Day 6

The morning started off with most of the vans leaving promptly and getting to the range in plenty of time for roll call, although there was one notable exception. Again roll call was followed by ‘colors’ before any shooting could commence. One more tradition they have here is that tie shoots (or shoot-offs as they call them here) are conducted before the main shooting programme begins for they day and they are done for first to third places. As the first individual match scheduled for the day was at 600 yards, a tie shoot for third place in yesterday’s match was what we witnessed. This way of doing the tie shoots has a distinct plus to it in that it guarantees a large gallery of spectators. The tie shoot was duly won after a shoot of 2 convertible sighters and 5 to count.

After 600 yards, there was also a tie shoot as we fell back through 800 yards before we went on to the 900 yard match and this was between two competitors for first and second and 7 competitors battling it out for bronze. First and second were decided after the initial five shots but for third place, there were still three still tied with 25.4. This then went into sudden death where all three remaining shooters had 60 seconds to fire one shot. The targets were then pulled down and the range officer then announced “were there any scores of 3?”. All the targets stayed down. Then he asked if there were “any scores of 4” and then one target was raised. For “5” a further target was raised and then for “V” the final target came up revealing the winner. Quite a crowd pleasing way of doing it and it did result in many positive comments from people who hadn’t seen the system before.

The shooting for the day was individual shoots at 600, 900 and 1,000 yards, 2 sighters and 15 to count as all the individual shoots are this week. 600 proved fairly benign, with a number of the team getting 75s, as was 900 yards. After lunch (a mixture of food made in the condos, philly cheese steak sandwiches and other delights from the catering vans), desert was provided by the Adj, who had forgotten to take a donut consultant with him when he went shopping. Most were eaten but it was decided that WalMart was probably not the best place to get donuts in the future!

The last shoot of the day was at 1,000 yards and after a couple of days when the much talked about issue of getting a good sight picture (in Perry, there are no butt stops as they shoot directly out over Lake Erie, which means that the targets are framed against the sky), we found out what it was all about. A very hot day with a heap of range mirage meant that the groups of many opened up considerably, and difficulty in reading the target numbers at that distance also led to a V-bull on the wrong target (for a final score of 69), although there were some notable exceptions – in particular David Armstrong who came off with a very impressive 75.7.

It was then time to pack up and leave the range for some downtime and decisions as to what to do for dinner. Some went off in search for a ‘decent meal’ at Crabshack, some cooked in their condos and others went to the shooters’ bar to partake of food there. (Officially known as the Lock, Dock, and Barrel, and alternatively known as Nicks, being previously owned by shooter Nick Mousliman.) More importantly, the shooters’ bar contingent had to prepare for the main event of the day. It had previously been arranged that the GB vs USA beer pong match was to be held tonight.

Beer Pong team selection had taken place earlier in the day, and the management team were fortunate enough to have a large pool of applicants from which to choose a strong team. Anticipation levels were high as we approached kick-off at 8pm.

(Un)fortunately, the bar didn’t permit beer in the cups, so the match ended up being tap water pong. After first playing some locals for ‘ownership’ of the table, Great Britain had to come from behind in order to beat the Americans with the help of a couple of bouncers scoring double, before rounding off the evening with a friendly match against the British Commonwealth Rifle Club. With one more day of individual matches before the next team selection, everyone was keen to put forward some excellent scores for consideration tomorrow, so we were retrospectively grateful for the downgrade to tap water pong