It’s the most fun you will have with your clothes on!
Bro. You're as ready as you can be. Wish I was there. Don't shoot your eye out!
That's awesome man! keep us posted on the fun you have.
TODD
That stock came out great!
Please let us know what you learned from your first match. I've never been to one and would love to know what I should be aware of ahead.
Well….I had a blast, I am hooked! Met great people and the guys from Palmyra Sportsman Association were more than happy to put this event on. Mother’s Day definitely had an impact on the turn out but that was ok with me and my first timer nerves. It was a very relaxed atmosphere from the get go. More about having fun than anything else. I was paired up with Glenn, couldn’t have asked for a better guy! I heard someone tell him as we left for the first lane, that you might want to take a kneeling pad. Didn’t think anything of it and neither did Glenn. Guess what? First lane is shooting from the kneeling position, and the flags are set so your kneeling on the stones not the nice soft grass. Luckily I had brought a roll of shop towels, in case of rain and we both shot in the kneeling position comfortably. The rest of that five lane loop was off a bucket. There were shots in this loop though that were right in my zero range, no wind, no nothing and I just flat out missed. It was at that point I realized that you can’t just go from shooting off a bench or leaning off of trees, walls or whatever to doing this without practice. So there’s two things I learned right there.
Number three would be, in that same loop, keep in mind that most if not all of there targets were freshly painted. I took a shot at 45 yards and what looked like a clear hit to me, inside the kill zone, the target didn’t go down. I mean to me it looked like an obvious pellet hit. So there was someone there working the event who went down to investigate. Because of the fresh paint you could see that the pellet Ricocheted and made what looked like a hit, but wasn’t enough to knock over the target. = 0. There was a guy there with lots of experience that later said that if just a 1/4 of the pellet hits outside the KZ it’s enough to slow the pellet down enough not to knock over the target. So I learned that. I also learned that one 55 yd shot can make up for a whole lot of misses! Another lessen learned was that no one makes you shoot from a standing position, no support when your at home. Practice! It could cost you 4 points or 8 points if there two lanes with this in there event like this one. Also, not all positions from the stool or bucket are gonna be just a straight shot. The last lane of the day was an uphill lane and my stool felt like it was gonna fall back the whole time I’m fixing to shoot. Ultimately I missed all 4 shots because I couldn’t get comfortable. When I was done shooting I looked and about five feet back it was more level and why didn’t I just shoot from back there? When we got back to the start and handed our scorecards in I asked about that scenario. I was told that your barrel should actually be past the two posted flags but not past your trigger guard. Ultimately you wouldn’t want to leave enough room for someone to walk in front of you. Makes complete sense to me. What I can’t believe is that all this getting ready that I did to do my very first FT event, build a stock, baby buggy, carry caddy, barrel kit, scope wheel, dope card and so on, maybe I should have taken some time and read the rules!
Like I said before, I am hooked! All this time I spent shooting from my bench at home when I could have been doing this! Walking through the woods shooting my pellet gun at squirrel 🐿, rabbit
chicken
turkey
rat
and so on, with cool people! I hope this explains the kind of experience I had today. Here are some pics.
