Final Ride off Viale Range, Camp Perry, Ohio.

  Riding out of Viale on the Shooter Shuttle on Sunday, August 2 after the Springfield Armory M1A Match at Camp Perry.  Some folks are wearing their red M1A Match shirts.  Lots of rolling carts and shooters.

  First video.  It's an uncut eight minute shuttle ride to the parking lot.

Texas Junior Team at Camp Perry

  Lined them up and shot them after the Whistler Boy Match.  Stan Jaroz and the Texas State Rifle Association National Match Junior Team.  

Real Manly Food at Rock River

   (Or: Goodbye and thanks for all the fish!)

  Rock River on Commercial Row had hot dogs all week.  Springfield Armory had Tea, Gatorade and popcorn.  

  I haven't counted my pens though I was discombobulated during the LEG match when a guy on the firing point pulled out  CMP blue pen and it didn't WORK.  He tried making those little circles you make when a pen dies in the corner of the scorecard.  No luck.  He tossed it back in his cart with a disgusted grunt and started searching for another.

  "Pen from last year?" I offered, hopefully.

  "Dunno", he said.  "I've swiped so many of them over the years that they are the only pens I own."

Cat on Commercial Row, Camp Perry.

 Home.  What a word!  After ten days of being gone, seven of them watching the wind with a good rifle across my knees I forgot I had another life.  A business.  A daughter.  A house.  A cat.  The Redhead.  Neighbors.  

  Certainly forgot about Texas heat.

  Sorting and stacking.  Post cascade on the way in the next week.  Lots of video to edit. 

Blood and violence at the National Matches: Assault Rifles!!!!!

A week among several thousand people with assault rifles, copious ammunition, knives, et, et. Nobody controlling them except their own culture, the gun-nuttiest of the NRA-assault rifle, camo-clad gun nuts. The people liberals HATE because they are so, you know, VIOLENT. Every police chief and mayor of any city of size would destroy these dangerous tools and lock up the owners without batting an eye. The streets would be SAFE, you know? If we could only get these guns under control.
Kids with guns! Kids from California with M1As, never mind the AR15s. Or theP17 one was shooting, or the old Springfield 03, Garands, et, et, et.
FREAK out, If Obama and Pelosi saw this.  Major.
So, I probably saw lots of shootouts, accidental injuries, fatalities, confrontations with civil authority, dead kids, et, et during this week among these astoundingly armed people, correct?
Blood, blood, blood! They MUST be hiding the bodies. It's a perfect conspiracy because the worst thing I saw was Hanna-the-Californian junior's unsunblocked sunburned ears.

Update:  And they were buying MORE guns, ammo, reloading supplies, accessories, T-shirts celebrating guns.  It was just enough to make Pelosi puke!

  And they all seemed so damn happy about it.

Unarmed Civilians

When you come out from a week at the National Matches you're back in the general population at the first gas stop. People, very casually dressed, with many tattoos, (like circus performers), are walking around with NO GUNS! Where are these folks rifles? Where's their gear? What kind of sunblock have they been using that leaves them so pale? We've seen the fat man, the bearded lady, the midget on a bicycle, and the amazing pierced girl so far.
I guess I prefer gun people, above all other cultures.

Update:  Having a little Culture shock back home in Texas.  Very strange to not take a rifle and gear everywhere I go.

Heat Waves

When you stand on Viale Range on the 300 yard line and look in all four directions, the Earth looks flat. Sunday 500 or so flat-earthers gathered with their M14s and M1As to shoot the Springfield Armory match. Last year it was raining sideways but Sunday the sun was up, the sky was blue and the wind was coming off the lake at about a half minute from 2:00. I got the 4th relay so we went into the pits. Good thing, because before 9:00 there isn't any sun on the target face and I shoot better when the bulls-eye is lit. My relay partner was a guy named Scott Kempler, an engineer for Bosh from Michigan. Nice guy, very competant, he and his dad were sharing a rifle and shooting the match. We had a couple of younger folsk, Hanna somebody, a blond juinor who hadn't sunblocked her ears and some round-headed kid who was like a lot of juniors: solid.
I shot a 194X7 prone slow fire, which doesn't seem like much except that this match is fired on the 500 yard F-class (scoped rifle) target. The X-ring is about as big as your grandfathers pocket watch and the ten ring about as wide as a childs hand. I shot the hands off the watch and the rings off the fingers and had some close nines. Shooting Dick Curry's MTA M1A. It's like him: old and wrinkled and greasy, but if I looked at the front sight against the sky over the lake and over the target and then breathed it down, it was in there. Half a minute of wind, on for one shot and off for the next. Sitting rapid I bounced around and shot an 88X1. Prone rapid I had to use some ammo I bought, (from Curry, incidentally) and the case necks broke off on three of the ten rounds. I saved four, so the match was over as far as score but I shot an OK offhand. That rifle lines up nice and you just hold it and wait on the trigger as you press it straight back. Really a joy to shoot. The ammo was some vintage 872 from some of the first lots made. The two boxes I brought shot perfectly. Note to self: don't be a nut.  Bring enough ammo for a small siege.
Several of us who bought ammo from Curry are going to have some REAL BARGAINS at a furture guns show....warning! Gregg foster had some of the same ammo doing the same thing down the line.
Fun though. Made a nice video of the shooters standing at attention during the Star Spangled Banner from the walk-over on Viale Pit wall, and then the last trolley ride out. Blackfork Channel on Youtube this week.
Posting this from Central City, Kentucy where we ended up last night. There's a heat advisory at home and it feels noticably warmer. Nobody stole any of the cases of M2 Ball in the open back of Ricks truck. That would have been a redneck Christmas here in the hills. Most of the country is as safe as your living room. I didn't bother to bring a pistol on this trip and we haven't heard a single discouraging word.

M1As in the Morning

I laughed out loud when I saw the poster for the Springfield Armory M1A Match at their store on Commercial Row early this week. Last year it rained- rained like-you-were-growing-corn or getting-readyto-pair-up-animals together rain- the whole match last year. The photo on the poster is of the firing line and it looks green and soggy. Of COURSE it's a bad photo. Looked like it was shot through an algea filter. Terrible day, terrible photo.
I was shooting legendary curmudgeon TSRA Coach Dick Curry's M1A for the match. The match is fired from 300 yards and I asked Dick what the elevation was on his rifle for 300. He thought for a while and then brightened and said: "Up 24." On the first shot I warned my scorer that I had an unzeroed rifle and I wanted him to watch the bullet trace in case I wasn't on paper. I rolled into position and broke a good shot. Nothing. The scorer offered that it looked over the target "about ten feet." I shot another while he watched and he said when he saw it last, it was going into low Earth orbit over the polar regions. I started cranking down and zeroed the rifle at Up 3, not 24. I probably sunk a small pleasure craft in the Canadian Maritime Provinces with my first three sighting shots.

I was soaked, rain was slanting down and I was very happy to be shooting someone else's rifle.

I've noticed all week how HAPPY everyone is. Armed, sunburned, out on the range for eight hours a day....and damn glad to be there. Nice to be around happy people doing something they love.

Jet Skis in the Impact Area

When you shoot at the Nationals your bullets go through the target faces and out into a huge impact area in Lake Erie. It's marked in person and on charts and maps. We had four separate cease fires when folks fished, sailed or jet skiied into the impact area today. Hundreds of people, maybe a thousand, waiting on.....one idiot in a speedo and a pair of flip-flops. Sometimes cease fires can be called for eagles in the impact area or behind the targets. Range Control ignores Canadian Geese who fly and walk in to graze the rifle ranges. There was a flock of 40 or more that swaggered in to eat as we finished up Vintage Rifle. Last year one turned up dead, bill down in a low wet spot after squadded practice. His butt blew in the wind all week that year and nobody would wade out to give him a Christian burial.
Probably a heart attack.

Coffee-free National Matches.

Hardly a cup of coffee all week. Seriously. I usually drink Brady's with a refill every morning of the world. No difference or effect. No withdrawals. Just no coffee.
Clean living, up early and to bed early, sunshine, lots of walking and outdoor activity, playing nicely with others. This is as good as kindergarten.
Shaved before I came due to a industrial mistake: (Wrong head on the trimmer) Helped with a cheek weld on the AR but the Redhead decreed that I needed to return to Texas with regrowth.
It's working.
They give us a T-shirt for every event so I have Springfield, Garand, Vintage and M1A Shirts stuffed here and there. New wardrobe.
Sunblock. Green grass. Fresh air. New clothes. No coffee.

Vintage Day On Rodreigez

We started off with Garands on Viale Range. Up dang early, as usual and out the door by six. I've seen every sunrise at Camp Perry for the last week. This morning their was a cloud of gulls wheeling over the beach. Last nights storm might have brought them together. Seems as likely to scatter them buy Justin Utley and I rolled out on the range under a sky solid with gulls from horizon to horizon. I wonder how they recognize each other? If you are a gull and have a special friend, I think you might need a secret handshake.
Yesterday I saw a tracer round out of Justins issued ammo burn through the nine ring. This years vintage Greek HXP 30-06 has few friends. I shot Rick Crawfords Garand and had the same problems: Shots not on-call, poor groups. I made the Gold Medal round just through dumb luck. Got Gold medal and T-shirt and headed for the trolley.
Switched from Garand to Vintage and Viale to Rodreigez at mid-day for the next match. I was sweating getting there but arrived very early. Gregg Foster and I were shooting my K31 and I had to get it out of the trailer, grab the ammo and get over to the next range. I did it, but no Gregg, so I went to the pits first to pull the target for the other pair on my firing point. Nice guys, one Marine named Burns was shooting a Schmidt Rubin 1911. Pretty well. He shot up the X-ring at prone slow fire with a 99X5. When I came out Gregg was there and we had a chance to shoot. I had two mags so the rapids were pretty easy. I had to hold off to take care of the windage as the wind was coming in off the lake. It dropped as I shot through the course of fire.
Gold in the Vintage. Gregg beat me by four points with my own rifle
Wouldn't the Swiss guy who was issued this rifle back in 1936 be shocked that it was being shot in Ohio, by Texans, at the National Matches for Gold Medals.
The medals they give you are little pot-medal things on a ribbon. They are OK, but mass produced and cheap. The only place you can wear them is from the range to the truck as you roll your cart off the range and they kind of clank together as you walk along.
So we did.

A Springfield Day

We weren't squadded until the third relay for Infantry Trophy this morning- going off at about 8:30, so we walked up to the Big Bopper, an industrial grade breakfast dive at the end of the fish camp we are staying in. I had plain pancakes, a rare cup of coffee and then we walked back counting rabbits. Lotta rabbits around this place. Seems like they would take a hammering from all the big birds floating around but maybe the eagles and ospreys are fish specialists.
Infantry Trophy team shot very well. I had the swing on the left end, which meant I was shooting two targets. Six men, 384 rounds, eight targets, 50 seconds shooting time, 600 yards away. Then you advance on line, dressed to a flag in the middle to the 500 yard line and do it again, then the 300, then the 200 if you have any ammo left.
One guy didn't have a zero that worked, so he missed his target at 600. That ends the whole thing though you have to go ahead and shoot your ammo. One mistake and we turn to each other and start asking "where do you want to eat?"
Only some of us weren't eating. We got off the Infantry Trophy range and switched AR15s for 1903 Springfield bolt action 30-06s and headed over to the Springfield Match on Viale. Last year I was 12, Rick Crawford was second. We shot well. Probably 1300 folks shooting the match. This year: not so much. We got silver medals and an ugly T-shirt for participating. 273. My Springfield has an awful, creepy, long trigger. I was building a odd sight picture- six oclock low with lots of white and favoring to nine oclock. Hard to hold it together while I worked through the lousy second stage of the trigger. Shot a 97X3 prone. Worse in the rapid. Terrible standing. All at 200. Silver medal.
I watched a round of tracer burn through the nine ring while Justin was shooting prone. He's a high master classified shooter, and his shots were all over the target face. Bad ammo. With an occassional tracer thrown in. It was brilliant copper orange as it lit up and disappeared through the target into the lake.