I just thought I would come back here and report on the class.
The class took place as planned on Saturday, March 3rd at the Juliff range of Bayou Rifles, Inc. We had 64 registrants in attendance, about a dozen or so had had prior exposure to competition shooting, (they came for the wind clinic,) but the vast majority had never competed in a rifle match and wanted to see for themselves. BRI had 19 volunteers to herd, teach and demo the various aspects of rifle competition. We ran all the registrants through the pits to teach them how to pull targets quickly and efficiently. We ran them through the scoring drill were they scored for 6 volunteer shooters.
We even had a TSRA Junior shooting Service Rifle from different positions, showing how that was done.
The volunteer shooters had been asked to do a lot of funny stuff that occur sometimes in matches; crossfires, misses, "visit the whole target." In the pits, we had also a great time, scoring properly and then not pulling and waiting for the call, mismarking a score, pulling out from under the shooter, etc. We exercised the scorers and the pullers. The radios crackled back and forth. (Yes, I was in the pits and boy did we send up some strange looking targets every once in a while.)
In the afternoon, we assembled at the 1000 yard line and discussed wind basics for about 15-20 minutes; the science of things and how to prepare for a match. Then we broke up into 6 pairs of shooter/coach and the folks assembled around the various groups and listened in as each group would discuss the conditions, decide on how to compensate for the conditions while explaining what they were considering, then after that taking the shot, pointing out things that might have changed during the shot and then figuring out the results of the shot when the target came back up.
We even invited a few people to take a shot or two under the directions of the volunteer pairs. It's always fun to watch someone hitting their first X at 1000 yards.
The weather was absolutely beautiful, winds from the east at 10-20MPH, lots of clouds so very little mirage and temps around 70 or so.
At the end of the day, we awarded a nice competition rifle case graciously donated by Bullets.com and called it a day.
Each registrant was provided with a booklet that contained articles written by Bayou Rifles competitors describing every facet of competition (shoot, scoring, pulling,) lists of equipment from different competitors and some wind reading material provided by Team Bayou and Steve Blair (with his permission.)
The next day, we had the regular 1000 yard match and we had a dozen or more new competitors show up for it. We had a few who needed some help getting on target at 1000 yards but we had a couple of veteran shooters on hand to help them out by reading trace and guiding the shooter onto the target. It also helped that the conditions were similar to the ones on Saturday, but as the day progressed, they go more difficult. The new shooters had a chance to put into practice what they had learned the day before pulling, scoring and shooting and it was actually fun to watch them be hesitant and first and then rapidly gaining confidence, doing well and having fun.
BRI is committed to growing the shooting sports this is an event that we hold at infrequent intervals because of the time commitment, but it's always rewarding to see the number of people attending these events and then coming to play with us after seeing how it's done. We try to demystify competition shooting and ease the entry into the sport for people who would otherwise shy away from it.
We plan on putting the articles written for the class at the BRI website sometime in the near future.
I would challenge other clubs to put on such a class in your area; this is THE ONLY way to grow the sport. I suspect Bayou Rifles, Inc. would be happy to provide the material used electronically. We had mailings, registrations, the booklet and badges for all attendees.
Finally, I want to thank all the volunteers who gave of their time and knowledge (and ammo) instructing new and soon-to-be-new competitors.
and we all had a wind class on Sunday.
