Match Report - 10/10/10 "Ten Pins"

Match Report - 10/10/10 - "Ten Pins"

Today's bowling pin match went off quite well if I do say so myself, but I can see some changes are going to be necessary. Fourteen people showed up to shoot the match (not counting me), and this was the first month where we shot a .22 rimfire class. Five of the fourteen brought a .22 to shoot in addition to their centerfire guns, and one shooter brought two different .45's to shoot, so there were a total of 20 entries (plus mine).

I ran out of entry sheets!

In agreement with the shooters, we had only three qualifying runs per shooter with their centerfire pistols instead of five, then we went straight to the .22 competition. Instead of running a .22 classifier, I just lined up two shooters against each other and ran one "practice" round to see what kind of differential we were looking at. From that I set a handicap, and we ran a double-elimination tournament. John Higgins with an iron-sighted S&W model 41 took the honors, competing against "Doc" O'Hanlon shooting a Browning Buckmark with a red-dot. Best match of the day, though was this one, filmed by John O'C with his cell phone:

I wish I could tell you who was shooting, but that match was a dead-even tie at just over five seconds.

After the .22 competition we started the centerfire class, running a single-elimination competition due to time constraints. I lasted two whole rounds before I was eliminated. The match eventually ended up with Jim Burnette shooting against Phil Roberts. Jim has a long history shooting bowling pin matches and has an original Clark custom compensated 1911 chambered in John Moses Browning's (PBUH) .45ACP. Phil was shooting an uncompensated STI hi-cap 1911 in .40 S&W. Jim won the first round, but Phil pulled it out in the last two for the win.

John O'C drove down from Chandler for the match, and as I mentioned, provided the video above. He won the drawing at the end of the match and took home the $21, which might actually cover the cost of his gas for the trip.

I want to thank everyone for coming, and for helping set up, run, and tear down afterwards. It makes everything run much more smoothly.

I think for next month's match we will stay with single-elimination, but we will go to a best 3 out of 5 competition rather than best 2 out of 3. The idea here is to come out and shoot, and if you got taken out in the first or second round, you didn't get to shoot much. Again, we will stay with the three runs for time for the centerfire shooters, and one side-by-side "practice" run for those competing in .22. (I may have to drag out my MkII and join in on that one. Or maybe my Single-Six...)

Overall, everyone seemed to have a good time, but I'll keep trying to improve the match and pull in more shooters. The next match will be held November 14 at 8:00AM at the Tucson Rifle Club.