Monthly Meet – NMLRA Targets
& Range Improvements
by John White
March 23, 2024
So while at least seven of our regular shooters were up at the York shoot in Pall Mall Tennessee in the Valley of the Three Forks of the Wolf River held the same day as ours, the remainder of us were down here on Burnt Mountain in Pickens County home of the Talking Rock Black Powder Shooters practizin. We had 21 folks come by, 14 shooters and a couple of the other seven became shooters before the day was done. We love converts!
The day started off very overcast, breezy and chilly if not down right cold. We had the hangover from the overnight rains and the winds just made it cold as the wind cut through our coats. The wind was estimated to move a roundball today between 3 and 5 inches at 50 yards. Imagine aiming almost off the target just to hit black let alone bullseye. We got started with the registration sign in at 8:30am and the course of fire description and safety brief with the shoot starting about 9:00am.
We had our normal two shooting categories, “off hand”, as it is known, and “supported” to compete in classifications for fairness. We do not ever want to exclude anyone who wants to shoot with us but we will not compete against centerfire or scopes to be fair for example. Supported is the bench rest, shooting sticks, kneeling, sitting, prone et al shooting group. No prone this time as we gotta practiz with these other shooting positions. All the prone shooters went to Tennessee to try their luck up there anyway and they better report back on how good they done.
We shot two 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. We had some dry-balls of course, klatches, popped caps, and we had a brand new Kibler rifle built by Miss Becky and wow, did she do a beautiful job on that rifle. Congratulations Becky, it is a beautiful rifle you built. Taking commissions for future project builds?
First Relay:
10 shots at 50 yards, the NMLRA six bull 50 yard target. Two shots each bull for score and one for practizin. The wind made this a very difficult target today. Scores were consistently 50 points lower on the 50 yard shots than the 25 yard shots. Very dramatic difference for every shooter today. But they all fought through it.
Second Relay:
10 shots at 25 yards, 50 yard NMLRA two bull targets, five shots each target. We had some small groups on this target. Believe we had a 53x or real close to it on one target. Not sure what happened on the next five shots.
We added the scores together and the results were as follows:
Off Hand
1st – Bob Wilson
2nd – Billy Townsend
Benched
1st – Mike Lamb
2nd – Kirk S.
We had an incredible trade blanket today and several hand made items made by Robbie never even made it to the blanket as folks bought them out of her hands as she was walking to the range. She sold some beautiful handmade long rifle blanket cases. As successful as this appears to be we will be having more and more BP related stuff for sale every shoot from now on. A short tour and discussion of the range upgrades such as a 300 square feet deck has been added, sitting patio benches, fire ring, scoring hut, gravel on 50 yards for better target support, grills installed, griddle obtained. More upgrades are planned for the range as well for our shooters comforts over the coming weeks. Now if we could keep the bears away, man was that a big paw print on the patio.
We continue to make new friends, improve our fellowship with our fellow shooters and make this the fastest growing charter club around. Check out www.trbps.com – Events Blog – for many more pics, videos and write-ups of our shoots and any further information on upcoming meets and events.
Thank you all for the support, coming out to shoot and appreciating what we are trying to accomplish for all shooters. We were done, cleaned up, gone by 12:05pm. Hard to beat that kind of morning. Till next month take care and be safe and healthy.
Enjoy the rest of the pictures below and the video at the end.
Enjoy the video of the March 2024 Meet below.