IRELAND - Guardian Match 2019

[GuardianLongRange]

You ever wanted to shoot a precision rifle match in the beautiful country of Ireland? Yup...so has the rest of the world. We are bringing the first-ever precision rifle competition to Ireland. $250 tax-deductible donation gets you on the roster.

Registration Link

The Ireland 2-day match will be a bit different than anything done before.

• Day 1 will be a traditional individual match with raffle and prizes.
• End of day 1 shooters will be partnered up with top performing shooter paired with bottom performing shooter.
• But here’s the twist. Each 2-man team will consist of 1 US shooter, and 1 European shooter. Working with a randomly paired partner...from a different country will be so much fun. Sharing equipment, communicating as spotters, km and mph, Guinness and Jack Daniels.

FAQ Document: Download this document that has over 40 answers (links and resources) to ALL of your questions! Can you bring a suppressor, what fees are associated with bringing a rifle, can my rifle have a collapsible stock, is there a place to store my rifle so my wife and I can tour Europe? What forms do I need?

Midlands National Shooting Centre: We have been blessed to work with JP Craven and the staff on bringing the first ever International precision rifle competition to Ireland. Midlands is located about 90 minutes from Dublin, and located in the beautiful countryside of Tullymore. Home of the National F-Class Championships, we will be able to engage targets out to 1,000 yards.

Very Limited Registration: We are limiting the registration to 60 US Shooters, and 60 International Shooters. During our early bird registration we have filled about 50% of the slots with select individuals from media personalities (some you may know), industry leaders, professional shooters and a few well known former SOF snipers (to-be-revealed later).

Nov 7 Conference Call:Still have questions? We are hosting a free QA session on November 7. Click this link to download the calendar invite.

Very Affordable Vacation: Part of the reason we chose to do our first international match in Ireland was the cost to US shooters to travel. Average round trip tickets from major US cities to Dublin are less than $600! Most pre-registered shooters are taking a spouse with them and making a full trip out of it.

 

[mepaddy]

bump

 

[AKMarty]

How did this turnout? After action report with difficulties encountered transporting weapons and ammo? I’m relatively new to the sport and just found this. This looks like a great event!!
-Marty

 

[D_TROS]

Pretty sweet match.

Traveling:

-Make sure you get the GARDA (Foreign police dept paperwork)
-Make sure you bring your rifle to the airport before had and get the customs paperwork filled out. Its a one piece of paper they put the rifle info down and seial number so you can get back into the contry

-Do not try to return with any ammo UNLESS it is in a separate, hard, locked case like a mini pelican or something. Doesn't matter what the "rules" say online, they freaked out when they saw my rifle and ammo during check in. Was a huge ordeal and the ammo was confiscated even tho it was gtg with all flying regulations.

-Not allowed to have the firearm in the car or house. Make arrangements to have stored at shooting range.

-driving wrong side of road (not left...wrong. LOL) having a co-pilot and not being distracted helps a ton. Still, roads are very narrow. Many near misses.

Other than that was very easy and gtg.


MATCH:

I believe we did 10 stages. Ireland is funky and has some very interesting laws. One law is 17* rule. You can shoot with people in front of you as long as they are 17* out of the way. So for ex if Im at the 1000 yd line, you can have shooters at every line up from there all the way to the 300 yd line as long as they are angled more than 17* to the side. Kind of scary, but the match went off with no hiccups.

-so the whole match was shot on a 1200 yd "square" range with stage 10 being far back left and stage 1 being close right.


Another interesting law is you cant leave any free swinging steel targets up every night or you have to take em down so to get around this, they bury the bottom of the target in the berm. Since most all the targets were at the main huge berm, they were almost all buried. To get around target recognition, they put 2 flashers on ea target. The problem is if you didn't hit the target at the top or near a flasher it didn't go off. Took our squad a couple stages to figure this out and look for other indicators. This wasn't helped by the intermittent rain.

-as I was shooting a 223, it was esp painful and hard to see. My goal was a top 10 with my 223. As it was after 2 stages I got 5 out of 20 points because my rifle wasn't setting off flasher. Pretty frustrating as when you think you hit it and no hit is made you make adjustments that just make you miss...ugh lol. I finished 21st, a mere 6 pts behind 10th! dang

Last grip that happens all too often is RO consistency. We were first up at a blind stage where you have to go in a room and build up a shooting position with blocks and hay bales to shoot over a fence. NO EXTRA gear allowed!! We tried couple times to use a tripod for a added support. NOPE.
-EVERY squad behind us was allowed to use a tripod. Everyone I talked to cleaned the stage or got a 8+. (full size ipsc at 750 yards)
If I would have got an 8 on that stage I would have been 8th place overall!#$&%$#*Q$^&# haha dang it.


DAY 2

Team match. 5 stages. Working together to max hits in time allowed. Minimal gear. Kind of a pro/am feel but the lower placing partner may had a bad first day or be a newb. Either way I was teamed with a lady from Norway and we had a blast. We finished 3rd in the team rankings and we really didn't bomb anything. Stages were like shooting off a fence. SHooting off a large spoke wheel. Shooting off a trailer etc. Had to help ea other get set up and with wind calls. Was tough as my partner was shooting a 6 SLR and I was shooting a 223. LOL.

Language:

Tree is not a noun but a number. When the RO says shoot tree here, tree here, and tree here...you don't actually shoot any trees but THREE rounds at ea position. HAHA. Had some good laughs at their expense at a couple positions.





Overall was fun and am planning more international matches.


Regards,
DT

 

[delfuego]

That AAR sucked Dorgan. Only one question that matters about that match and you didn't even mention it. How was the whiskey?

 

[mepaddy]

Pretty sweet match.

Traveling:

-Make sure you get the GARDA (Foreign police dept paperwork)
-Make sure you bring your rifle to the airport before had and get the customs paperwork filled out. Its a one piece of paper they put the rifle info down and seial number so you can get back into the contry

-Do not try to return with any ammo UNLESS it is in a separate, hard, locked case like a mini pelican or something. Doesn't matter what the "rules" say online, they freaked out when they saw my rifle and ammo during check in. Was a huge ordeal and the ammo was confiscated even tho it was gtg with all flying regulations.

-Not allowed to have the firearm in the car or house. Make arrangements to have stored at shooting range.

-driving wrong side of road (not left...wrong. LOL) having a co-pilot and not being distracted helps a ton. Still, roads are very narrow. Many near misses.

Other than that was very easy and gtg.


MATCH:

I believe we did 10 stages. Ireland is funky and has some very interesting laws. One law is 17* rule. You can shoot with people in front of you as long as they are 17* out of the way. So for ex if Im at the 1000 yd line, you can have shooters at every line up from there all the way to the 300 yd line as long as they are angled more than 17* to the side. Kind of scary, but the match went off with no hiccups.

-so the whole match was shot on a 1200 yd "square" range with stage 10 being far back left and stage 1 being close right.


Another interesting law is you cant leave any free swinging steel targets up every night or you have to take em down so to get around this, they bury the bottom of the target in the berm. Since most all the targets were at the main huge berm, they were almost all buried. To get around target recognition, they put 2 flashers on ea target. The problem is if you didn't hit the target at the top or near a flasher it didn't go off. Took our squad a couple stages to figure this out and look for other indicators. This wasn't helped by the intermittent rain.

-as I was shooting a 223, it was esp painful and hard to see. My goal was a top 10 with my 223. As it was after 2 stages I got 5 out of 20 points because my rifle wasn't setting off flasher. Pretty frustrating as when you think you hit it and no hit is made you make adjustments that just make you miss...ugh lol. I finished 21st, a mere 6 pts behind 10th! dang

Last grip that happens all too often is RO consistency. We were first up at a blind stage where you have to go in a room and build up a shooting position with blocks and hay bales to shoot over a fence. NO EXTRA gear allowed!! We tried couple times to use a tripod for a added support. NOPE.
-EVERY squad behind us was allowed to use a tripod. Everyone I talked to cleaned the stage or got a 8+. (full size ipsc at 750 yards)
If I would have got an 8 on that stage I would have been 8th place overall!#$&%$#*Q$^&# haha dang it.


DAY 2

Team match. 5 stages. Working together to max hits in time allowed. Minimal gear. Kind of a pro/am feel but the lower placing partner may had a bad first day or be a newb. Either way I was teamed with a lady from Norway and we had a blast. We finished 3rd in the team rankings and we really didn't bomb anything. Stages were like shooting off a fence. SHooting off a large spoke wheel. Shooting off a trailer etc. Had to help ea other get set up and with wind calls. Was tough as my partner was shooting a 6 SLR and I was shooting a 223. LOL.


View attachment 7203452

View attachment 7203490

Language:

Tree is not a noun but a number. When the RO says shoot tree here, tree here, and tree here...you don't actually shoot any trees but THREE rounds at ea position. HAHA. Had some good laughs at their expense at a couple positions.





Overall was fun and am planning more international matches.


Regards,
DT

i can see myself in you 2nd pic . im from up in the north of ireland so we say 3 up here not tree lol

 

[Wssickta]

No need to compete with the excellent aar report above as it was spot on!
I’ll only add that I had no issues getting my leftover ammo and spent cartridges (dasher) back on our united flight, even in my pelican case with the rifle. I heard stories of it being much different on the delta flights.
“JP” at midlands worked his tail off, along with other Ireland volunteers and were all very accommodating and great hosts!
Gary and Brittany along with the whole Guardian team were absolute stars and also put in a insane amount of work and time into making the match a huge success!
I encourage anyone able to attend any Guardian match in the US or overseas in the future to not hesitate and sign up immediately. They are simply inspiring!