Range/Bullseye Report

Maybe it isn't such a good idea to practice so hard on League Night--I tire out my arm and my eyes by, essentially, shooting the equivalent of 7 relays before the official one. It's like playing seven scrimmage soccer games right before the real game on the same day--not a good idea. Maybe next time (i.e. next-next Monday--no MPL for Memorial Day) I'll just get to the range only an hour to half-an-hour early to warm up and nothing else...a couple rounds of rapid-fire, a round or two of slow-fire, nothing more.

Oh well.

Before MPL even started I put nearly 500 rounds downrange with my two revolvers. Decided I was doing better with my newly-acquired 17-8, so I chose that one to shoot tonight.

Slow-fire was...well, maybe a little disappointing. I still shot a 165, my second-best score, but I would've liked to have done better. I used my usual 3-shot strings--since I'm using open-sights, I'm not as concerned with being exactly the same between every shot...it gets tiring, and I don't feel comfortable setting up, shooting, and breaking down after every shot. My muscles seem happier to set up, shoot, shoot, shoot, break-down. 3 shots is about the maximum I can do before fatigue really sets in, but for those three shots it's easier to just keep the muscles going like they were instead of having to set-up every time.

Anyways. Timed-fire was even more disappointing, with at 179. A respectable score, sure, but 9-points below what I scored last week, and I put let far too many shots hit outside of the black--somewhat surprising, since in practice I was getting only about 3 or 4 outside of the black. Perhaps it had something to do with my tiring myself out before the match tonight.

Rapid-fire was OK today--176, 1 better than last week but still 10 points behind my best (186).

Overall, I secured 520 out of 600 points tonight, a 20-point gain (all due to a much better slow-fire) over last week, which earned me a 286 handicap score. Not bad...not top-4, but not bad. Next time (June 2nd) we're against the Navy Team, which should be easy, what with the Navy Team's personnel problems and lower-general scorers (last week they got a 1133, the week before they did a 1130-something, and the week before that they did 1140-something; my team regularly and easily scores in the mid 1150's)

My 3-week average dropped, however, to 256. Which means that next match, if I continue to do this well, I should have a much better handicap score.

Well, first things first. Next weekend there's no MPL match due to Memorial Day, and the weekend after that I'll be doing the Tahoe thing, so we'll see how this goes...