DrThunder88 Shoots F-Class
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As I’m sure many of you know, I have been endeavoring of late to worm my way into long range shooting. I attended BangSteel’s Long Range Rifle Class in July, and now I am recently returned from the Michigan Rifle and Pistol Association’s Long Range and F-Class Regional Championship, a 1000 yard, 100 shot affair at Camp Grayling in the northern Lower Peninsula.
How’d I get talked into this?
One of the cops I work with is a shooter of many disciplines, including F-Class. I had told him about my recent foray into long range, and he thought I might be interested in joining his and another cop’s annual schlep up north to compete. I had never shot in any formal match but was excited to get onto one of my state’s only 1000 yard ranges.
The guys I was with were not highly competitive in F-Class but were more than competent shooters. They also knew the ropes of participating in the matches, which was helpful to an absolute neophyte. The process and procedure of entering and shooting in matches had always intimidated me slightly. Both were shooting Remington 700s in .308 Winchester built by a local smith. They would both be shooting F-T/R, whereas I would be F-Open.
Taxis is back, Sis
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...And Bro. My rifle and ammo were set up the same way they were on the BangSteel trip. The only change since my last correspondence is the bipod. Formerly a 9-13” BLACKHAWK! tilt-adjustable bipod, I switched to a Caldwell 6-9” tilting pod for the match. The tilt lock is an upgraded handle, a welcome change to the original knob.
I had also spent a good deal of time in the lead up to the match preparing ballistic tables based on density altitude. I assembled this in a handy, little three ring binder, the pages protected from the elements in plastic sleeves. Ultimately this turned out to be utterly worthless since my drop was the same on a fall morning in lower Michigan as it was on a summer’s afternoon in the mountains of Virginia. Go figure. The windage data was also less than helpful for most of the shooting for reasons I'll get into later.
Another equipment change has been to my shooting mat. The Midway-brand mat didn’t play much part in my previous adventure, but it figured in heavily here. One problem I noticed while practicing for the match was how hard it was to consistently load the bipod, even on the grippy, rubber surface of the mat. At BangSteel I was also having trouble keeping a load on the bipod due to the rubber feet wanting to walk on the carpet. I addressed this on my mat by sewing a length of 1.5” nylon webbing onto the front edge of my mat, similar to the deluxe Midway shooting mat. Aside from a rather stupid layout error, this worked very well.
The match
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As the day got closer it became more and more apparent that we would be getting wet. And we did. Sometime Friday night into Saturday morning the skies opened and the 7:15 AM squadding time was met with constant rain. My crew arrived in time to find that the match would not begin until the rain abated, which was expected to be in a few hours.
Another side effect of the rain was one of the paid target pullers (my friends had convinced me to go that route with them) had bailed and one of the paid puller squads would need to do pit duty after all. The match director worked out a solution and one of my would-be squadmates volunteered himself and his son for the pits.
At around 10 AM the rain slowed down enough for the iron sights shooters to get a clear view of the targets, NRA LR targets for them and LR FC targets for us. I took to target 42 with my friend from work and two other F-T/R shooters. He was assigned relay 2, and I would shoot after him in relay 3. I learned about scoring by watching him score for the relay 1 shooter and watching the relay 1 shooter score for him. When the relay 4 shooter took to the line, I was ready to take my place behind the spotting scope.
Before that happened, however, it was my turn to shoot. I grabbed my gear and placed it on the line. The match director called for the targets to be raised signaling the three minute prep time at the line. I hooked the feet of my bipod under the nylon webbing and assumed a comfortable prone position behind the gun. I popped my single-shot adapter in the magazine well and opened the scope caps to the unforgiving, intermittently raining atmosphere, the wind occasionally shifting from left-to-right to quartering into my face.
The match format called for unlimited sighters within the 30 minute slow-fire firing period, but I was confident I had a good dope for elevation and could figure out the wind between direction shifts with just a few shots before calling for score to be kept. As I mentioned, my dope book was kind of worthless, as my elevation did not seem to change despite a 1500 foot drop in altitude and 40 degree F temperature plunge. Unfortunately, I didn’t know that, and dialed 7.6 mils as predicted by my charts, which put me well above the waterline but still on paper.
Winds of suck and fail
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Windage? I don’t even want to talk about windage, but either the numbers in my book or my ability to judge the wind were utter garbage. Four sighters into my first match and I was finally on paper and dialing in. I found with 1.5 mils on the windage knob I was able to hold on the windward side of the 9-ring when the wind strengthened and right in the center when it was steady.
We shot three matches that day. By the time the third match rolled around, the sky had lightened considerably but the winds had kicked into overdrive. “Gusts up to 25mph,” the weather forecast had warned, and even with my relative ignorance of the wind, I’d believe it got every mph predicted. The wind flags were pegged pretty much the entire time, but it ended up being one of my better matches of the weekend. When the gusts came barreling across the range, I’d put my head down on my mat and wait. I still finished with plenty of time.
I ended the first day with an aggregate score of 538-7x out of a possible 600 points. I don’t remember any individual match score, but the average was almost 180 per match, I was well ahead of my goal to score 750 on the weekend.
Sunday the weather was nicer, but my shooting was worse. The crystal skies disguised the horrible truth about the less severe but highly variable wind. The flags were all deflated completely when we arrived at sunup but had started their merry dance before the first shots were fired. Relay 3 was called to the line to begin the first match. A few sighters confirmed that my cold, dirty gun was still in the neighborhood and that the 1.5 mil windage preset was unnecessary. The gentle wind, I figured, could be compensated for easily by hold off.
Wrong. The wind flags' merry dance evolved into a mocking jig, vacillating 90 degrees almost at the drop of a hat at different times on different parts of the range. Mirage was even less helpful, it seemed. Due to what I can only assume was an optical illusion caused by the trees directly behind the targets, mirage always looked like it was moving, always moving the same direction, and always at the same speed. Looking at mirage down on the ground was more edifying, though it revealed what the flags did: the wind was totally nuts. At one point I managed to hit the x ring three times in a row, but the rest of my shots seemed to have no stable pattern that I could compensate for. I only averaged 160-some points on Sunday, which was better than my arbitrary goal required but still disappointing overall.
Oh, and I also think I crossfired, which resulted in a miss in my last match. I thought it may have been a bad round, but my spotter saw target 40 drop into the pits around the time I called for my target to be marked and the shooters complaining that they hadn’t yet fired. It was embarrassing because that wasn’t even the target directly next to mine and obnoxious because target 40 came up with a 9 after the crossfire. Still, it only would have brought my average up to 170 on the day. I can't blame the wind for that.
The end of the day
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My final aggregate score was 871-14x, and I was not displeased with the result. It also has provided me with a good baseline for comparing my progress in future matches. Perhaps even more importantly, I was happy to be in the company of friends who were able to walk me through the process of participating in a match, making the process seem a whole lot more accessible.
It was also a great deal of fun, I have to say. The rain was annoying when it was happening, but we were all dressed for the weather. By the time the Sun came out, I had to be reminded of how gray and dross the day wEven my tender shoulder is a pleasant reminder of one of the most frustrating shooting experiences I've ever had.
