07-2017 July

Well a hot day was matched by some hot shooting from our participants as 23 brave souls come out in what would be 95 degree temperatures by match end to shoot our July match at Sacramento Valley Shooting center in Ione.

This match was billed as a Piston-centric Match which meant it was not set up to challenge the top PCP shooters in the group but to give the piston shooters a chance to knock down a few more targets than normal. Not wanting the PCP shooters complaining about a course to easy to keep their attention, we threw in a twist. 4 of the 13 lanes had 3 targets, the 2 short targets were shot by the piston shooters, the 2 long targets were shot by the PCP shooters. All 4 of the PCP targets were challenging shots, probably all over a 40T rating. This coupled with the return of the Ione winds which blew the entire match at 5-7 mph made for a challenging match for all participants.

The most exciting part of the match was that we had 5 first time shooters join us in the trying conditions. All of them shot some really excellent scores, but the highlight of the match was 10 year old Matt G who shot a 22/54 score narrowly losing to his father who was also a first time shooter. It looked like Matt had a great time and we appreciated having him join us.

The performance of he day came from Bob K who scored a 47/53 shooting his trusty HW97 in the Hunter Piston class. Bob is in his first season of shooting FT and in his first match in March of this year Bob shot a 23/58. He improved his score every match he has shot and now has broken the magical 90% barrier. Not to be out done Dave C shot a 47/54 upholding the pride of the PCP group. This match Dave switched back to the Open class shooting his USFT which he just switched to HPA. Obviously Dave didn't miss a beat. Great shooting guys. One other performance of note was Riz M's score of 32/54. Riz is preparing to shoot the World FT championships in Wales in September and he choose to shoot the entire match using only the Offhand and Kneeling positions.

In reviewing the scores for the match it seems our little experiment of leveling the playing field worked out better than we expected. Taking the top 5 shooters from the PCP and Piston ranks the scores totaled PCP 205, Piston 202. This may be something that we will continue to experiment with in future matches.

After the match we had cookies and ice cream to help cool us off. Again a big thank you to all who came early and helped set up. I also want to thank everyone who participated in the match in some tough weather conditions, Scott and I really appreciate your support, it is what keeps us working to improve our matches and make sure that everyone who comes out has a great time.

Below are the results, sorry for the small number of pictures, I guess everyone was having to much fun to take some!

Jim in Sacramento

Match Scores - 54 Shots