BCSA (Binghamton, NY) May 11th 2019 - FT Match Report

BCSA May 11th, 2019 Match Report

Another Season of Field Target in underway at BCA (Broome County Sportsmens Assoc. - Binghamton, NY). Our weather this Spring has been very wet. There has only been a handful of days where rain hasn’t been in the forecast. The early forecast for Match Day was looking pretty good……BUT….the forecast for Friday’s set-up was not good! My wife, Dave Lee and myself opted to do our set-up on Thursday afternoon in order to stay dry. Good call since Friday’s weather didn’t disappoint! Hail, heavy rain, severe thunderstorm and tornado warnings were plenty!

My wife Pat and I arrived early Saturday morning to get things finished up and see how things fared. We pulled the strings and set the sight-in range. While we were finishing up, our first competitor of the day (Glenn Thomas) arrived. Within the next half hour, we had a count of 23 for the day. One of those was Mike Norris who came bearing gifts! Mike brought along a Paul Porch Egret target to donate to the club! Thanks Mike……..greatly appreciated!!! Mike and I went and set the target on the course so that it could make it’s BCSA debut!

Sight-in was under the cover of our 100 yard rifle range. Pat handled all the registration, score card prep and waivers while the shooters were getting ready for the day. Paul Manktelow had a Bachelor weekend and was solo, so no Janet to lend a hand. After an hour long sight-in session, we all made our way over to the FT range.

Before the match got underway, we had a little a little class/discussion session. The topics covered in the class were proper use of the timer, what happens when targets are shot out of order, not to take additional shots (practice shots) once the match has started during a Grand Prix match and a discussion about sling use in Hunter Class. Once class was over, it was game on!

The layout for the match had 15 of the 30 targets beyond 40 yards (7 of which were beyond 50 yards)  with 1 standing and 1 kneeling lane for a difficulty of 35.03T. There was a definite wind that ranged from around 5mph - 14mph during the match that was not included in the difficulty value. This definitely accounted for a few of the misses. The sky was overcast at the start, but after a hour or so the sun popped out. It was funny hearing people say my wind flag was blowing to the right yet my pellet went way left………..welcome to the tricky BCSA range!

A few guys were shooting and settling in to their new classes of choice. Brian VanLiew was in WFTF PCP as was Kevin Kunkle with his Anschutz 9015 HP. Glenn Thomas was in WFTF Piston and getting some trigger time with a springer in preparation for the 2019 Worlds! Along with new classes, Jeff Little was giving his new Steyr another workout.

We had 1 cold line to correct a string hangup issue…………my fault for setting a target behind a stack of pallets. The new Egret target was hanging up a little, but it’s new and will wear in just fine.

As we finished up the 10 lane 60 shot match, the competitors for the day handed their cards to Pat who checked and finalized them before we handed out the awards. After the conclusion of the awards presentation, we took a short break while we pulled the strings for the pistol targets.

With the pistol course set and the match competitors done with their plinking and shooting the bull session we started the match. For this match, we had 7 Hunter Pistol shooters and 3 Limited Pistol shooters. I did lump Leo Gonzales and John Eroh who were shooting hands only in with Nathan Thomas who was shooting Limited Pistol.

Along with the pistol shooters, Vasyl Povroznyk shot all the targets standing with his rifle for some offhand practice. Paul Manktelow re-shot some rifle targets with his R9 while Brian VanLiew and Mike Harris were playing with Brian’s HW97 set to WFTF levels.

No cold lines during the Pistol match. The difficulty for the match was 32.54T. There was no forced position for the match and the wind speed did come down a little…….still around 9mph max.

At the conclusion of the pistol match……the remaining people jumped in and helped with the teardown then the awards were presented.

A bunch of us went to grab a quick bite to eat to unwind and relive the day.

Thanks to all that came out to play in what turned out to be an awesome spring day with a much needed break to all the wet weather we’ve been dealing with! Also a big thanks to my wife for keeping us all in line! It was nice to finally get out and and get back in the groove after a long Winter!

The Pictures from Saturday’s match can be seen here.........since Photobucket's change and Imgur doing away with albums......giving snapagogo a shot:

https://www.snapagogo.com/album/FXeI/?sort=title_asc&page=1

Or Here https://imgur.com/a/MnojbdH

The Results:

Rifle Match Results (60 shot match):

Pistol Match Results (40 shot match):