Monthly Meet – February 2024 – Over The Log Shoot
by John White
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It started off a blue sky, cool day and warmed up nicely to sweatshirt level at about 11 or so. Then what happened? Wind gusts to take your hat off, temp dropped to whoa level, shot targets flying off the scoring bench. It got downright ugly but we got it done.
We had 29 folks sign in, 23 shooters. Tied our record of shooters. Very nice folks and first shoot of the year. The group got to see quite a few improvements and hear about the ones for the future on the range itself. All new gravel to make it so soft and cushiony to walk on for our tired feet. Brand new hut for storage of our shootin’ supplies and gatherings out of the wind and rain. A 10’x20′ hut that will have a front and side porch on it in the next few months to sit in chairs talking and watching our shooters gather. Everyone got to hear the plans for grills, sitting benches, fire rings and the list only gets longer and better for our shooting gathering range. It is happening, it is not a dream folks. It is real.
Everyone came with their own objectives this first shoot to test a new gun, sight one in, check sights, meet back up with old friends, meet new ones, see the range and changes, see if bodies can hold up to walk and shoot an entire match and many others. A short safety brief started at 9:00AM then on to a few warm up practice shots at 9:10 to see if the zero changed from sitting in the corner cold all winter. We had our usual, oops, dry-balls, been a while since I loaded this gun, caps popping and no big bang, where did it go puzzled looks, broke range rods and the list goes on. Then what was to be a 10 minute or so warmup time got extended to 40 minutes due to the RSO getting distracted and our normal first-shoot-uh-oh’s.
We had two groups: a traditional over the log prone match portion to replicate the Alvin York shoot held in Tennessee each March with some unbelievable tall, heavy firearms in flint, percussion, under hammer, mule-ear-side hammer, shaders. You name it—it was somewhere on those guns. Ten folks chose to shoot old school and do a bunch of walkin’ and talkin’. This ‘Over The Log’ match is scored different, different targets, bring the target to the impact—not move the sights to the impact. It is so opposite of our norm. Probably walk and talk close to 1,200 yards total. We had 13 shooters decide to shoot the NMLRA 100 yard single-bull-target and opt to stay in their seats toasting the walkers and talkers with their warm coffee or tea. Because of the nature of this match, the amount of walking and target changing it is probably the longest overall time investment shoot we have each year. We do not run timers to penalize our shooters with no scores for fail-to-fires etc. We know we will get it completed before dark sets in! Last shots were taken at about 12:15PM. But we finished up, scoring, talking, awarding ,planning, fussing, discussing and gone by 1:05.
Our shoot results were:
For our prone shooters:
1st – Robbie M,
2nd – Brandin M,
3rd – Erik R,
4th – Brian P.
For our bench shooters:
1st – Jim G, had score of 97 with 3x’s,
2nd – Brad T,
3rd – Mike L.
4th – Curt R.
5th – Dohrman C.
Congratulations to all our shooters and shoot administrators. Without you all we are not The Talking Rock Black Powder Shooters. It was so obvious today. Thank you to all for your understanding and patience as this was a tough day for all.
A simple story today of who we are and what we are about. A brand new shooter today, found us via our website less than two weeks ago was leaving before he got his first shot off. When asked where he was going he said, home, I brought the wrong size roundball. What size you shooting? 45. Asked the first person and he handed him a box of 45 round balls. I know if all the 45 shooters were asked to loan or give 20 roundball, not one of you would have turned the request down and that goes for all the shooters regardless of the size roundball you shoot. That is who we are. Fellowship and friendship. No one goes away disappointed. Thank you for hanging in there and having a good day shooting with us.
So we think everyone’s personal shooting objectives were met today as we had nothing but smiles, ‘cannot wait for the next one’, ‘will be at the next one’, ‘will not be missing it’ responses. Our next shoot is March 23rd, the 4th Saturday with the same start time of 9:00AM. We will continue on with our Trade Blanket process of ‘buy, sell, trade, barter’, and we will be having more and more BP related, and other stuff for sale. I know of folks who are coming next month to visit, meet us, talk to us, put stuff on our Trade Blanket and mingle to learn and meet new friends. I know we will treat them as old friends we have not seen in a while. We will continue to make our range better, more shooter and guest friendly for all.
Enjoy the rest of the pics and the video at the end.
Enjoy the Video of the event below:
Great pictures. Thanks, Chris
Thank you, Bob. Good to see you and your new rifle. Beautiful engraving on all the appointments.
Bob I didn’t have time to see that pretty rifle! Busy swabbing and dealing with shoot’n issues LOL! What a nice piece you had there (saw it on Chris’s video)
Just a suggestion – we should consider a dope page where members and non-members who have talents like the person who constructed the prone target stands used in the Feb 24th shoot, could supply the dimensions and materials used in the construction. There are many of us who could duplicate them and stow in the shed for future meets – or build for personal use.
For example – Given the lack of availability of percussion caps, I have experimented extensively with one of those MAKE IT YOURSELF percussion cap kits with notable substantial success.