Now that I am finally in one spot for a few minutes and able to collect my thoughts:
First off, a big thanks to Jamey Williams, who runs this match. He does an outstanding job of pulling in sponsors for the prize table (there were some excellent prizes given away, I'm sure he'll post the full list when he has a chance to breath) and putting on the match. Herding cats across 4 relays is not an easy job, but the match runs very smoothly. I've listed the aggregate results by class and overall below for those that want the TLDR version.
The Friday team match was well attended, with several Open and several F-TR teams facing off. I did not get a copy of the results to post and I don't want to post winning teams with only the few member names that I remember named, so I'll try to get that and post it as soon as I can.
Deep Creek, for me, is one of those ranges that can frustratingly subtle conditions - coming from my own home 1000 yard range of Rattlesnake, which is somewhat notorious for NOT being subtle, I find it easy to overcompensate for what the mirage is showing me at Deep Creek. That is - when it's actually showing. Towards the last relays on Saturday and again on Sunday, there were relays where the wind was blowing (hard for Deep Creek anyhow), the flags were conflicting, and yet there was not an *ounce* of mirage to read, which I personally found the easiest and most reliable indicator on that range. Many shooters took a beating on those relays, as Monte mentioned.
We had a lot of great cross discipline shooters that shot the match and did very well - from the Benchrest ranks, PRS, new-to-competition-but-not-shooting shooters, as well as names that you see pop up on some of the other regional and national competitions around the country and world.
This match gets tougher to get into every year - when I shot it three years ago, there were plenty of spots. Last year was pretty full and this year was a full complement with some talk about "infiltrating" shooters into the relays that wanted to get in on it. Luckily, everyone that wanted to shoot, got to shooter and the whole thing came off well. But, my guess is that early entries will be in order if you plan on attending in the future.
Lastly - there were some *very* near misses on individual National Records this year. Two shooters came within one point of tying the NR for Palma format (Open) and outright beating it on X's (Open). I thought for sure it was going to fall. If you are looking to make a run on a National Record, Deep Creek is the place to do it.
Aggs are out of a best possible 1050-105X.
F-TR:
- MASTER
- Don Erpenbach - 1015 - 31X **GOLD**
- Justin Covey - 1012 - 30X **SILVER**
- Monte Milanuk - 1012 - 25X **BRONZE**
- EXPERT
- Randell Van Sant - 1011 - 35X **1EX**
- SS/MK
- Kari Frisbey - 993 - 19X ** 1SS**
- F - Field Rifle (This is a division that Jamey invented that limits shooters to a Harris style bipod, encouraging shooters to compete with a typical hunting or field rifle)
- Steve Kreyenhagen - 985-21X **1FIELD**
F-OPEN:
- HM
- Jay Christopherson - 1041 - 59X **GOLD**
- Robert Hoppe - 1039 - 61X **SILVER**
- Chris Ford - 1032 - 40X **1HM**
- MASTER
- Tod Hendricks - 1035 - 53X **BRONZE**
- Christopher Bosse - 1030 - 48X **1MA**
- EXPERT
- Praveen Kumar - 1020 - 35X **1EX**
- SS/MK
- Devin Wiggett - 1006 - 24X **1SS**
Again, excellent shooting by all and big thanks to all the sponsors that provided excellent prizes for the table!
