise, to take the match overall winner spot. I think he was almost a full time zone ahead of most of us!

We all had a grand time, dodged the rain almost entirely except for a little bit of drizzle, and can't wait to get back for next month's fun steel shoot.

On Saturday, March 29th. Central Whidbey is putting on a Bowling Pin Shoot and I understand John and his wife will be coming over for the shoot. Maybe Rob and his buddy (Dan? - Boy am I terrible at remembering names!) will come over and give us all a lesson on iron sight centerfire pin shooting.

Hope they can make it, and if YOU have been thinking about giving pin shooting a try, why don't you come over to CWSA and give it a try too. (Just don't bring any full metal jacket bullets because of bounce-back. Plated bullets, hollow points, and lead bullets are all OK.)