War Rifle Match & Egg Shoot, 2/4/24
Today was the annual War Rifle match. This being the 10th match of this. The War Rifle match has rifles that have been in wars the world over, in a head to head match. The match is similar to a standard high power rifle silhouette match. 40 shots, standing un-supported to see who, and which rifle is the best. Simple – except these rifles were mostly made to fire at an enemy so most were manufactured on the quick to get them on the battlefield. Nobody considered major accuracy during WWII for rifle used for war. Most of these rifles, being war rifles, had no scopes because, in the Great War, and before, scopes for rifles for war were pretty much useless.
The AR15, a copy without full-auto, of the rifles used in the Mid-East, recently, even though manufactured far better and more accurate than the old rifles previously mentioned, even so, the AR-15 is a short barreled rifle made better for quick shooting than total accuracy at a tiny long-range targets.
So, knowing the kinds of rifles, and positions used in this match, it may be a surprise that the targets are basically, tiny, for the type of rifles being fired. Targets are similar to animals. They are chickens, pigs, turkeys, and rams. The chickens are life-sized, pigs are about 12″ W X 10″ H, turkeys are about 8″W X 12″, rams are about 10″ x 8″. Rules are that the animal is to be knocked off the rail it sits on – can’t just hit it like similar shooting games.
It’s a hard game. Indeed, it is much more difficult than the standard high power rifle silhouette as most high power rifles have scopes.
Take a look at the chart: Match Winner was Mat Copland with a 20×40. Other winners were Hi-Senior – Tom Muddiman with a 10, High Lady – Lesley Ivanjack – 9. See the chart for all winners.
Victor Bolster was target setter today and as usual, did a fine job.
We have a fine stat officer in Jim Sealy. He does our squadding and scoring on computer, at the match. Thank you Jim!
This match was advertised as a 2-fer, that is, 2 matches same day. The other match was the Egg Shoot. We hang an egg from the target rack at 200 yards. Walt Ivanjack helped the shooters out by painting the egg orange. Rumor had it the egg had belonged to a duck and was therefore larger, though that didn’t seem to get it broken any faster! Bring whatever firearm you want, shoot at the egg for 1 dollar a shot. Put your money in the pot. 1 minute per shot. Hit the egg, get all the money in the pot. Miss and your money goes in our pot.
As usual, in the Egg Shoot, there is never a shortage of shooters that want to win that pot. In this match, we allowed a max of 3 shots, until all had a try. During the first try, no one hit the egg though a lot were Very close. We did the shoots after having a complete round of the silhouette match. We actually did 3 rounds of Egg Shoots.
Finally, on the 3rd round of tries, our winner, Joe Ryba, smashed that egg at 200 yards, and won the pot – $91!
It was a great, fun match and a good time was had us all, especially Joe Ryba!
Roger Estes
