FT Match Report Arlington Sportsman’s Club 01/28/2023
Howdy and happy 2023 from the Arlington Sportsman’s Club!! We shoot year-round here in Texas and for this first match of 2023, we had 21 competitors join us. It was warmer than our last matches in November and December and got to about 62F by the end of the match.
Scott Cotton and I painted the targets and checked them for proper operation and setup the course on Friday afternoon. I chose a layout that emphasized close targets this month to remind shooters how important it is to be well-rounded in your FT shooting experience. There were a couple of maniacal laughs from the wooded course as Scott placed targets in spots that forced shooters to use all of the shooting box to see the targets. But the worst twist of all this month was the highly elevated target on Lane 8 that I made an offhand lane. There were many comments about that target during the match. Thanks as always to Scott, the assistant to the match director, and to everyone who helps me setup, run, and takedown the course each month. Kudos!! The average Troyer this month was 31.1, SD 7.13, Avg Dist 29.4 yds, and Avg KZ 1.04”.
Shooters came from as far as Tulsa, Oklahoma City, San Antonio, and Houston to shoot with us today. There was a chance of light rain with a north wind, and the temps were in the low-50s as we got started. Our wooded course tends to block some wind directions on certain lanes and then cause the wind to swirl invisibly on other lanes. We had two new shooters this month, Stacy S and Dusty Burkett, and everyone welcomed them to the match. We started at 10:00am after our standard safety meeting, and then spread out on the course “shotgun” style and started shooting. We only had one cold line this month, where a clamp was placed too close to the faceplate of a Rhino target. For match directors, diligence on setup and paying attention to target idiosyncrasies like this are important for a smooth-running match.
Hunter PCP was once again the most numerous and contested class for the day with 14 shooters. 1st place was Rick Cuccio from Tulsa with a 57/60 shooting his FX Dreamline defeating Art Womack also with a 57/60 via a shootoff. Art was shooting his Daystate Redwolf again with a custom aluminum chassis. Thom Davies finished right behind these two in 3rd place yet again with a terrific 56/60 shooting his FX Crown. Great job guys! That makes two shootoffs in 2 months! Dusty Burkett in his first ever FT match, shot a 40/60 besting his dad. I’m sure Bill was proud of Dusty’s performance but perhaps also wondering why he invited his son along and got his butt kicked… Just kidding Bill.
In WFTF PCP, we had three shooters. I finished first with 51/60 shooting my RAW TM1000, while Eric Pianori finished 2nd with a 46/60 shooting his Tau Brno and Scott Cotton finished 3nd with a 38/60 from his Hammerli AR20FT.
We had two springer shooters this month. Bill Burkett finishing 1st with a 33/60 shooting his AA TX200.
You can see all the other scores and the equipment used in the table below. Take a look at the growing content of our shooting score analyses website
http://stuntcode.com/agshoot/ that shows your score on each lane, your hit percentage by lane or near/mid/far targets, how you compare to your class average, your class winner, and the HOA winner. Thanks to Scott for his work on this, you should be able to tease out some areas where you can improve and hopefully finish higher in the standings. A couple of shooters mentioned they had looked at this last month and had specifically practiced ranges where they were weak.
One new change for 2023 is that ASC will be offering an Unlimited FT class that allows any of the configurations or aids from the other classes, as long as the gun shoots less than 20 ft-lbs. I’ll keep you updated on how that class progresses.
Our next match will be on
Saturday February 25. This match will start at 10am.
See you at the next match,
Jeff Cloud
Field Target Match Director
Arlington Sportsman’s Club
