Results Extreme American Field Target 02/27/21 (PHX, AZ)

"Elmo says welcome to this month's match report."



We had another match this afternoon, at Phoenix Rod and Gun Club, butted up to South Mountain on the south side of Phoenix. 

Weather was awesome. Car said it was 72 degrees so it was short-sleeve weather for sure, but check out this screen grab from NOAA.



All the shooting was done during the time frame represented by the red box. I mostly wanted to include this to show the shiftyness (or pooptyness?) of the directional changes that we needed to account for today. I think the prevailing wind was mostly from the southwest, which would be coming from behind the right shoulder (4:30ish) of a shooter in the ready position (most targets face generally west so shooter facing east when pulling the trigger). But, it WAS changing around enough to need to be taken into account on nearly every shot. Also, good thing we were done by 2:51, cuz those 5-8mphs that we saw during the match were tough, that 15mph woulda been brutal. 

I posted a prelim idea of the difficulty rating we'd see earlier this week (discussion here: https://www.airgunnation.com/topic/extreme-ft-phoenix-az-saturday-27-feb-2021/?referrer=1). Had the target setters stuck with that, we would have had the most difficult match yet, but they took pity on us and eased it up a bit. They just bumped up the reducer size on a handful of the targets. So, instead of an overall Extreme Troyer rating of 43.36, we actually ended up with an overall rating of 40.221, which is just a hair tougher than the Dec and Jan matches. 



The target setters were also pretty clever (at least they thought they were) by having a "Noah's Ark" theme, with each lane having animals "two by two." The themed lanes were a fun little detail. 

Here is "Deer Me!" (and that's how I felt on this lane too, it was my last lane and I was at 21/40 before those last four shots, and I was still at 21/40 after those four shots, BIG FAT goose egg for me here).



If you look hard "Dam Beavers" is also visible in the above pic, on the right side of the frame.

Next pic is the two bears on the offhand lane.



Scoreboard and equipment list:



Sandy was on fire today. Her and Kent were tied with high score but Sandy hit an incredible 17 targets in a row (that's what we've been using for tie breakers)! Amazing shooting. Congrats Sandy!!! Here she is with Lauren. 

 

Hit Ratios



Lots of misses on the off-hand lane. I'm thinking that is a good place to get a couple extra points on the competition, now, just need to find some time to practice offhand. As an FYI, the top 6 shooters were collectively 1/12 on the far offhand shots, with Steve M being the only top 6 shooter to knock down a far offhand shot. Looking at ALL competitors, out of 30 shots (15 shooters, 2 shots per shooter) taken at the far offhand, the hit ratio was 5/30. The hit ratio was 8/30 for all competitors for the near offhand. 13/60 combined makes a 21.66% knockdown rate on offhand shots. That is really pretty pitiful.

The equipment side of this whole thing is always fun. I've gotta poke some fun at Mike S here. He bought a Wolverine and had it gone through by THE Daystate GURU. I think AOA's techs may have even done some work on it before The Master worked on it. Anyway, Mike shot it a month or two and decided to upgrade to a Red Wolf. Mike offered the Wolverine up for sale to Kent and Kent just couldn't say no. And today Kent was tied for high score and only wasn't the winner cuz he didn't hit as many in a row as Sandy.....and guess what gun Kent was using.......that hand-me-down Wolverine!!! ha ha. Some old saying about and it being the Indian and not the arrow, lol. The gun has to be up to snuff for sure, but a big part of it is the guy yanking that trigger. (feel like I can tease Mike here without offending because he so often get's perfect scores in sub 20fpe field target, no problem with the Indian, just fun to rib him a bit). On that same equipment vein, we had some new guns show up this month, a Delta Wolf and a Thomas HPX. Neither were tip top of the scoreboard but there's always a get-to-know-it period with a new gun. Just can't put a lot of weight on a first showing since the owners are still getting familiar with their new guns. So much of this competition goes back to familiarity with one's gun/pellet/scope/wind drift/etc. I won't be the least bit surprised when/if these new high-end, high-performance rifles are top of the scoreboard in the near future. 

Prize money was again donated by Robert Buchanan of Airguns of Arizona. Thank you! Always fun to compete for money, and always fun to have you at the matches to talk airguns. 

There was also a side match-a modified form of know your limits at 130 yards. 10inch, 5 inch and 4 inch circles. $5 into the pot to enter, total split up to highest scores. I must have hit the side match early b/c there was only two hits on the 10incher, 5 and 4 were unshot. I got it on steel for my first shot and drilled the 5 incher on my second shot, nearly center. I waffled back and forth about taking a shot on the 4 inch (lose all your points if you miss) but ultimately decided I needed to try it to be in the money. And.....I missed....so, zero points for me. The way it ended up, I'd have gotten some money if I'd have stopped with hitting the first two. High score winner of the KYL side match was Kent G, by hitting all three targets. Impressive. (yep, Kent was using the afore mentioned Wolverine here too)

Thanks to Ben and Mike and Barry and Robert Buchanan and Airguns of Arizona and whoever helped out that I didn't see. I always enjoy these matches immensely and owe it to you guys for making it happen.

Closing this out with the random pics section

Dan L shooting a RAW with awesome figure in the stock. This one was converted from .25 to .22 by Martin, and old metal bottle was upgraded to carbon fiber. Just a cool example of refreshing an classic old solid performer with the latest tech. 



Pre-match meeting



Bobby C doing some last minute dope verification here, before the pellets start flying. And Colorado Chris's back.



Gabe, Ben, and Barry here. 



A real live Delta Wolf, in the flesh.



Barry is such a hard core Daystate Red Wolf Pack member/team shooter that he even coordinates his shoes (he just needs a cute little red hand bag to complete the ensemble-maybe he could keep his pellets in it?). 



Edit: I just couldn't leave it alone, I did a quick search and found this one for you Barry...



AOA, if you're reading this, GET THIS THING HANGING ON A PEG in the showroom. Deluxe pellet pouch. Get Chuck to start cranking some of these out in his high quality leather and they'll be selling like hot cakes. Gotta keep the latex shiny red though, for the whole Red Wolf matching laminate effect. Could even find out where Barry got his shoes and sell the shoes and bag as optional accessories for any Red Wolf sales. Ahhh it's too late at night, I'm slap happy over here.