Talk about the trials and tribulations of Field Target competition!
The latest scores show US Team member Tyler Patner in first place on the leader board with a total score of 78 after the second day. And this in spite of having to borrow an air rifle as his own had been lost en route to Poland. Great shooting Tyler!
But, some competitors have not yet yet completed the second day’s course (as is explained below), so that may be subject to some change tomorrow…
In the PCP Veteran class, Team USA member Greg Suave is in second place. But he has no posted “Day 2” score yet, so may well overhaul the current leader when he completes that stage. And yet another Team USA member, Peter Brooks is in Third Place, right behind Greg. Great shooting from you both!
Take it away Hector…
Below we see Team Germany waiting for the off.
Given yesterdays’ delays, it would have been logical to start at 8:00 AM, instead of 9:00 AM. However the organizers felt that it was not proper to change the schedule if they could not inform everyone about it. Just one example of the trials and tribulations of Field Target competition!
I think they acted in the best of faiths and we have to applaud them because they are protecting the weakest link. And that is admirable.
After arriving to the range to check, yet again, the rifles, we waited for the whistle blows to start (one long whistle blow means the range goes cold and two mean that the range is going hot).
People congregate naturally by teams, and so we had Team USA, then Team Canada and Team Germany, while other Teams started to trickle in to the Shooters’ Meeting place.
Below we see Team USA waiting to start. That’s Tyler Patner standing.
But there was not going to be any shooters’ meeting, we were instructed to go directly to the last lane we shot to complete yesterday’s course.
And we did, so by 10:00 AM we were tackling the new course. Now 66 shots in a day is not unheard of in the USA, what is unheard of is to have to walk 3 miles over and over again (you get to your starting lane, then go around the course, then get out to the parking and sight-in range).
So, it’s a lot of walking up and down, in the sun, and in a terrain that actually is trying to mummify you.
As the day went by, we realized that the White course we had shot had been the tame on in relation to shooting positions and locations in the Black and Blue courses!
In one of the lanes, we had to shoot from a “perch”. My friend Alexandre seems to be asking himself: “And you are expecting me to shoot from HERE?”
There were lots of places where part of the challenge was to find the targets themselves. I’m posting a couple of pictures to exemplify that.
Although my rifle was shooting real well, some shots were being pulled to the left, and I had found no reason to suspect of anything but myself to blame for it. But on one of those casings and un-casings, a tell tale part was found in the rifle case…
Of course I immediately recognized it as one of my trigger’s parts. And so, preparations had to be made.
One of the spare beds was prepared as operating room. Tools were out and the disassembly of a perfectly working gun was started.
Luckily, the part was easy to find and once replaced in its place, we could all relax on the way home.
After tonight’s’ good rest, we should do better tomorrow.
Tomorrow is going to be a complicated day because the PCP shooters had a bad time with some torrential rains and thunderstorms, and so they would have to shoot about 15 lanes of today’s course, plus the 25 lanes of tomorrow’s course.
But these are the trials and tribulations of Field Target competition for you. You either adapt or you die…
You can see yesterday’s story from Hector here.
The post The Trials And Tribulations Of Field Target Competition – Hector Medina’s Personal View Of The 2018 WFTC appeared first on Hard Air Magazine.