The local September IHMSA Field Pistol metallic silhoutte match was lightly attended, but some good shooting was done by both 75Vette and Kdiver58. Not only did 75Vette get a new personal best with his micro reddot equipped 629, he did it with some "special" cast bullets! Kdiver58 tied his previous best, thus giving him his second "leg" needed for a bump up into AAA, the next to highest classification. He has been campaigning an 8 3/8" AFS 586 for some time.

Meanwhile, I dialed in a tweaked .32 magnum load. It shows promise, but I lost a few hits due to the change in come ups. The five sighter shots were not helpful this time, just the opposite! Still, it was my best effort for the day at 22. Also drug out the "high rise" 629 for the first time in about a year, probably should have shot it beforehand, as results were not up to par. In fact, my "just for giggles" entry with the 3" barreled JP Enterprises sighted 686 was only one less at 20! That speaks volumes for the potential accuracy of short barreled revolvers out to 100 yards.

Some photos by a friend:

Shared album - Lisa Godwin - Google Photos

Shared album - Lisa Godwin - Google Photos

Shared album - Lisa Godwin - Google Photos

Hopefully, 75Vette got some more! Congratulations, y'all!

Good shootin' guys! Where is your range? Maybe I can shoot with you all someday if it's not too far away.

Thanks jaymoore. I was really hoping to break that 20 score I seemed to be stuck at and although it wasn't a huge jump, I managed to break it twice with a meager 21. Now that means I need a new goal to set for myself.
I did get a few pics Saturday. I got 2 of your "birthday present" to yourself, a gorgeous engraving job done at the factory on the 3" 686.



I caught kdiver58 right before he pulled the trigger on his afs 586.
He was killin it Sat.!


And here's one of you & the "Where'd he get that!" hi-rise scope mount 629.


Of course I had to get a shot of my score card after shooting my new personal best with my favorite shooter, a 629-4 PowerPort.


And let's not forget our favorite range master Ron taking the 1/5 scale critters with a TC Contender.


Probably not as colorful as DragonCon going on in downtown Atl but I'd rather have been here chunking lead!

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Don't You Ever Wash That Thing

Toolguy, we'd love to have you but may be a little haul. We're in Gainesville, Ga at the Cherokee Gun Club the first Sat of every month (Except Nov, Dec, Jan & Feb.) They even feed us!!

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Don't You Ever Wash That Thing

Very good shooting jmoore and grasshopper. Those home cast 44s

are 'special' from the scented lube, courtesy a local candle maker..

Really nice 686 you have there Jay.. lts performance inspires me to try

my 625 Mtn Gun on Field Pistol... Glad yall had a good time..

282

I forgot to mention that I got my second 21 score with the help of sw282's world famous scented boolits. He was gracious enough to gift me 50 of his aromatic 250 grain projectiles a few months ago. I told him I was waiting for a special occasion to shoot em and I guess Saturday was it. Thanks buddy!!
BTW, happy birthday today young man. Don't eat too much rum cake!

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Don't You Ever Wash That Thing

Thanks grasshopper...l feel honored by the BD greetings from the FORUM.

The 'scented boolits' are cast from Keith's original designed 250 gr SWC.

Mold is a Hensley&Gibbs #503. Lube is another story;-)

Yeah- that might be a long drive for a weekend match. I still enjoy seeing the pics and reading about it. Thanks for sharing!

Threads like this is what got me interested in silhouette in the first place. I now have some 1/5 scale targets in my back yard that I shoot at with an american rimfire and old burris scope. I'm hooked! Thanks jaymoore.

I shoot half scale silhouettes at a field pistol range at my local club. I think I'm the only one who still does it. I wish I could attend some kind of match and see how I would score.

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-Matt

This was a good range back in the day, but apparently match attendance dropped off to nothing: Burrell twp. rod & gun club.

There may be still some NRA style shoots around your area.

BTW, the 1/2 scale Field Pistol course is difficult enough that in several decades nobody has yet been known to shoot a perfect score! Even with optics and specialty handguns like the Thompson Center Contender (Field Pistol Any Sight or "PAS") perfect scores may not happen in any given year in official competitions. I don't think I've ever witnessed a score higher than 33 or 34 out of 40 locally. I've shot three 30s in PAS, altogether. The first was with a 625 PP with a microreddot! The other two with the 629 shown above, but over a year apart.

Pretty sure both 75Vette and Kdiver58 made it to 20 in a shorter amount of time than I. And 75Vette did it using cast bullets in his .44s, which adds several additional layers of difficulty! Never could get a .44 to act as well, so went to swaged lead long ago. (Oddly, the .45 Colt did well with cast, powder position sensitivity dramas notwithstanding, as does the .32 Magnum. None of my .357s shoots nearly well enough with cast, but have had some prior success with factory JSPs.)

That's a whole 'nuther level of challenge! Lisa and I have shot a few NRA 1/5 scale rimfire rifle matches, but IHMSA is hard to beat for good folk.

Shot in many matches at Burrell back in the day....always camped-out all weekend for the state and regional matches. I still have my T/C Contender....wish there were still some matches in the area!

I'm wishing we still had a silhouette range around here. I helped start an IHMSA range back in the early 80's. We shot the 200 Meter and a 100 yard rimfire match. No one seemed interested in the 1/2 size targets. The interest fell off after our club introduced USPSA action shooting. That's been quite a few years now.

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H Richard
SWCA1967 SWHF244

What killed silhouette? Was it all the different classes and categories made a match too long and complicated?

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-Matt

Well, adding all the scoped categories sure complicated things....but.... it kept the long-timers shooting as their eyesight weakened. There just seemed to be a lack of interest in younger shooters. I'm into IDPA now and it seems that there is a bit more interest from the younger generation. <my two-cents>

Petty bickering and infighting certainly didn’t help matters. A lot of ridiculous gamesmanship where good-hearted comradderie would have served the organization much better.

The loss of Elgin Gates was a great blow, IMO.

I recall seeing those super high taco mounts back in the 70's - I wonder if they are making a come back?

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Merle, retired
western PA

Not so much. The main source has basically quit the business in the past year so so. All of mine were procured used.

I think Met. Sil. just doesn't hold the interest of the younger video game crowd. Too slow and plodding, similar to Bullseye. They like the run and gun games like USPSA and IDPA, etc. Lots of movement and fast shooting is what is popular now.

There may be little more to it than there's no points for being close. The various paper and cardboard targets don't advertise your misses or your peripheral hits, and generally you can spray away at the steel in other games until it goes down. Kinda odd to think the binary scoring is less popular than the rather more "warm and fuzzy" math of many of the other shooting sports in the digital age. (Shotgunning i guess is "fuzzy" shooting with binary scoring.)

Hey!

Back when I started pistol shooting (1991) we still had to learn on the old UIT (now ISSF) style of target shooting. I just missed the era when you had to shoot a score of 70/100 or better to qualify for your pistol endorsement ). But even back then the "run and scoot" crowd was gaining in popularity.

Even 20 years ago at my club 10 - 12 shooters would be there every Sunday shooting formal target shooting, including the new shooters. Today there is no formal target shooting. Even our annual Club Champs struggle to get shooters along.

Now new shooters go straight into either CAS or IPSC shooting. ISSF is fading away. Once the old timers who shoot Black Powder stop shooting it'll die out at my club completely. And the ability to hit targets is suffering. Most shooters struggle beyond the 15 - 20 meter mark. (At our IPSC Nationals last weekend there were four steel discs (8") at 30 and 35 meters shot strong hand only that many shooters left standing).

Still we have one bright spot on our horizon. We have a Service Match, a 90 shot version of PPC/1500 shot at 50, 25, 10 and 7 yards, that a number of clubs are now using as training for new shooters. We also have four Classic Pistol 48 round matches shot a 3 - 25 yards. It develops the ability to shoot fast but accurately.

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View from down under

Sounds like NZ is/was similar to Canada. You needed to join a club to get the pistol permit. Some clubs were bullseye only. The old Hart House club on the University of Toronto campus in downtown Toronto (long gone now!) was like that. Many members of the Canadian Olympic team shot there. Other clubs did have silhouette including large bore IHMSA out to 200M.

IHMSA is great fun, and I enjoyed their matches a bit more than NRA silhouette. That was years ago.

I think the fall off in all the precision pistol matches with many (not all) shooters under a certain age is symptomatic of other, bigger problems. One of those is being failure-adverse. I see it in so many disciplines and skill based activities. They don't want to work their way up the ladder. They just want instant gratification, some kind of novelty stimulation, and no risk of feeling bad for not doing well.

Jim

If you think you should start at the top of the ladder and can't take failure then IHMSA isn't for you. You are correct as to how the younger kids want instant gratification. I just got involved 3 years ago and LOVE it but while it can be very gratifying it can also be VERY frustrating. But that's the whole point of trying to better yourself. I felt on top of the world when I shot my first 20 in field pistol and before last season ended I'd shot back to back 22s. Woo hoo!! But now I want to better those scores. Naturally I hope to keep improving and enjoying this sport. We need to find some young blood that still has older values.

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Don't You Ever Wash That Thing