I thoroughly enjoyed being able to help on Area 4. What a great crew!
Thanks to the match organizers and all the staff who helped. Thanks to all the shooters who came out with positive attitudes to have a safe, fun experience. I didn't hear or see anyone complain about anything. That says a lot about how this was organized and run.
Speaking of attitudes... Gotta give a shout out to David Martin and Jason Greene. What superb gentlemen and professional sportsmen. I was happy to see these guys on top of the leader board. On Area 4, stage 4B, David came through with an amazing run. He cleaned the stage with first round hits on all but two targets. The two he barely missed he quickly picked up with follow up shots. Then on the surprise "4C" stage he drew down on the third target array by mistake (an easy thing to do and something LOTS of guys did) and called a target. He noticed his error, corrected to the second array and started getting hits. Two 3-point hits was pretty darn good. SOLID performance by a humble guy. That was the best score of the day by far on this stage.
Two shooters later here comes Jason up the hill. The first guy cheering Jason on was David. Jason made an almost identical run with eight first round hits and two targets picked up on the second shots. So, it came down to the 4C stage. Jason did the same thing (great minds think alike!) and drew down on array three. But he noticed the mistake in time to adjust to array two and call the small plate (7 point value). I looked over at David and we waited until that first shot rang out and... Impact! David's face lit up and he started laughing.
David was the first guy to congratulate Jason on the faster run. And Jason was just the most humble guy about it.
It was an experience I'll never forget.
I didn't get too many opportunities to take pictures, but did snap a few on 4B.
Marcus smacking the first plate off-hand after running up the hill. First round hit. Give up the cigarettes brother and you won't have to stand in the damn box catching your breathe so long. LOL.
Walt Sailers on position 3. Kept his cool. Always happy. Laughs at opportunities to do better (aka problems!). What an awesome guy and gentleman.
Sean, tryin' to get away from his comfort zone of the AI chassis. You look very different not running a chassis brother. Ha, ha.
My buddy Ron was the guy to bust his butt up the hill. He shook it off, sucked down 17 Tylenol and rocked on.
My buddy Chris rockin' out "Jeffrey, the Tactical Giraffe" rifle. This is the surprise stage 4C "sling" stage.
Thomas running the stage...
Tod Litt, my friend from Nightforce. He had a solid enough performance to earn him a #4 finish position. Proud of ya, bro. That BEAST sure helped I know.
I'll try to dig through some more pics later. I am beat. Was a LONG day driving over.
Before I go, special shout out to my buddy Joey. This was hist first match ever and he has only had his precision rifle for about a month. This was his second time ever shooting past 200 yards! And he did VERY well. I told him just go slow enough to get your hits. Use this as a learning opportunity and don't be worried about the time. He did just that and it worked great for him. He stayed calm and focused on the targets. He didn't miss many either. Well, except when his shot the "2" marker on 4B! He mistakenly thought THAT was the target and center punched it. We all got a laugh about that. I guess technically it wasn't a miss. ;-)
Great seeing everyone. Hopefully we can take David and Jim into doing this more than once a year!
Mark