Summer wrap-up!

I’d like to apologize for the radio silence over the last couple of months – my day job was incredibly challenging over the summer, and I was working a lot of nights.  Plus I had this whole wedding thing to do in July.  This didn’t leave me a lot of time for blogging and unfortunately I had to push this to the side to focus on family.   So that being said – here is a brief rundown of my summer!

BCRA Precision Rifle Championshop

June was my annual outing to the Bcra Precision Rifle Championship out in Chilliwack at Vokes Range.  This marks my third year in a row competing!   As usual, it was a great turnout of guys and girls, shooting a variety of targets back to 600m.   Sight-in day went well, and the data I had for my 6CM looked great!   We did our walk-backs and got our dope for the following two days.   Arriving at the range on the Saturday morning, we could all tell that it was going to be an uncomfortable day spent in the rain – it ended up dumping 20mm over the course of the day.

Starting the day, I almost immediately noticed that I was getting a sticky bolt.  I managed to only get through 2 of the days stages; as it progressively got wetter and wetter, I was seeing more and more pressure signs from my rifle – popping primers and sticky bolts.  I judiciously made the decision to stop firing.  The rest of the day was spent spotting for Ryan, and then booked it back home to grab my 308 that night.  Nearing the end of the day, I was also happy (not happy?) to hear that I wasn’t the only person experiencing popped primers and pressure signs from the rain – a couple other competitors had the same problem during the days activities.

Working through the challenges

Sunday rolls around and I made it home and back in time for the second day of the match, using a tried and tested rifle with a scope I had only Shot a couple times before!  I had left the Primary Arms scope on my 308, and didn’t have time to swap it over and re-zero for day 2; knowing that it was zeroed from the last time I shot it – I went with it and figured we could work out any wrinkles along the way.   Another thing to note,  it was in MRAD and I had only shot MOA – so that was also challenging.

First exposure of the day is the cold bore shot at 100m, and Ryan’s advice was to take the shot and we could use the following ‘Dots of Doom’ to confirm zero.   I took my cold bore shot and Ryan was doubtful that it even hit the target – he couldn’t see a bullet hole on target.  Thinking that this would be a lot more of a challenge to finish the day – I was 100% happy to see that I nailed the cold bore, with a score of 100/100.   My confidence for the day was excellent – and I approached the rest of the shoot relaxed.   We went through a number of awesome serials, including modified prone through a barrier and ‘rooftop’.  Check out the course of fire here.  I was incredibly pleased to see that despite missing 4 serials on the first day – I still finished 13th place.

Wedding!

Shortly after the BCRA match – I got to marry my best friend in a beautiful ceremony in Chilliwack, with a great view of the mountains and on a really beautiful day!   It was a fun-filled day of drinks, good food and a whole lot of partying with our friends.  We wanted to throw the best party we could to celebrate with our friends and family and it was exactly what we had hoped for.   I’ll keep this brief and just show a picture of after the ceremony:

NSCC 2016 – preparation!

With all the stuff going on before NSCC – I didn’t think that I was actually going to make it this year, but some last minute juggling of time and money, and I had my ticket booked and spot secured.  The previous month, I was wracking my brain on solving the pressure issues with the 6CM – after the BCRA match, I cleaned the hell out of it, JB’d the bore as per the cleaning regimen that is documented, and lo-and-behold, a load that was spot-on for velocity before, was now giving me between 100 and 175 more FPS velocity, bringing it up to around 3300 FPS.  The target velocity should be 3100-3150, so this was completely puzzling to me, and to Ryan.  I leaned on his expertise heavily on trying to troubleshoot this, and I will have a full post dedicated to it.

Suffice it to say, the day before I flew out – I was at the range getting my 308 match ready, swapping scopes and then loading the 200 rounds I needed for the next day!  Talk about last minute!

I managed to get everything done in time, and at the ungodly hour of 4am Ryan and I met at the airport for our trek back east.  As an aside – I’d like to say it’s really shitty of Westjet to jack up the prices of checked luggage – $30 for one piece, $70 for the second and $100 for the 3rd, making for almost 1/2 the cost of my flight in baggage fees.  Thankfully the girl at the counter was sympathetic and knocked that down for me.   I think next year – I am going to have to take a long look at if I can make it again.  All of this shooting is out of pocket for me as we don’t seem to have the same sort of sponsorship opportunities that our friends in the US do.   (Any sponsors out there want to help a guy out – email me at [email protected])

NSCC 2016 – weekend summary!

The first half of day 1 was walk-backs to get our zeros.  I was more than pleased that all the data that I had from last year, was almost spot-on this year as well! The match is all shot prone, and is a mixture of snap targets, movers, and fully indicated targets – it’s challenging and goes out to 800m.   Check out the course of fire.   I am not going to do a full run-down of the matches, but more highlight the positives over the weekend.

As usual – I met and shot with a bunch of awesome and friendly guys – being my second year, I was happy to see some familiar faces from last year, and to meet some new ones.  NSCC comraderie is amazing – with military, police and civillian all mingling and hanging out shooting the shit.  Lots of taking the piss on the line, and lots of support when things were not going 100% the way people wanted.  I highly recommend anyone that likes to compete, and can make it happen – to come to NSCC.

NSCC 2016 – pros and cons

My stated goal, on my Facebook page this year was to better my score from last year, and I accomplished just that.  2015 score was 300.12 and this year I eked out a 306.15.  My v-bull count went up and my overall score went up.  I left being completely happy with my performance there. Out of all the rounds shot, I only had 5  dropped shots, and one of those was a penalty for taking a shot at a trial-exposure.  Unfortunately we were far down the line, could not clearly hear the PA system and I mistook the target coming up, for the serial and fired a shot.  My mistake, and I owned up to it.

By far the biggest highlight of the weekend was when Ryan and I won Match 63!  A 500m snap shoot at Figure 12 and Figure 11 targets.  Ryan got a perfect 50 with 5 V’s and I got a 48 with 4 V’s. Hearing my name called at the award ceremony at the end of the second day was something I won’t forget. This is my first time in a competition where I won anything.  I was riding a high and on top of that, I got to take home a sweet memento from the weekend.

Final thoughts

I had a fantastic time again and am really hoping that it is in the cards for me to get back there for 2017.  I want better my score over this year and last year.  I have 11 or so months to sort out rifle issues and practice practice practice!   I firmly maintain that if you are contemplating going to a match – just do it.  You won’t regret your decision as there are always amazing people to ease you into it.  I jumped in both feet first, and have not looked back since.

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