More practice with the 1885 and the .22lr insert. This is practice for a silhouette match that uses .22lr and iron sights to shoot 3/8 scale rams at 75 yards. Today's work went really well. I shot paper Rams at 75 yards and wound up with a 36/40. The record at the clubs that run this match is 39/40. More than 50% of the time a 36 will win the match.  So I am VERY happy.

I did some practice yesterday on the rimram target with the 1885 and Crossno insert. I felt really good about a 13/15 with it. If I had had more time I would have continued. I finished with 11 in a row.

This is a local match, iron sights and single shots using the cowbow sized ram at 75 yards. While the distances are modest and the targets fairly large. You fire your 10 shots on a shared point and in shooter order left to right, so there is the pressure of other shooters waiting on you.

Yesterday, I was able to just bring the rifle up and break the shot in a few seconds. I think the 1.5 month break after highpower did me some good. My previous high with these targets and iron sights was 10/15.

Well the season is over.

Camp Perry had it's good points and bad points. I was able to shoot my highest scores yet in President's 100 and the leg match. But the weren't high enough to make the cuts.

I've taken August and now Sept off. But I am ready to start training again. The winter training plan will be a combination of dryfire, airgun, and smallbore silhouette matches. It's also time to get out the longbow and flintlock. Bow season starts in 3 weeks.

Yesterday I had a really good match at Rivanna Rifle and Pistol Club. It was a beautiful day and I shot my highest match score ever. It was a 459-9x of 500.

Individual scores were 180-1x standing, 93-2x sitting, 93-3x rapid fire prone, and 93-3x slowfire prone. I made some mistakes, but still managed to turn in a solid performance.

This afternoon I went out to do some practice with the rimfire upper (primarily sitting and rapid prone, but I shot a standing string as well). My scores were 90-2x standing, 94-3x sitting, 96-4x sitting, and 95-3x rapid fire prone. I did not shoot a slowfire prone today.

My positions are solid, my hold is improving, I am more picky in sight picture, and more important, my new glasses let me focus on the front sight. It's a good feeling to have things come together and I feel like I am closing in on Master classification. After a year and a half I finally picked up an NRA scorebook so that I can have a temp classification. I think that I have something like 320 shots in at the NRA over almost 2 years and still no initial classification.

A new day.

Another new high. But it came with a major asterick. I started a 20 shot stage with a score that made me unhappy. I pulled off a new high to shoot my average.

Standing: 82-0, 98-2

Rapid Prone(2-6): 75 of 80

Today's Practice:

Standing: 91-1x, 94-3x

Sitting: 95-2x

All shot with new glasses, both eyes open using a paper blinder in sweatband.

One of the things that has really helped my shooting in the past few weeks is the realization that the glasses that I was using basically gave me 20/20 distance vision. The problem with that is that I was not able to keep focus on the front sight. I began testing a  week and a half ago with +1.5 diopter readers. That worked. I also ordered a set of sports glasses from Zenni Optical with the left lens for distance and the right for the hyperfocal distance of an AR (about 40 inches or so). With good eyesight (like I used to have) this would be +.75 diopter  with my current situation it is +1.5 diopter. I need .75 for distance and an additional .75 for hyperfocal for the front sight on a 20inch barrel.

With almost 2 weeks of testing I am shooting better than ever. It's funny how being able to REALLY focus on the front sight lets you shoot well. But front sight focus is not one of the fundementals of marksmanship for nothing.