Thursday, April 06, 2006
Hunter Class
We have been shooting Hunter FT at our club (Tennessee Valley Airgunners ) now for about three years. Since we started shooting Hunter I have always wanted to try shooting Hunter at a major match. Every year I go to Baton Rouge for the Cajun Spring Classic and the past three years I have toyed with the Idea of shooting Hunter class there. Jack Kirkendoll has been shooting it for years with his ProSport and Leupold 3-9x combo and I thought it would be fun to shoot with him. Well, this year I decided that I might think about possibly really shooting Hunter style at the match.
As it turned out, there was enough questions about offering a Hunter Class that the Bayou Airgun Club decided to offer it as a formal class. That sealed the deal for me. I had decided on the way down to the match that I would finally put my beloved HW97 aside for at least one match and give Hunter a go. That lasted well into the first 5 minutes on the sight in range after I had a chance to shoot my HW97. Oh, man, it was shooting so sweet and it kept begging me to shoot it. Now I was torn, I wanted to shoot my HW97 but I also wanted to shoot Hunter. Well, I got my ProSport and sighted it in. It wasn’t shooting as well. The zero seemed to shift around a bit and I kept having an occasional flyer. On top of that the cocking handle started to fall down when I shot it standing. This was a bit troubling and made me lean even more to shooting my match rifle.
Saturday morning I woke up resolved, I was going to shoot Hunter and that was that. That lasted for about a half hour this time once I found out that the loose cocking lever could be a real problem. That only left me with my match rifle. I was still resolved to shoot Hunter. Luckily, I was able to borrow a TX200 from my buddy Wade and off I went with 5 minutes of sight in time to shoot the course.
I knew that shooting Hunter was going to be a completely different experience for me but I didn’t think it would be too bad since we shoot the hunter course at my home club. However trying to hit the smaller kill zones at longer distances was a real challenge. I was very surprised though at well I did even with the smaller kill zones. On Saturday I really struggled with the TX’s trigger for about half the match, I had to adjust it on the fly to more of my liking. Once I got that figured out, I was surprised at how well I did. The closer targets were fairly easy to guess the approximate range and correct hold over/under. I got most all of the distances close enough to hit most of the close targets. The longer targets gave me fits and I totally missed the distances by 5-7 yards which on some of the smaller kills were enough to miss. I had the shooting part down pretty well it was the range estimation and hold over/under that was the hard part to guess.
Before heading out to the course, Jack had given me a little trick in estimating the ranges. The trick was to estimate the range while standing at the lane rather than while sitting. This give a better angle to look at the target and triangulate the distance. Hmm, made sense to my engineering mind so that is what I did. After a few lanes I could see that it worked.
I ended up with a 32 on Saturday with Wade’s TX. I managed to fix my ProSport, as I wrote in my last blog, so I was very happy to shoot it on Sunday. With a day’s experience and my own rifle I felt confident that I would be able to shoot a better score. My ProSport was tuned by Paul Watts and shoots smoothly at 950 fps with a spread under 10 fps. It is a wonderful airgun and I totally enjoy shooting it. At that velocity I am not ½” high or low from 10 yards to 50 and only 1” low at 55. That makes the range estimation a lot easier!
Sunday was a day of ups and downs. I made some incredible shots only to miss some really easy shots. I had a string of about 5-6 lanes where I cleaned the lane except for my last shot. It was me, I just seemed to flinch or move just as I release my shot. I probably wasn’t on my natural point of aim but didn’t relax enough to know realize that. I still did a lot better overall. Most of my misses were from guessing the range wrong, there were errors in my shooting mechanics. I ended up with a 37 of 50. Over all I shot a 69 which I didn’t think too bad for my first try at Hunter.
There were a total of four of us shooting Hunter class, I was second overall to my arch springgun nemesis Rod Bradley. Rod shot an incredible 80 of 100 on the weekend! That was really impressive especially considering he was shooting a .20 HW97. He is a hunter at heart and his shooting and range skills really shown through at that match.
I totally enjoyed shooting Hunter class. It was challenging in new ways and more challenging than the traditional field target. The shooting skill was still critical but so was ranging accurately. The whole idea of guess and shoot with out rangefinding and dialing was very refreshing. I was able to sit down, shoot and get up within two minutes. The only times I went over that was if I was talking or goofing around. Hunter class was a real breath of fresh air and I think I am going to have to give it a try again in the future.
As it turned out, there was enough questions about offering a Hunter Class that the Bayou Airgun Club decided to offer it as a formal class. That sealed the deal for me. I had decided on the way down to the match that I would finally put my beloved HW97 aside for at least one match and give Hunter a go. That lasted well into the first 5 minutes on the sight in range after I had a chance to shoot my HW97. Oh, man, it was shooting so sweet and it kept begging me to shoot it. Now I was torn, I wanted to shoot my HW97 but I also wanted to shoot Hunter. Well, I got my ProSport and sighted it in. It wasn’t shooting as well. The zero seemed to shift around a bit and I kept having an occasional flyer. On top of that the cocking handle started to fall down when I shot it standing. This was a bit troubling and made me lean even more to shooting my match rifle.
Saturday morning I woke up resolved, I was going to shoot Hunter and that was that. That lasted for about a half hour this time once I found out that the loose cocking lever could be a real problem. That only left me with my match rifle. I was still resolved to shoot Hunter. Luckily, I was able to borrow a TX200 from my buddy Wade and off I went with 5 minutes of sight in time to shoot the course.
I knew that shooting Hunter was going to be a completely different experience for me but I didn’t think it would be too bad since we shoot the hunter course at my home club. However trying to hit the smaller kill zones at longer distances was a real challenge. I was very surprised though at well I did even with the smaller kill zones. On Saturday I really struggled with the TX’s trigger for about half the match, I had to adjust it on the fly to more of my liking. Once I got that figured out, I was surprised at how well I did. The closer targets were fairly easy to guess the approximate range and correct hold over/under. I got most all of the distances close enough to hit most of the close targets. The longer targets gave me fits and I totally missed the distances by 5-7 yards which on some of the smaller kills were enough to miss. I had the shooting part down pretty well it was the range estimation and hold over/under that was the hard part to guess.
Before heading out to the course, Jack had given me a little trick in estimating the ranges. The trick was to estimate the range while standing at the lane rather than while sitting. This give a better angle to look at the target and triangulate the distance. Hmm, made sense to my engineering mind so that is what I did. After a few lanes I could see that it worked.
I ended up with a 32 on Saturday with Wade’s TX. I managed to fix my ProSport, as I wrote in my last blog, so I was very happy to shoot it on Sunday. With a day’s experience and my own rifle I felt confident that I would be able to shoot a better score. My ProSport was tuned by Paul Watts and shoots smoothly at 950 fps with a spread under 10 fps. It is a wonderful airgun and I totally enjoy shooting it. At that velocity I am not ½” high or low from 10 yards to 50 and only 1” low at 55. That makes the range estimation a lot easier!
Sunday was a day of ups and downs. I made some incredible shots only to miss some really easy shots. I had a string of about 5-6 lanes where I cleaned the lane except for my last shot. It was me, I just seemed to flinch or move just as I release my shot. I probably wasn’t on my natural point of aim but didn’t relax enough to know realize that. I still did a lot better overall. Most of my misses were from guessing the range wrong, there were errors in my shooting mechanics. I ended up with a 37 of 50. Over all I shot a 69 which I didn’t think too bad for my first try at Hunter.
There were a total of four of us shooting Hunter class, I was second overall to my arch springgun nemesis Rod Bradley. Rod shot an incredible 80 of 100 on the weekend! That was really impressive especially considering he was shooting a .20 HW97. He is a hunter at heart and his shooting and range skills really shown through at that match.
I totally enjoyed shooting Hunter class. It was challenging in new ways and more challenging than the traditional field target. The shooting skill was still critical but so was ranging accurately. The whole idea of guess and shoot with out rangefinding and dialing was very refreshing. I was able to sit down, shoot and get up within two minutes. The only times I went over that was if I was talking or goofing around. Hunter class was a real breath of fresh air and I think I am going to have to give it a try again in the future.
