Hey guys, I just got back from a 3 day match put on by Shane Cossar of Gunslinger PLRS down at Lake Tekapo in New Zealand and wanted share this AAR. He puts on a number of matches here in NZ throughout the year and this one was well geared for ELR shooting. I had only recently got my SRS and reloading gear into NZ, so it was a mad rush to make up some .338LM ammo in time for the match. While I had recently gotten a hold of a bulk of Hornady 285gr bullets, I didn't have time to develop a load for it as I was crunching on "Ironman3" at the time. So I went with a tried and true load using 250 Scenars 94gr of RL25 loaded at 3.681", which gives me about 2980fps and hopped on a flight down to Christchurch and made the 3 hour drive to Lake Tekapo.
The main firing point for practice day, shooting down into the valley below to the left.
The shoot took place on Sawdon Station, a rather large farm about 10km south of the lake. There were roughly 44 shooters total with a variety of rifles and gear from around New Zealand including two shooters from New Caledonia. There were two main shooting sites during the 3 days, one down a draw that we used for sighting in, using the chorongraph and some closer range dot drills and target boards. The second area was a ridgeline that we shot deep into a valley below (see above photo). The competition as a whole was broken into 3 distinct categories: coached, long range and extreme long range. The coach class for was new shooters who were assigned a coach to walk them through each firing stage. Many of those shooters also attended a shooting clinic on the first day run at the nearby Sparrowhawk facility. The long range group competed out to 1000m while the extreme long range group went to 1620m. There was also an unlimited long range match shot in the middle of the event starting at 1000m and going to 2000m.
We started each morning at sunrise, which was stunning in this part of the country. As we're heading into winter down here in the southern hemisphere, it was starting to get cold so layering up was vital especially with the potential for rain, still it never got even close to freezing. Thursday was a practice day for most shooters and a clinic day for the coached shooters. I confirmed my zero and velocity then took my rifle up to the ridge line to work on some steel. There wasn't much in the way of wind and making hits from 600-1200m wasn't very difficult. Targets came in a wide variety, from tall thin poppers and discs of varying sizes to IPSC silhouettes and a large 1x1m square at 2000m. The 1200 and 1650m targets were reactive, falling down and rising with a hit while some of the other targets were setup with an ingenious camera flash system, that on impact, would trigger a bright flash back at the firing point.
The Unlimited Long Range match took place at this same firing point, shooting across the valley. Some of us drove up the ridge line while others humped their gear to the top.
As the sun went down on the first day, we had a fun night shoot, mind you without NODs or other night vision gear. We engaged two steel discs at 200 and 250m from a trail down into the draw. The first stage was shot just like a daytime shoot, and as it was dusk, it wasn't too difficult. The second stage allowed us to use illuminated reticles and with Lake Tekapo being a protected skies region, it got very dark very quickly. By the third stage we needed some illumination, so a green laser mounted on a precision tripod was used to illuminate the far target, with the beam divergence nearly matching the diameter of the disc - still this was a difficult shot. And the final stage used a spotlight on the target area which bathed them in dull light, but by this time they'd been banged on so many times that they had gone from neon green to a dull shade of grey, blending perfectly into the night. With illuminated reticles, this was still very tricky shots as there was no way to spot the splash from a miss and in my case I found myself shooting at the shadow!
Fabien and Étienne from New Caledonia making shots into the valley while Christian spots.
Friday morning we did the Unlimited Long Range match out to 2km. While it was from the same firing point as the practice day, the conditions had changed radically with strong wind at the firing point and difficult to read swirling wind in the valley. The group that shot this match were predominantly shooting .338LM with one .416 Barrett on a Barnard GP action. I had gone into it supremely confident as I had made several first shot hits the day before in practice, only to discover that I needed 5mils of left windage at 1000m. And even when I made the correction, the swirling wind was difficult to read and I still ended up missing more than I hit. There was also a weird down draft coming off a second, lower ridge line we had to shoot over for the farthest targets. In the end my performance was dismal but it was enough to shake me up and make me start paying attention to how the wind was flowing through the trajectory of the bullet. Tony, shooting a Barnard Model 10 .338LM, made two hits on the 2km target using 300gr Bergers out of a 32" barrel. Over the course of the next two days Tony would prove to be very adept at reading the wind.
Tony's Barnard Model 10 with Simon's 300WM
After my dismal performance, I took a break from the day and drove to the nearest town for some comfort food. On a side note, as an American living in New Zealand for the past couple years, I could never get my brain around the concept of meat pies. I know, it's an English commonwealth thing, but regardless in town the only thing that looked good was a pie shop so I had my first mince & cheese pie. Damn, that was good!
There was some really nice gear out there, including Jayson's PLRF-10 and Spotter 45 as well as Shane's PLRF-10C. Several shooters were running FFS on Nomads too.
As I returned after my break, the group was rounding out Friday with a fun shoot down near the draw. A few of the old timers brought out some really cool older .303 and SLRs (FN FAL) to shoot along with a few surprises. Then the rain arrived and it was time to head back to our quarters for BBQ and beer.
The guys from New Caledonia brought a PGM 338, the first time I'd seen one in the wild.
Saturday was the final day and the primary all day match. Once again we all met at the top of the ridge line at sunrise, and while one of the stages used a few of the targets we had practiced on, the vast majority were new targets and new firing positions. I was thankful to be squadded with a familiar group of guys I had shot with at a previous match and who helped range targets and spot for me. My old Newcon had finally crapped out and the strong gusting wind made it extremely difficult to get a steady reticle read on any targets.
Shooters doing what shooters do when not behind the rifle: tell stories.
Our first couple of stages involved relatively close targets (400-700m), but they were small and unforgiving of bad wind calls. Also from the new firing positions along the ridge line, these closer targets involved a bit of high(er) angle shooting, which was an added challenge for elevation. One of the most painful stages involved an IPSC target with a hostage shoulder swinger that was shot from three positions. The shooter had to hit the swinger before moving to the next position and a hit on the big IPSC target scored a big penalty. Everyone was biasing their wind calls so if they missed, they missed the IPSC, but again with swirling wind it was a serious challenge.
My SRS overlooking the main shooting area.
As we moved further up the ridge line, the stages seemed to get more and more difficult yet for me personally, I started performing better. With my annoying wind experience from the previous days, I had finally started to clue in on how it was flowing through the area. This was initially frustrating to me because I should know better having had an Army career that involved some of the best precision rifle training at the time and now a civilian career that involves computational physics - I should be able figure out multiple wind bands and do the vector math!.
Jayson and Tony shooting one of the earlier stages.
The terrain at the firing points varried at each stage, with some being very rocky and making it difficult to get a stable shooting platform in the wind while others being soft flattened grass. The angles also changed, with us sometimes laying prone and shooting downwards, while other times laying at a down angle and trying to shoot outward. Either way it was an added challenge at times.
Simon shooting the other SRS in New Zealand, a .300WM in this case.
Continued below....
The main firing point for practice day, shooting down into the valley below to the left.
The shoot took place on Sawdon Station, a rather large farm about 10km south of the lake. There were roughly 44 shooters total with a variety of rifles and gear from around New Zealand including two shooters from New Caledonia. There were two main shooting sites during the 3 days, one down a draw that we used for sighting in, using the chorongraph and some closer range dot drills and target boards. The second area was a ridgeline that we shot deep into a valley below (see above photo). The competition as a whole was broken into 3 distinct categories: coached, long range and extreme long range. The coach class for was new shooters who were assigned a coach to walk them through each firing stage. Many of those shooters also attended a shooting clinic on the first day run at the nearby Sparrowhawk facility. The long range group competed out to 1000m while the extreme long range group went to 1620m. There was also an unlimited long range match shot in the middle of the event starting at 1000m and going to 2000m.
We started each morning at sunrise, which was stunning in this part of the country. As we're heading into winter down here in the southern hemisphere, it was starting to get cold so layering up was vital especially with the potential for rain, still it never got even close to freezing. Thursday was a practice day for most shooters and a clinic day for the coached shooters. I confirmed my zero and velocity then took my rifle up to the ridge line to work on some steel. There wasn't much in the way of wind and making hits from 600-1200m wasn't very difficult. Targets came in a wide variety, from tall thin poppers and discs of varying sizes to IPSC silhouettes and a large 1x1m square at 2000m. The 1200 and 1650m targets were reactive, falling down and rising with a hit while some of the other targets were setup with an ingenious camera flash system, that on impact, would trigger a bright flash back at the firing point.
The Unlimited Long Range match took place at this same firing point, shooting across the valley. Some of us drove up the ridge line while others humped their gear to the top.
As the sun went down on the first day, we had a fun night shoot, mind you without NODs or other night vision gear. We engaged two steel discs at 200 and 250m from a trail down into the draw. The first stage was shot just like a daytime shoot, and as it was dusk, it wasn't too difficult. The second stage allowed us to use illuminated reticles and with Lake Tekapo being a protected skies region, it got very dark very quickly. By the third stage we needed some illumination, so a green laser mounted on a precision tripod was used to illuminate the far target, with the beam divergence nearly matching the diameter of the disc - still this was a difficult shot. And the final stage used a spotlight on the target area which bathed them in dull light, but by this time they'd been banged on so many times that they had gone from neon green to a dull shade of grey, blending perfectly into the night. With illuminated reticles, this was still very tricky shots as there was no way to spot the splash from a miss and in my case I found myself shooting at the shadow!
Fabien and Étienne from New Caledonia making shots into the valley while Christian spots.
Friday morning we did the Unlimited Long Range match out to 2km. While it was from the same firing point as the practice day, the conditions had changed radically with strong wind at the firing point and difficult to read swirling wind in the valley. The group that shot this match were predominantly shooting .338LM with one .416 Barrett on a Barnard GP action. I had gone into it supremely confident as I had made several first shot hits the day before in practice, only to discover that I needed 5mils of left windage at 1000m. And even when I made the correction, the swirling wind was difficult to read and I still ended up missing more than I hit. There was also a weird down draft coming off a second, lower ridge line we had to shoot over for the farthest targets. In the end my performance was dismal but it was enough to shake me up and make me start paying attention to how the wind was flowing through the trajectory of the bullet. Tony, shooting a Barnard Model 10 .338LM, made two hits on the 2km target using 300gr Bergers out of a 32" barrel. Over the course of the next two days Tony would prove to be very adept at reading the wind.
Tony's Barnard Model 10 with Simon's 300WM
After my dismal performance, I took a break from the day and drove to the nearest town for some comfort food. On a side note, as an American living in New Zealand for the past couple years, I could never get my brain around the concept of meat pies. I know, it's an English commonwealth thing, but regardless in town the only thing that looked good was a pie shop so I had my first mince & cheese pie. Damn, that was good!
There was some really nice gear out there, including Jayson's PLRF-10 and Spotter 45 as well as Shane's PLRF-10C. Several shooters were running FFS on Nomads too.
As I returned after my break, the group was rounding out Friday with a fun shoot down near the draw. A few of the old timers brought out some really cool older .303 and SLRs (FN FAL) to shoot along with a few surprises. Then the rain arrived and it was time to head back to our quarters for BBQ and beer.
The guys from New Caledonia brought a PGM 338, the first time I'd seen one in the wild.
Saturday was the final day and the primary all day match. Once again we all met at the top of the ridge line at sunrise, and while one of the stages used a few of the targets we had practiced on, the vast majority were new targets and new firing positions. I was thankful to be squadded with a familiar group of guys I had shot with at a previous match and who helped range targets and spot for me. My old Newcon had finally crapped out and the strong gusting wind made it extremely difficult to get a steady reticle read on any targets.
Shooters doing what shooters do when not behind the rifle: tell stories.
Our first couple of stages involved relatively close targets (400-700m), but they were small and unforgiving of bad wind calls. Also from the new firing positions along the ridge line, these closer targets involved a bit of high(er) angle shooting, which was an added challenge for elevation. One of the most painful stages involved an IPSC target with a hostage shoulder swinger that was shot from three positions. The shooter had to hit the swinger before moving to the next position and a hit on the big IPSC target scored a big penalty. Everyone was biasing their wind calls so if they missed, they missed the IPSC, but again with swirling wind it was a serious challenge.
My SRS overlooking the main shooting area.
As we moved further up the ridge line, the stages seemed to get more and more difficult yet for me personally, I started performing better. With my annoying wind experience from the previous days, I had finally started to clue in on how it was flowing through the area. This was initially frustrating to me because I should know better having had an Army career that involved some of the best precision rifle training at the time and now a civilian career that involves computational physics - I should be able figure out multiple wind bands and do the vector math!.
Jayson and Tony shooting one of the earlier stages.
The terrain at the firing points varried at each stage, with some being very rocky and making it difficult to get a stable shooting platform in the wind while others being soft flattened grass. The angles also changed, with us sometimes laying prone and shooting downwards, while other times laying at a down angle and trying to shoot outward. Either way it was an added challenge at times.
Simon shooting the other SRS in New Zealand, a .300WM in this case.
Continued below....
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