I shot as a reserve for the Hereford and Worcester County team, although as one guy was running late, I was straight into the scoring at 300 yards in the morning.
So Obviously we started at 300 yards on Century after sleeping the night in my friends caravan on Bisley. and I was the last to shoot out of our group. I was shooting TR (my RPA with Trakker rearsight and Fultons foresight using Homeloads of 2156 SMK, 46.8gr varget and Federal primers at all ranges for anyone interested).
As it was a team event we were shooting 1 to a firing point and it was coached, so basically the coach was reading the wind, and as the shooter all we were doing was pulling the trigger... Perfect for me as I'm not great at doping the wind just yet, and the "coached" session helped me identify a few new things I would never have picked up!
We were shooting 2 + 10 at all ranges, so a possible 50.10 was available at each range! (haha, like I'm gonna get close!)
So after my first shoot @ 300 yards, I did my worst of the day - I think its down to not getting settled into the rifle first thing and it takes a while for me to get into it. i shot 44.3!
We moved back to 600 yards and unfortunately had one of our members drop out at this range due to not having a very good nights sleep and feeling dizzy. - we did however have the guy who I shot in reserve for at the 300, so he took that gentleman's place and we carried on.
At 600 I shot a much better 47.3 without pulling too many shots! I was feeling a lot more settled into the rifle and I'd adjusted my sling to a more comfortable length.
We broke for lunch, and visited the Bisley museum. What a fantastic collection!! Thoroughly enjoyed looking round and particularly interested in the trench gun in the archive room, which had a periscope and an array of levers to work the bolt from down in the trench!
After a quick bite to eat we made our way to Sticks and got onto 900 yard firing point.
I remember reading that a few people have had trouble with the markers on stickledown recently and hate to say we could see exactly what you mean!
I'd set my sights 5 minutes too high (on the foresight) so I was overshooting the target- yet the first 2 sighters came up and showed me as on the board 6 o clock to the bull on the edge of 4/5... this came up twice, then when started scoring, I got 3 misses in a row... Whats going on? on the third miss, we asked where we were going and got a radio message that we were missing high, which prompted to look at the sights, but it was confusing because the first 2 shots were on!... Had it not been for the 2 sighters coming up as hits, and the marker doing what they're supposed to be doing, We would have been on the board much sooner! - either way We reset and carried on. Not counting the misses I scored a respectable 46.3. This was also my first time shooting at 900 Yards!
As for the markers, we barely had a string of 2 shots the whole time at 900 and 1000 where we didn't have to send a message 4 to the butts, either they weren't paying attention or there weren't enough staff, but it was truly shocking, and from what we could understand not limited to our targets either! I've worked Stickledown butts, and although the occasional round got past us whilst talking down there, or just missed it... I don't even understand how it can be so bad as it was on Saturday!
We moved back to 1000 (also my first time this far back!) and moved the sights up 5.25 mins and got straight into the ring and I converted my second sighter being a 5!
I dropped a magpie on one of my shots which pulled me down, and I ended up shooting 45.2 at 1000 for an aggregate of 182.11 - not bad for my first ever county team match, however, it was obviously not all me as it was a team event, and I had a wind coach at every step! - we came 4th out of the 8 of us in our team, and our team came 2nd out of the 4 (RAF A, RAF B, HWRA and Lloyds Bank).
More pictures available at http://www.dudleyrifleclub.co.uk/photos/?gid=6
