The day dawned cold and rainy as Jbar awoke to the irritating sound of his alarm clock at 6:30am. He stumbled out to the kitchen and brewed up a pot of coffee. Whilst the coffee was brewing, he dug out his Uberti 1866 .38 spl., his Winchester M97, his Baikal coach gun, and a pair of .357 Blackhawks. After pouring a cup of coffee, he went back downstairs and selected three boxes of 12g AA's and four boxes of pistol/rifle ammo. Whilst sipping his coffee, he gathered up the proper leather and dress accoutrements for the day, and set off for the range about 8:00am. Upon arriving at the range, he loaded his guns into his hokey golf cart cum gun cart and headed off to the registration table. After posses were selected, he proceeded to his starting stage, opened up a box of ammo and started filling his loading block... WTH? .45's?? Uh oh.
Fortunately I was able to share a pair of very nicely tuned Colt SAA .45's and a .45 lever gun with another shooter. On the first stage, I unleashed a few rounds from his M94 and suddenly had a problem where I squeezed the trigger and the hammer wouldn't drop. I let the gun down from my shoulder, quickly checked the goofy crossbolt safety... it was off... back up to my shoulder... still no go bang. I jacked out the live round, shot a couple more, and experienced the same problem... OK, the light finally went on , and I squeezed the lever another fraction of an inch to engage the damn safety thingie underneath it.
My time on this stage was horrible and I already had a miss to boot. The pressure was off now, and I couldn't do much worse, so I just shot the next five stages like I didn't much care... not a single miss the rest of the match! In the end, I placed first in class (Modern, but shot with traditional revolvers), and FIRST OVERALL! I beat the second place overall by a full 30 seconds, and I've never outshot this guy before. In all fairness, only sixteen people braved the elements to shoot the match though. A fun shoot, even in the cold & rain.
September 17, 2005, 06:44 PM
