Monthly Meet – April 2024 – Open House Gathering
by John White
April 27th, 2024
Sometimes it is extremely difficult to decide on how to start these summaries of our shoots but we will start this one off with thank you. Thank you to Michael and Bobby for cooking, Mary Ann and Cynthia for assisting the cooks and handling everything, Ken for stepping up for scoring, Barney for RSO’ing, Jim for the dessert pies, Dennis for the coffee and donuts, Chris for videoing/RSO-ing/fixing targets, to all our shooters and observers for attending the shoot and seeing what this is all about, to all our first timers welcome, to our experienced shooters thank you for welcoming and mentoring our new shooters, to Phil and Larry for bringing your sons and grandsons to shoot, to our observers thank you for supporting us and I am positive we forgot someone and for that we are truly sorry. Many of the folks named here are regular shooters who gave up their opportunity to shoot to make this a memorable open house for all.
This was virtually a perfect open house. Overcast but no rain, so a cool start, not hot with a little breeze but not gusting, not sunny so no real sunburn. What a nice day to shoot.
So why start with thank you’s? It seems this open house to celebrate our phase one construction completion was was attended by 51 folks. We had 17 shooters for score and at least 11 others working with their family, demonstrating and teaching first timers, sighting in rifles, working on them and other reasons just to attend and shoot with like minded supportive people. So we set an attendance and shooter record today as we shot under our Betsy Ross flag with flints-a-scratchin’ and caps-a-poppin’.
We welcomed back several of our regular shooters who we have missed of late due to their surgeries and medical issues and we were missing at least a dozen regulars for work and family conflicts. We are family but we understand we are everyones second family.
As many have seen of late we have made some incredible improvements on our range for our shooter comforts, guests, scorers, RSO’s and anyone else that wants to use the range. The attached pics are from where we were 3 years ago to today. What a change. This continues our philosophy of fellowship, friendship and family for all here at TRBPS. We had our trade blanket with lots of goodies this month that folks like to browse and buy from but for future reference we need names and prices for folks so they can negotiate! Tours of the hut, its layout, storage and memorabilia were given to all interested.
The range seemed to easily handle this many folks as we were not crowded, we had seats for all, conversations with many, food and even drinks for all. What a day. It is difficult to express how it felt to be so blessed to be a part of this for many of us. 4.5 years ago we started a NMLRA charter club with five members, including the covid year of nothing we are now at 40 TRBPS members. Thank you for supporting us with your participation. It means the world to us.
So on to the shoot! We are had our two shooting categories for our rifle match, off hand as it is known as and bench to compete in classifications for fairness. And guess what we had at least three dryballs from the same shooter who received his dryball instruction card and his scorecard for when he gets his 10th dryball he gets an 11th for free of harassment (NOT), another new record and a broken frizzen. One pistol shooter even had to retire because he broke his pistol stock. What kind of load was he using?
There were two rifle shooting relays, 10 shots each, patch and roundball, any caliber in these two shooting classifications off hand and supported. The classifications did not compete against each other for prizes, just bragging rights.
First Relay:
10 shots at 50 yards, steel and other targets of various sizes simple hit or miss. For the first time using these targets the shooters finally broke a small bowling pin top referred to as a bulls balls and broke one of the hook hangers. Took us three years to break something. Our shooters must be improving and hitting them more frequently?
Second Relay:
10 shots at 25 yards, NMLRA six bull target, two shots each target.
Scores were added together for placement within the appropriate shooting category off hand or supported.
The rifle results were:
Off hand:
1st – Jim Gravely
2nd – Bob Wilson
3rd – Brian Palmer
4th – Erik Rolle
Bench:
1st – Tim Coleman
2nd – Charlie Russell
3rd – Mike Lamb
4th – Dennis Schmidt
Please note with our increased attendance we have increased our prize payouts. We want to reward as many as possible for their supporting our program.
Our third Relay:
Was a pistol match independent of the rifle match. We had four participate along with a six shooter who only loaded five to be fair. This worked out so well we will be making this a regular shoot and will include a score placement with prizes from now on. So bring your pistols for added chances to bring home the meat so to speak.
So shooting safety talk started at 9:00am, goal was to be done by 1:00pm and actual with all this going on we were out by 12:30. What a day with time left over so we can all enjoy time with our families this weekend. So there was a question raised of the cooks, “How did four of the burgers get a top of the bun on both top and bottom? Where did the bottom of the buns go on these four?”
So we look forward to everyone coming and shooting with us at our next shoot on Saturday, May 25th at 8:30am. If you have any questions please holler.
We’d like to thank YouTuber, “@RoswellNative” for participating with us today. Click the link above to view the video he made of his visit to PCSC.
Enjoy the remaining pictures below and the video at the end.
Enjoy the video of the TRBPS monthly meet for April 2024 below: