Results 2022 N50 Nationals Finals, Raton NM

[Loufish]

N50 Nationals are completed. We started on Friday with practice but got chased off for the thunder & lightning. Saturday was spectacular and Sunday was even better. Windy on both days - for pellet most of us held 1/8" outside of the 6 ring!
Me? The bigger they are the harder they fall... Forgot to hang my card. Ha!!

Combined results. Sum of all 3 classes for 18 target cards. Pellet Overall for those that signed up for shooting pellet rifle in all three classes.

Combined Winners. Mike Niksch, Keith Longerot, John Parrish

All Class Winners

Pellet Class. Sum of Saturday & Sunday, for 6 cards total. After those 6 cards - a 1 point separation for the top 2!
12 points separate the top 5. That's ~2-1/2 points per card!

Sportsman Class combines factory air rifle slug and factory 22RF Total of 6 cards. 2 points separate best RF and Pellet rifle. Unfortunately, no factory slug rifle showed up. Pearl came back to beat us again. Keith has been on the N50 leader board for a good while. And Irwin is legendary. Mike is too sexy for his gun and I'm honored getting beat by any of them.

Pro Class combines custom Slug Air Rifle and Unlimited 22RF. 6 cards. 2 Thomas' surrounded by 2500Xs. Two pellet rifles in the top 8 shot up in class.

This is the heart of N50. Joe Friedrich & Ardey Vad doing the back breaking heavy lifting.

My ol' #33

Joe, Gabe and new friends setting up the 50 yard line. Brandon & Steve.

 

[thomasair]

I don’t see how you could miss with a setup like that….especially at only 50y.

 

[XSUltimate]

Great fun had by one and all!!! It sure was fun rubbing elbows with all of these top notch shooters! Some pretty amazing talent behind those triggers. All of them are truly good human beings who enjoy the sport and enjoy good healthy competition. (and a good healthy ribbing with each other to boot) Here are a couple spectators that shared the range with us and they were eager to see just what the N50 is all about! Great write up Lou as usual! A huge Thanks to Mike, Joe, Ardy and Lou for all the work they did making this a great time for all of us shooters! Got to meet some of the AGN members that share this forum with us which was icing on the cake.
Thx
Dan

 

[rhbrink]

Great write up and I enjoyed the pictures and the score board maybe next year!

 

[Mooner625]

Glad to see the results and hope to be at the next one. I am trying to get a lot of practice and gathering better equipment. See then.

 

[tommyb]

Awfully good shooting here!

I realize that a RF won both Sportsman and Pro class, but there is enough data here in the summary results that demonstrate how close the pellet/slug guns compare in scoring to Rimfires at 50 yards. In looking at both Sportsman and Pro class results, the air rifles do very well. A lot of air rifles in the top 10-12 finishes.

I am surprised a little by the results, but I am guessing those air guns were shooting close to 40g slugs in both classes. Very high scoring and with wind! Amazing. .

A case could be made that high end air rifles and RFs are pretty equal in scoring accuracy at 50 yards, regardless of wind conditions. In my own case, my RAW .22 HP or Safari .22HP can’t score as high on average vs. my Rimfires shooting N50 cards. I’m probably not alone.

Very interesting results.

Tom

 

[thomasair]

Tommy….there were zero air guns shooting slugs in the sportsman class. All pellets.

The Thomas guns were shooting 38ish grain slugs in pro in the low 800fps range.

Mike

 

[tommyb]

Yeah, I just re-read the narrative on Sportsman’s class. Wow - zero slugs, only pellets. This makes this comparison ( I.e., RF vs. Airgun) even more amazing in my mind. Pellets vs. 40 G RF ammo and many AGs doing very well. Same for Pro Class, AGs very competitive.

The gap is narrowing between RF and air rifles for N50, and this is proof enough for me.

 

[Centercut]

Yes, I think for Benchrest that gap has narrowed considerably. For other disciplines like NRL-22, we’ve got a ways to go, but we’re moving in the right direction. When we start seeing air rifles finish in the top ten at big NRL-22 matches we’ll know we’ve arrived.

 

[igolfat8]

Do y’all have any more pics of the line? I’d love to see the set ups used by the competitors like what front and rear rest variations and how many stock and color variations were outfitted on those fabulous shooting Thomas rifles.

 

[thomasair]

I took maybe one picture the whole time I was there. I think Lou has some more pictures…but not sure. Sorry

Mike

 

[thomasair]

Most of the rests were 2 piece setups with rear bag. There were maybe 7 or 8 guys using one piece rests. I use a Randolph 1 piece. Lou also used a Randolph 1 piece. I saw a few others as well.

I think there was most every color gun that I’ve ever made there except green. Red, blue, black, purple, gold.

Mike

 

[Loufish]

As requested. Sorry we didn't get everyone. Unless someone else got some more.

 

[Loufish]

That's 10yo Killian Schmahl at his 1st tournament. He's a good kid.

 

[igolfat8]

You-da-man Lou! Thanks for a glimpse of the fun.

 

[thomasair]

There were a couple shooters with Kestrals out on the range sending data back to their bench. They reported average wind speed for Saturday to be 8mph gusting to 15. Sunday was 7 mph also gusting to 15. That made for some big holdoffs well outside the rings in pellet. I was into the neighboring scoring box a few times.

Mike

 

[tommyb]

These are the types of scores I would expect to see with very light wind. Blows my mind, how high the scoring was in these winds.

I have a difficult time with 2-5 mph winds with pellets at 50Y. Can’t imagine how I would do with 8-15 mph. That is a another level of wind reading skill. If I hold on the 6 or 7 ring, that feels like a lot.

Would definitely require some hand holding (I.e., teaching ) to learn these types of winds.

 

[rrann]

A big thumbs up for our Oklahoma shooters, a good representation. John, Michael, Larry and the Sportsman Winner Pearl.!!
Thank you Mike Niksch for putting on this N50 Match. Cant wait for next year!
Randy

 

[thomasair]

The target on Pearls back got way bigger!
Lou and Joe may be more important than me when it comes to the survival of N50! Could not do it without them.

 

[thomasair]

Here is a pic of the nightly get together with our good friend Don Julio.