TSRA Garand, Springfield, Vintage and Carbine Championship.

Garand Match last year. Relays run all day Saturday and Sunday for Garand, Vintage, Springfield and M1 Carbine.


All my guns are working guns, even the collectable carbines. I restocked this one. Hope it shoots better than it did last year. Might put one in a folding stock. Better hand position.
This doe was shot at about 60 yards with Remington soft-point hunting ammo.

Coming up in Terrell at the Terrell Rifle and Pistol Club on the weekend of the 24th-26th. Anyone can come shoot their old rifles in these 30 round matches. (40 rounds for the for the carbine). Five sighters and then away you go, prone, prone rapid and standing. Fund raiser for the TSRA NM Team. Great time.

Match Rifle Sight.

Cannon from the CSS Alabama. Off the bottom of the English Channel.


Cannon being conserved at Texas A&M labs.


Match Rifle.



Got out the metric hex drivers and popped the back sight back into place. Simple. Screwed the sunshade back on the front of the sight and it was looking right down the barrel again. It's been wonky since it fell off the cart in it's hard case between the 500 and 600 yard lines at Camp Swift during the Mid-range Championship.
Gotta clean it now and get ready for this weekend at Panola.

Sputnik

You can't imagine what a big deal this was way back when.

Counting deer at Clarksville.

Basic count tools: Old Bronco and a smart kid.

A Saturday night deer count by four of us, (a record) Fun time but it makes for a verylate night. 2:00am getting back home to Tyler after the count wrapped in a 250 mile drive.
41 deer. Almost none in the dry pastures away from the main creekbottom. 34 in that creekbottom. Pretty rough range conditions this year for horn growth.
41 is about half of our high year totals.
Beautiful stars up in Red River County. The milky Way was clear and bright in the sky and the planets looked very close. When the Moon came up we had distinct shadows laid across the pastures.
Have to do three spotlight surveys to get the data to the state so they will issue Managed Land Permit tags. Two more to go.

Johnson Automatic 1941

Gotta love the internet. You get interested in an obscure rifle and you can read all about it, bid on one on Gunbroker. Interesting rifle. Wonder if someone would trade three Garands for one?
Anyone out there locally that has a Johnson Automatic 41?

Update: Just to be clear- I'm looking to borrow an M1941 Johnson to shoot in the Texas Garand Championship.

First day of the Fall semester.

Kids off to school for the first time. I'll have a full classroom twice of mostly new Junior College students at TJC. It is a lot of responsibility though I am sure I worry about them more than its worth every year.

Update: Reasonable enough looking groups. Just a whiff of public education baking off. Early group is younger and the afternoon bunch full of working folks. They spread out and the ones sitting in the "hot seats" kind of blinked when I started heating up the chairs. They aren't prepared to have me working them like a blue heeler turned loose on a flock of sheep though...they will.

This is a rigorous course that requires engagement. You can't coast through it.

Camp Perry.

Feet on the firing line before the National Team Trophy Match.

If I hadn't shelled out for a Macbook there wouldn't have been any direct posting from Camp Perry. The shops on Commercial Row didn't bring computers this year. (which makes sense, most folks have their own now.) The lousy wifi vastly slowed things down but all my posting I did get up was from my own computer.

Every year the matches change a little. Daunting to think how much they have changed in just ten years. We don't stand for sitting and prone rapid- you start off in position. We don't stay in huts but when you do you can put an air conditioner in the window. Young Range now has pop-ups and is unusable for High Power matches. Viale pits have been badly rebuilt. NRA matches are shrinking and CMP getting more crowded. Garands cost a grand but you can buy all you want. I'm certain the first years I came that we prepped rapid fires on the previous shooters target while he was getting his score.

Never rebuilt the messhall. Sorry I missed it. Good and cheap food. The head cook stood at the door and knocked hats off anyone entering with a cover.

On the other hand I'm certain we are shooting Infantry Trophy on the same lousy targets we shot at 10 years ago.

A little pistol, probably a Smith and Wesson that dad brought back from India after WWII. It was missing for most of my life and found when my paternal grandmother died. .22 cal. Single shot. Dad, who was a kid at the time, filed the trigger down so that its VERY light. Unsafe. I shot it a couple of times but it needs work. Falls open when fired.

Camp Perry Medals.

Hearst Doubles: 13th with Utley. M1A Match: 37th. Gold in 1903 Springfield and Silver in Vintage. Gold in the LEG match with a 484X12. Crossfired in the Garand match and only got a cotton medal, size L.

I would hesitate to estimate what these medals cost me in USD.

Shutting down the Dead Cow Cam.

Young Coyote.


Armadillo cruising for bugs.


Stray dogs dumped at the lake.


Squabble over not much.


Drying out wings.


Juvenile Black Vultures.

Amazing how the pasture and woods grow up and change in just a season. Nothing left but a rack of ribs and parts scattered all over the pasture. Skull is off about 50 yards. Hide out in the weeds. Leg bones here and there. While I was ranging I came across a beaten area where a young deer had died and been eaten. Nothing left but jawbones and scattered ribs. Re-batterized the cam and moved it to a tree covering a soon-to-be scrape. Dead Cow season over and deer season started.
Update: Just too hot to go across the creek. One camera over there was submerged when the dam broke and is dead, the other OK. Sacks of corn gone wievilly. Have to toss it all.

The cheapest item on Commercial Row.

Springfield to the left of me, Winchester to the right.

Wandering the man-haul area of Camp Perry, Commercial Row, I chanced up on a small selection of Winchester Garand front sights. 20 bucks. That's kind of a deal. I think the Winchester front sights with their much wider ears are a better sight than the normal Springfields. Went back a bit later and got the bolt to tighten it down. .86 cents. That's the cheapest thing I bought at Camp Perry. Even the Bunny Bars cost a buck.
Those wide ears make me wonder if there wasn't a gay gun designer at the Winchester works. All for diversity.

Update: To move the Garand rear sight closer to the mechanical zero you just loosen the .86 cent bolt on the front sight and move it over.

Not finding a punchmark anywhere on this sight. It's slightly more than 3/4 inches wide on top.

M1s For Vets.

Clay with his big-ass hat on the line at Panola.

M1 For Vets was at Camp Perry for the second year. We could see their yellow T-shirts all up and down the line during the CMP games weekend. Last year during the awards the audiance gave them a raucous standing ovation when they rolled up front and refused to sit down or stop clapping, whistling and yelling.
My teammate Clay Hefner watched a guy struggle to shoot a Garand out of a wheelchair during one of the events and just GAVE the guy his National Match AR, case, mags, ammo. Whole deal.
Clay makes me dang proud to be a Texan.