25 June, Lincolnton match:

Big news is that Kdiver58 shot his first Big Bore match! Not with a S&W, instead, he used a custom XP100 in .25BR that he got from fellow IHMSA shooter and good guy, Dave Chaney. Hadn't even paid for it yet! (Has since been sorted with his daughters. Unfortunately, Dave passed away unexpectedly.)

Lots of firsts for Kdiver. First 200m event, first time freestyle, etc.
And still managed a 30 out of 40! That's with NINE Turkeys.



50m chicken going down.


Only 150m Turkey to escape:


He also made some future collector cry by shooting his NIB S&W 586 with the integral scope cuts on the barrel. Not BB, debut was on the Field Pistol range.

Also hot were the temperatures! Pushing 100 degrees.

My own efforts were rather more modestly rewarded. BB Revolver (S&W 29-3) score the same: 25, but US with the 629 was a couple better than the previous month. Good enough to make AA class.

Ads interfering with typing! Enough for now!

Sounds a good time was had by all. I shot steel at the Rio Salado sportsman club in Mesa,Az for years back in the 80's. Good memories of the matches,shooters and facility there.

I'm glad to see kdiver's doing good with Dave's gun. It went to a good new owner.

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Don't You Ever Wash That Thing

I enjoyed IHMSA years ago when it first started. Never got into bolt pistols , simply shot a M-29. Moved to MT and I'm unaware of any ranges here that currently shoot it. Thankfully my local Range DOES shoot bullseye, Steel challenge and 3 gun. Wish we had silhouettes though. It was fun.

Rumor IS---Tinkers can't do 200 meters...Just a bit ''TOOO FARRRR''

Beware! well;l crud. siterut about unusable! ads! Arrgh!

Testing, testing. New Bronze member. No ads! Usable! Yee friggin' ha!

Post #6: about 8 minutes for that wee bit of gibberish. (What my typing looks like without editing.!)

Post #7: about 30 seconds. I don't know how some few adverts can about take over a computer, maybe because I depend on wifi? Would have bailed off this site permanently if it weren't for friends here!

At any rate, sw282, beware getting too many folk sucked into the fun of smacking big steel! I hates crowds. And having to stand in line.

There's something about having to wait for those rams to fall using our slow .44 loads that's just pure pleasure.

Mind you, I did find just the wrong spot to hit a Ram. Kdiver58 watched as the bullet sailed into one, hitting it a little below centerline, just a skosh toward the front end. Even I saw the black puff of vaporized metal and waited for the slow topple. Nope! Just pushed it straight back a little but not enough to carry it off the rail. Velly intellisting!
And somewhat disappointing. Wee physics lesson. Nest ram was hit even lower and it went down fine.

Happily, I finished off the day shooting by taking all of the final five Rams with the 29-3 10 5/8" ("#2" as it's not the one set up for Field Pistol).

Then we went and broke in Kdiver's 586 over on the Field Pistol range.

He has commented that he enjoyed shooting Big Bore the most of all his IHMSA efforts to date. I understand that sentiment as, although the targets are twice as far or more away, they LOOK bigger than their 1/2 size brethren. And you don't have to stand unsupported to throw lead at them!

But I've been shooting Field Pistol so long, it's hard to make the transition. Mostly as there's goals yet to meet in FP and progress seems to be possible still with our cantankerous wheelguns.

Just watch that creedmore position, that you don't crawl back on the gun positioning. I had a pair of jeans leg "shredded" by muzzle blast. A 7 TCU does have muzzle blast, and a 10" barrel just wasn't long enough.

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H Richard
SWCA1967 SWHF244

Shot Creedmore in two classes last weekend (R and UAS BB) wearing shorts. But did use a blast shield with the revolver! (A piece of shower stall liner with Velcro strips.) Sadly, I shot better with the scoped 629 revolver standing than I did with the stock 29 in freestyle. Thought it was pretty well dialed in but it was trending high at 50m and needed some windage dialed in at 150m and 200m. Kdiver58 wasn't able to make the match for very good reasons, and was sorely missed as spotter! It really is a team sport unless you're so good you don't ever miss, and those folk are few.

Scores aren't climbing quickly, still in the 'mid 20s, but this match felt the best with the 629 (in BB US) to date. For one thing, no windage adjustments as distances increased!:

Now keeping the support forearm as vertical as possible whilst holding onto the front bell of the scope. Thought muzzle blast might be a problem, so started with an arm guard, but it wasn't needed. Didn't feel a thing!

Just don't get that arm too close to the B/C gap!

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H Richard
SWCA1967 SWHF244

When I was shooting the steel chickens game back in the 1970's, our club didn't own a range and we had to rent or borrow space, so our set-up was sort of portable. We used railroad ties for the target bases.

At one match, we had hired a couple of teenagers and a member brought his 3 wheel Hondas for the target setters to ride out and back. We had driven straight nails into the ties to mark where the targets' rectangular feet should be placed, by putting the feet up against the nails.

In order to make their tasks easier and faster, the kids bent the nails down over the front of the feet of the pigs, turkeys and rams, so they wouldn't get knocked over. After a large number of hits with guns and loads that usually did the job, we went out to repaint the targets and see what the deal was.

Laughter and gaiety ensued. Not.

"In order to make their tasks easier and faster, the kids bent the nails down over the front of the feet of the pigs, turkeys and rams, so they wouldn't get knocked over."

They weren't kids, but some of our buddies did the same thing with nails and got a bunch of grins and laughs at the other guys on the range one day. We should have know something was up when they got to the range early and did the set up for the day...

Onliest S&W photo I got last weekend other than the one above in Post #11:



Sw282 sharing his 629PC.

And a test video of AtomicDogg cleaning the 50m Chickens. He did about the same all match.

Not a S&W but a lever action falling block (MOA) shooting .357 Mag cases necked down to 0.308"!

Didn't do all that great at spotting Sat...Was doing pretty good shooting my scoped Light Hunter
til l decided to change ammo @ 150m turkeys...
Twas 10 for 20 thru the lil piggies...Struck out on Turkeys AND Rams :-(

For practical hunting purposes, it seems mad to attempt shots standing on your hind legs past 100m anyway. Those 150m and 200m banks are just for giggles. Funnily enough, my standing scores with the scoped 629 aren't too much different between FPAS and BB US, which does make me feel better about the load adopted for FPAS.

And Field Pistol remains my favorite: small targets at practical distances. I reckon those 100yd 1/2 size Rams are a good approximation of a deer's heart/lung region.

But there IS a great deal of pleasure watching those BB 200m rams slowly topple!

Just think, now some of the "Top Gun" bolt action and falling block action handgun silhouette shooters are actively promoting the "Ultra" course of fire with Rams at 500m or thereabouts!
I applaud their efforts, but don't have the desire to join them (at least in any serious way).

0n Rams @ 200 meters with my 629 Hunter lts
''Flop-Bang'' instead of ''Bang-Flop''.
Those big chunks of lead traveling SOOO SLOOWW

August Big Bore match!

Still hot but happily not quite so brutal.

Shot my best Revolver score to date (first year shooting Big Bore), managed a 28 whilst intentionally giving up some 100m pigs to rezero the revolver with a "top of rail" hold as opposed to the previous "belly" hold. Sort of a work in progress and should have re-entered to fine tune further, but decided to shoot Unlimited Standing with the scoped 629.

Which didn't go well at all! Finished the Chickens and Pigs with a 15, not terrible, then proceeded to miss an entire bank of 150m Turkeys. My spotter recorded a bunch of slightly low misses, so we decided an elevation correction was in order. (I wasn't sure at first, thinking poor timing and a building breeze were more to blame.) But dialed in 1 MOA and preceded to topple all of the next five birds! Used the entire target, so to speak, but they all dropped. Happy, happy.

On to my usual friends, the Rams. Getting tired, and the cross breeze becoming more constant. Could not find a good elevation setting! The breeze was quite vexing, as whilst it wasn't doing all that much to the bullets, it was pushing me about quite a bit being at about 90 degrees to my backside. No Rams in the first bank, so decided to go with the old sight setting and try and settle down. No joy. Buffeting and mystery misses all the way through bank two. Final score: 20, a new low!

We did have some new shooters to the match, John W. from our CGC Field Pistol matches, and a NRA Highpower shooter who is used to 1000 yard rifle matches, but has never tried his hand at long range handgunning. Also one of the local LRGC FP shooters shot his first Big Bore. Hope to see then all back in the next season!

Thanks to SW282 for the .41 Mag bullets! Have always liked those old 1/2 jacketed projectiles.

Glad to hear you did so well shooting Big Bore. Looking at the scores last night it appears Kdiver had quite a day too.
See y'all in Gainesville next week.

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Don't You Ever Wash That Thing

l had a good day too with my 629 Magnum Hunter..

Best part of my score is...l never KEEP Score :-)

I have an XP100 with a 4X Leupold scope in 7mm BR. But it has been years since I shot Silhouette.

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Kdiver58 upped his Unlimited score by four for his second BB match, and hit one more Ram in addition. But it was in the wrong bank! Not an uncommon boo-boo, especially when shooting them whilst clamped in place. (Eases the work load on our target setter on hot days by a considerable margin as they weigh about 55 lbs each!) Would have mentioned it earlier, but it was with an iron sighted .25 BR XP100, so isn't exactly S&W pertinent. Still, being in the mid-30s isn't bad for morale, esp. after living in the land of frustration that is Field Pistol! (It's so difficult no is known to have shot a perfect score since it's inception over thirty years ago. FPAS has had a few perfect scores. though.)

That's all nice and libtarded of you, but if you don't post scores, our ranks have diminished. There's just not all that many of us left! S. Keuhl even posted his revolver score of 3. And that's fine.

Don't you miss the gratification of making the steel go down? Far better than punching paper, and not bad practice for hunting season (especially shooting those 1/2 scale targets!), even though the distances are rather further than I would shoot game.

l used to punch paper as a benchrest shooter. Great practice for Prairie Dogs.

As for keeping score, l remember the early days in the 70s of IHMSA ...
We used to get little pins/medals for 'five or ten straight targets'...
Try as l did, always seemed to miss one... Don't care about ANY sport
that involves keeping score...That's work....l'm here for F U N :-)

Did anybody do photos this month? Sorry to report I got distracted with other stuff again. Still ciphering on how to do a good video clip showing the huge delay between pulling the trigger and having a lead .44 bullet topple a Ram.

l saw Sherry with her camera out.
Tis a pity tho..Jay and Kdiver performing as
Winston Churchill would say, ''ln Their Finest Hour'' but no pics :-(