2011 Tennessee Mid-Range Prone and F-Class State Championship
October 22-23, 2011
Memphis Sport Shooting Association, Lakeland, TN
First let me say thank you to all those who spent time preparing the range, making new targets, insuring that all the target carriers were working properly, and helped make the match one of the best held at our range! There were probably 20 people involved in different areas. A special thanks goes to Ron Krelstein, who ran the match allowing me to shoot.
The weather couldn't have been much better for shooting. Temps were around 45 to 50 at the start of each day with the high's in the 70's. Saturday was mostly sunny with a slight tail wind that slowly switched back and forth with good mirage. Sunday was overcast with almost no wind to speak of and no mirage, although a light rain came in during the 600 yard stage. The rain was a non-issue due to the new covered line extension that allowed all competitors to shoot from under cover. Overall, beautiful shooting weather! After match #3 on Saturday, there was an informal 2-man team match with 8 teams representing all the categories. Ken Dickerman and Chris Anderson took the F-Open title with a 398-28X, Joe Sturtevant and Bill Madsen took the F-TR title with a 387-14X, David Mayfield and Bob Horn took the Match Rifle title with a 396-28X (David shot an incredible 200-18X!), and finally, the combo of Brad Davidson and Mike Dacus took the Service Rifle title with a 363-7X. Following the shooting, everyone enjoyed a great Bar-B-Que dinner put together by my wife, Roxie.
There were 55 competitors for both days with 52 shooting Saturday and 46 shooting Sunday. There was about an equal portion of Prone and F-Class competitors that made setting relays pretty easy. We had folks come from all around the region with the farthest two coming in from Central Texas and Northern Illinois. We had people come in from Kentucky, Alabama, Arkansas, Mississippi, Texas, Illinois, and of course, Tennessee. Many of our regular Mississippi shooters were at the MS F-Class State Championship that was unfortunately held on the same weekend. Hopefully next year we can avoid the conflict.
The scores reflected the conditions... If you weren't clean on a target, you probably weren't in the lead! It's tough when you end the first day with a 599-34x and find yourself in third place! That just goes to show what great competition we have here. Saturday ended with good high scores across the board and 8 National Records being established or broken. Good stuff. Sunday, the competition was even stiffer with higher overall scores and 11 National Records being broken, several from the previous day! So, once again, this little range in Memphis established or broke a large number of records. 19 to be exact...
We had a good diverse showing of Juniors, Seniors, Grand Seniors, Women and Police shooters as well as us plain ole Civilians. 6 Juniors shot this weekend with 3 shooting service rifles, two shooting F-TR and one shooting F-Open. Conner Godbold broke the 300 yard F-TR Junior record with a 196-4x in his first match ever. Yes, his FIRST match! Not to be outdone, Michele Lockhart, in her third match, broke the Junior and Women F-Open record with a 197-11x @ 300 yards and the Junior record with a 192-6x @ 500 yards on Saturday, followed on Sunday by shattering her own record with a 198-9x @ 500 yards. Did I mention this was her third match?? Colt Ellis, in his second match, tied the record at 300 yards for score, but came up just 1 X short. It's great to see junior shooters like this starting out so well in Tennessee. I'm sure we'll be hearing more about them in the future!
In Prone, David Mayfield broke the Open Any Sight record at 500 yards with a 200-17X (shooting Palma!); Jeff Bartlett broke the Senior Any Sight Aggregate record with a 599-44X besting the previous high of 597-32X. In F-Open, in addition to the records broken by Michele, Jason Pagan established 3 Police records on Saturday and followed that by breaking them all on Sunday; and Chris Anderson shot an incredible 200-18X @ 500 yards beating the previous Open record by 2 X's. He couldn't understand what all the fuss was about when the pits shut down while Jim Fowler and others cut the center out of his target! (By the way Jim, you owe me for a target!) In F-TR, Chris Umfress established the Police record at 300 yards and broke the Police 500 yard record on Saturday followed up by breaking both again on Sunday; Jim Murphy broke the Senior record at 500 yards with 198-10X and Joe Sturtevant broke the Senior record at 600 yards with a 199-11x. Quite good shooting I'd say! Congratulate them when you see them. They earned it.
Competition was stiff at the end of day one, with several competitors within a point of the lead on each category on Saturday. The field separated slightly on Sunday with the leaders shooting cleans in F-Open and Prone. After all the scores were tallied, these were the Championship winners:
Non-Resident Winners:
F-Open: Jim Fowler (1199-74X)
F-TR: Chris Umfress (1182-61X)
Match: Keith Stephens (1199-76X)
Service: Robert Cantrell (566-10X)
Tennessee State Champions:
F-Open: Jim Sokolowski (1187-57X)
F-TR: Joe Sturtevant (1179-59X)
Match: Doug Fletcher (1196-74X)
Service: Brad Davidson (1076-19X)
On the equipment front, you can just imagine the lineup: On the prone side, there were service rifles with Krieger, Satern, Wilson and Douglas barrels and the match rifles included Krieger, Brux, Bartlein and Pac-Nor barrels attached to Barnard, RPA, Savage, Stiller and Remington actions. On the F-Class side, There were Broughton, Krieger, Bartlein and Hart barrels attached to BAT, Kelbly, Remington clones and Savages. One rifle that was interesting to me was Michele Lockhart's. Her dad Troy assembled a pre-fit Criterion barrel in 6mmBR onto a Savage 110 action. Now I've known Criterion for their service rifle replacement barrels, but this was the first time I have seen one of their pre-fit Savage or Remington barrels. Obviously, it takes a great shooter to set National Records but the equipment must be great as well. Given the results, I've got a couple of Savage's in the safe that may soon see Criterion upgrades!
In the end, it was a great weekend. Awesome weather, solid competition, good food, great fellowship, making new friends, seeing several juniors getting started, many awards, 19 National Records... Just one this was missing. There was no barrel chunking contest! Don't worry though, I already have folks willing to provide worn out barrels for next year as we establish the “Jim Fowler/Union Pacific Railroad Barrel Chunking Awardâ€. I'm still working on the details, but there will be points for distance and style, with the entry fees going to charity. I hope to see you next year!
Stay safe and shoot well. May God bless you all.
Doug
October 22-23, 2011
Memphis Sport Shooting Association, Lakeland, TN
First let me say thank you to all those who spent time preparing the range, making new targets, insuring that all the target carriers were working properly, and helped make the match one of the best held at our range! There were probably 20 people involved in different areas. A special thanks goes to Ron Krelstein, who ran the match allowing me to shoot.
The weather couldn't have been much better for shooting. Temps were around 45 to 50 at the start of each day with the high's in the 70's. Saturday was mostly sunny with a slight tail wind that slowly switched back and forth with good mirage. Sunday was overcast with almost no wind to speak of and no mirage, although a light rain came in during the 600 yard stage. The rain was a non-issue due to the new covered line extension that allowed all competitors to shoot from under cover. Overall, beautiful shooting weather! After match #3 on Saturday, there was an informal 2-man team match with 8 teams representing all the categories. Ken Dickerman and Chris Anderson took the F-Open title with a 398-28X, Joe Sturtevant and Bill Madsen took the F-TR title with a 387-14X, David Mayfield and Bob Horn took the Match Rifle title with a 396-28X (David shot an incredible 200-18X!), and finally, the combo of Brad Davidson and Mike Dacus took the Service Rifle title with a 363-7X. Following the shooting, everyone enjoyed a great Bar-B-Que dinner put together by my wife, Roxie.
There were 55 competitors for both days with 52 shooting Saturday and 46 shooting Sunday. There was about an equal portion of Prone and F-Class competitors that made setting relays pretty easy. We had folks come from all around the region with the farthest two coming in from Central Texas and Northern Illinois. We had people come in from Kentucky, Alabama, Arkansas, Mississippi, Texas, Illinois, and of course, Tennessee. Many of our regular Mississippi shooters were at the MS F-Class State Championship that was unfortunately held on the same weekend. Hopefully next year we can avoid the conflict.
The scores reflected the conditions... If you weren't clean on a target, you probably weren't in the lead! It's tough when you end the first day with a 599-34x and find yourself in third place! That just goes to show what great competition we have here. Saturday ended with good high scores across the board and 8 National Records being established or broken. Good stuff. Sunday, the competition was even stiffer with higher overall scores and 11 National Records being broken, several from the previous day! So, once again, this little range in Memphis established or broke a large number of records. 19 to be exact...
We had a good diverse showing of Juniors, Seniors, Grand Seniors, Women and Police shooters as well as us plain ole Civilians. 6 Juniors shot this weekend with 3 shooting service rifles, two shooting F-TR and one shooting F-Open. Conner Godbold broke the 300 yard F-TR Junior record with a 196-4x in his first match ever. Yes, his FIRST match! Not to be outdone, Michele Lockhart, in her third match, broke the Junior and Women F-Open record with a 197-11x @ 300 yards and the Junior record with a 192-6x @ 500 yards on Saturday, followed on Sunday by shattering her own record with a 198-9x @ 500 yards. Did I mention this was her third match?? Colt Ellis, in his second match, tied the record at 300 yards for score, but came up just 1 X short. It's great to see junior shooters like this starting out so well in Tennessee. I'm sure we'll be hearing more about them in the future!
In Prone, David Mayfield broke the Open Any Sight record at 500 yards with a 200-17X (shooting Palma!); Jeff Bartlett broke the Senior Any Sight Aggregate record with a 599-44X besting the previous high of 597-32X. In F-Open, in addition to the records broken by Michele, Jason Pagan established 3 Police records on Saturday and followed that by breaking them all on Sunday; and Chris Anderson shot an incredible 200-18X @ 500 yards beating the previous Open record by 2 X's. He couldn't understand what all the fuss was about when the pits shut down while Jim Fowler and others cut the center out of his target! (By the way Jim, you owe me for a target!) In F-TR, Chris Umfress established the Police record at 300 yards and broke the Police 500 yard record on Saturday followed up by breaking both again on Sunday; Jim Murphy broke the Senior record at 500 yards with 198-10X and Joe Sturtevant broke the Senior record at 600 yards with a 199-11x. Quite good shooting I'd say! Congratulate them when you see them. They earned it.
Competition was stiff at the end of day one, with several competitors within a point of the lead on each category on Saturday. The field separated slightly on Sunday with the leaders shooting cleans in F-Open and Prone. After all the scores were tallied, these were the Championship winners:
Non-Resident Winners:
F-Open: Jim Fowler (1199-74X)
F-TR: Chris Umfress (1182-61X)
Match: Keith Stephens (1199-76X)
Service: Robert Cantrell (566-10X)
Tennessee State Champions:
F-Open: Jim Sokolowski (1187-57X)
F-TR: Joe Sturtevant (1179-59X)
Match: Doug Fletcher (1196-74X)
Service: Brad Davidson (1076-19X)
On the equipment front, you can just imagine the lineup: On the prone side, there were service rifles with Krieger, Satern, Wilson and Douglas barrels and the match rifles included Krieger, Brux, Bartlein and Pac-Nor barrels attached to Barnard, RPA, Savage, Stiller and Remington actions. On the F-Class side, There were Broughton, Krieger, Bartlein and Hart barrels attached to BAT, Kelbly, Remington clones and Savages. One rifle that was interesting to me was Michele Lockhart's. Her dad Troy assembled a pre-fit Criterion barrel in 6mmBR onto a Savage 110 action. Now I've known Criterion for their service rifle replacement barrels, but this was the first time I have seen one of their pre-fit Savage or Remington barrels. Obviously, it takes a great shooter to set National Records but the equipment must be great as well. Given the results, I've got a couple of Savage's in the safe that may soon see Criterion upgrades!
In the end, it was a great weekend. Awesome weather, solid competition, good food, great fellowship, making new friends, seeing several juniors getting started, many awards, 19 National Records... Just one this was missing. There was no barrel chunking contest! Don't worry though, I already have folks willing to provide worn out barrels for next year as we establish the “Jim Fowler/Union Pacific Railroad Barrel Chunking Awardâ€. I'm still working on the details, but there will be points for distance and style, with the entry fees going to charity. I hope to see you next year!
Stay safe and shoot well. May God bless you all.
Doug
!!! The record couldn't have been set by a better guy!! I want to be the first to sign up for next years charity event ;D Thanks again for your hard work, and congrads to everyone who set their records.
CONGRATS TO CHRIS ANDERSON on setting the 500 F-OPEN 
