The father n law convinced me to be his partner in a shooting competition.  Of course he asked the guy that shakes like a leaf.  Thankfully he brought the rifle to me a day early to let me practice six shots.  That’s it.  Six shots while most shooters have done this for years.  So that means today on competition day it was my second time even touching this gun.  It has so many gizmos and knobs on it I should have had a reference sheet.

Today we were shooting at water balloons.  At each distance, I had four shots to shoot two balloons.  I started at 200 yards.  No problem.  Also at 300 yards, I shot two balloons in two shots.  At 400 it took me three shots to shoot the two balloons.  Now it gets hard.  500 yards is a long way.  I got one of the two balloons with the four shots allowed.  That foreshadowed how I did  at 600.  I didn’t get any of the balloons.  Oh well.

The f-i-l started at 600 and went down to 200.  He only missed one balloon the whole competition.  Needless to say, with my skills, we didn’t win.  The good news is we didn’t come in last.

Looking down range.  See the black targets above?  Yea, those weren’t what we were shooting at.  Our targets were behind, twice as far.   This is from the 200 yard birm.

Now we are looking up range.  I am standing on the 200 yard birm.  It is difficult to see, but the 300 through 600 birms are there and it goes all the way back to the trees.

After I shot, I had to man the targets for the other half of the shooters in the competition.  The targets are for the three shots shooters are allowed at the beginning to ensure their scopes are correct.  You can see the balloons hanging from the other targets.  These targets are nice.  I can stay safe standing in the pit managing the targets and when the shooters are ready, I can slide the target up six feet in the view of the shooters.  The bullets fly over my head and hit the targets.  Water balloons as targets meant I got a little wet.

All things considered, I did well and I had a lot of fun.  I hope to do it again sometime.  Maybe I will get more practice before showing up.

This is my grandfather during WWII.  He is the one in the dark overalls.