I know there are a lot of thank you's to AoA, but again this was a lot of fun getting ready for this day. Thank you for putting this all together!
My first official/unofficial EBR-like event and learned a lot. I finally got out to shoot my official EBR 9.5 Lockdown targets today. Weather Channel: forecast of 1-2 mph or less. This was my 'pick' day for weather. It was 29 degrees when I arrived at the range at 8:30am this morning. I was the only one there, for about 20 minutes. Then two of the .22 LR steel shooters showed up. I said, this is going to be my day. Set up (2) targets at 101 yards. One was my standard practice target, the other was my real EBR target. Went back and forth twice to get a precise read from my range finder. So far so good. I didn't mess anything up yet. Said to myself, the home made wind flags I made yesterday at Lowes were not needed. Nope, I can't feel any wind. This was going to bite me in the A...... later.
Here is a picture of the shooter, his targets and his gun.
This was taken after my session at the house. I had two homemade "four foot iron poles with surveyor's tape." I 'thought' I did not need because of little to no wind. I believe I was wrong and was about to pay for this later in the EBR session. I only show this because it was a big mistake and it cost me. I should have used them even if I thought the wind was minimal.
This is where I had a generous double decker portion of humble pie. I watched Tomcat's video a couple of times. Do you remember when he said, " I shoot from the bottom first to establish zero, then move up to sighters, then move up to bottom horizontal row." I vividly recall him saying something like, " I take a few sighters, have some good results and then move to a real target and bam....flyer." These words were ringing in my ears as I got progressively worse. Worked my way up to next row, then next, and so on. Never had so many flyers on all my previous 100 and 75 EBR sessions which were started by Mike and Bobby C. Wow - what is wrong here? Gun shot well this past Monday, I did sort my MRDs by eye only, did not weigh. Wind is minimal. Very puzzling.
OK, now I think I'm about to redeem myself. Move up to 75 yards. Again, better but not like I had been shooting for several weeks past.
Lessons learned: Use flags even if wind is minimal and honestly, I cannot say why there were so many flyers. I shot two 5-shot groups on splatterburst before I took targets down and they were very tight at the 75 yard target range. Also, I normally shoot on a 100 yard range with a large 20 foot berm behind, but it was under repair and only 98 yards from the bench. So, I went to the
100/200/300/400/540 range with no berm, and set up in an open field. I had a bad feeling about this other range, guess I'm superstitious.
Despite my disappointment, I did enjoy the whole hype period of getting ready to do this. I can only now fully appreciate to some extent, how those EBR shooters at the major EBR events feel with a bunch of top notch shooters to their left and right.
No sour grapes here, I will do better with flags and with a lot more range time.
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As an aside, this was this past Monday. Wish I had brought this to the challenge instead of the above. Tom
