Aust V's Texas

Hi fellow fly shooters i have been on consultation with Mike Cockcroft from Pine Valley Benchrest club to arrange an international competition between Australian fly shooters at Canberra's shoot in September and Pine Valley will host their shoot at the same time. It will be a postal shoot between the two countries and should be a lot of fun.

At this stage thinking to arrange certificates for placings ranked regardless of country. I am going to invite Mike to post some pics on the forum of the Pine Valley range and hopefully Russel or Dave can post some of the Canberra Range. This is in no way going to interfere or change the Canberra shoot it is just an idea to grow the sport. I am very happy that America have shown interest in this match. I have sent one of my fly patches over there for Mike to have  look at.

What are your thoughts folks.

all the very best

Les

Bloody Oath Les......real good stuff.

To bring an international flavour to our game would be fantastic.

Very well done.

Belly

Sounds good Les, it will work well.

Maybe point the US guys to the electronic time calls as fheese make it really easy to run as you know.

Will have to go grab some photos for you.



Dave.

Hi Les,

Great idea,  adds some international flavour and fun.... why not.

Maybe Belly can give you a handful of Canberra Fly shoot images that capture the range, the people, the flags and atmosphere at a Canberra Shoot.

Voice calls are on the home page, and I have offered to set them up a score spreadsheet for their event.

Cheers

Anthony

Also about fair..... Texas v Australia.... One state v a whole country..... similar population (circa 24m each) and I bet they have more shooting competitors  :)

Great way of promoting  the Fly worldwide, should be very interesting to see how the Yanks go against you guys.. good luck to all..looking forward to see how it  unfolds.

Cheers Jason

We are Texans not Yanks!!  Yanks live much further north and talk with a strange accent. We are excited to have our first Fly Shoot. Hopefully this will be the first of many. I am working with printer to get targets made and getting range ready. The only thing that is different is the sighter plate under each target. Travis with Alloy Targets is cutting them out and making the hanger bars for us. It helps when the steel target manufacturer also shoots at your matches.
Several years ago I contacted your association about having matches here and they sent me three targets to look at. I had to put the match on the back burner for a few years but we are ready to go forward with it.
I believe the shooters are getting excited about the match and the prospect of numerous matches next year.
Our first match is the same weekend as Canberra. We propose a postal match between our shoot and Canberra. All the scores can be posted and we will see who comes out on top!!!  
Should be fun. Hopefully y'all won't take losing to hard.
Best regards
Mike

Ahh, Mike. I feel your pain.....we have Yanks down here as well, only we call them Queenslanders......

This "shoot off" is a great idea & We'all  won't take losing too hard if that's the way it has to be,...after all we have rule 10 to consider,  i.e. if you don't have a good time you're disqualified!!!

Be sure though that we're "Fixin to" give y'all a walloping & we might even have Taco's for breakfast & T-Bone's for lunch to honour the occasion.

Regards,
Belly

Also, I'm "Fixin to" send you some pics, if you could send me an email  to   bellphotography@bigpond.com  I'll bounce it back to you.

Sorry Mike I stand corrected...It should be interesting to see how you 'Texans' go against OZ...

Y'all remember to bring your A game!!!

Cheers Jason

this sounds like a great idea and looking forward to the results

i had some interest from some blokes it the US the other year to about our fly shooting through accurate shooter and i sent them a few of targets to. sounds like this could get interesting

keep us up to date
cheers
pethy

 

Looking forward to this match. Should be interesting. Hopefully we get the hang of it quickly.
Joe

G'day Mike and Joe,
                                     If there's anything we can do to help from here, please just ask, there are a few tools we use to run the event that make it very simple, the time calls and Anthony's score sheet make it so easy to administer that it is now an enjoyable and low stress event to run. I have some paper based tools that allow me to track nominations, equipment sharing and do a bench draw to prevent "lefties" and "righties" bumping shoulders when there isn't much space between benches. All this is available electronically to provide.

How many competitors do you think you might get to your shoot? How many benches do you intend to run?

Last September we had just less than 50 individual shooters (ten shot both classes) and that is just a little below average for the last few years at the Pro-Cal Challenge (Canberra's September event)

We are lucky to have a target crew of young blokes, the four of them average less than ten minutes to change the targets driving a little Suzuki Sierra that has been decked out for shooting and just happens to work very well to get the team to the 500m mark and back in quick time. One goes along and pulls the shot targets, two go along and put up the targets for the next detail whilst checking that they are in the correct order, and the fourth fellow paints out the splash plates. They run the targets like a well oiled machine and make it easy to run the shoot and allow the organisers to concentrate on the important stuff like catching up with friends and running a fun shoot.

We have a scorer, check scorer and data entry person in the scoring hut, (thanks Russ, Sue and Mike respectively) The scorer identifies the shots (making any line calls) and measures the group, check scorer adds up the total and the data entry person inputs the scores into Anthony's score spreadsheet which provides the results. Scores are posted throughout the day, we try to post the running tally after each target (A, B, C, D and E)

Targets are numbered according to the local clubs system, but generally along the lines of:
1 (bench)
3 (detail)
W (Warmer)
Using this sort of process with minimal writing the targets are easily tracked in the scoring hut.

Our "splash" plates are a mix of Bisalloy 500 and 600 grade steel which resist everything we throw at them (we tested the 600grade for the manufacturer with a .338 Lap 300gn Sierra at 100m and it didn't dimple the surface) which we paint with spot marking paint that surveyors use on work sites, a good coat at the start of the day and then a touch up each target change to cover the splash from that firer's sighters. I can measure them if you like (no idea off the top of my head). Good splash plates make a big difference, we battled with a substandard set for a few years and welding up chain hooks and hangers during the shoot (thanks to Paul Deehan on many occasions) gets pretty old pretty quick!

We run 4 details these days, once upon a time it was unusual for somebody to shoot two classes but now that people like to shoot two classes, running 4 details allows two friends to shoot two classes each and spot for each other.

Personally my tactic is to run quite a few shots through on the Warmer target (10 minutes allowed, unlimited rounds allowed) to ensure that my barrel is fouled and that I am confident of my elevation setting for the target, with such a small 10 ring, having a good "waterline" on the target makes a big difference.

For my "business" targets (8 rounds allowed, 3 on splash plate, only 5 on target) I will wind  some windage on my scope and favour the side of the splash plate that the wind is predominantly coming from so that I reduce the risk of missing the splash plate. Once I'm on the splash plate,  if my initial wind call was correct and conditions are looking pretty stable I might go straight "up" to the target, otherwise I might fire another sighter to confirm windage and then go up, if conditions aren't changing too much I might not use my second and third sighters, keeping the option up your sleeve to have another sighter if things change isn't a bad thing in my book!

That's a little bit of info, if I think of anything else I will let you know.

As I have said above, if there's anything we could possibly do from here, please just ask.

Cheers

Dave Groves.
Canberra.

Dave, thanks for all the good info.  Any and all scoring sheets and other documents would be very helpful. You can send them to me at jeduke at wildblue.net.  As usual, replace " at " with @.  It will be interesting to see how many we get out for the first match.  We shoot a series of clay bird matches here and recent attendance has been 30 to 35.  See www.texasbenchrest.com.
Mike's range goes out to 600 yards and has 18 benches available. He can accommodate a lot of shooters.
Joe

Dave,
Thanks for sending Joe the files to help organize the match.
Have been busy talking to numerous printers trying to get target paper issue worked out. Found a fellow shooter that is a printer and we are working on targets. Still having a color issue matching the yellow. We will start taking shooter registrations (nominations)
next week.
I'm catching a little flack over the 'no muzzle brakes" rule. Quite a few of the guys shooting our clay bird matches have brakes. My goal is for this match to be shot using the same rules and target as your Canberra match. Hopefully the muzzle brake rule won't become too big an issue and cause hard feelings over here.
Interest is growing over here. Will keep y'all updated as we prepare for September 23
Mike

Hi Mike,
                 we often have people bringing a rifle from another discipline to try the Fly, it's a big decision to build a rifle to fit within the rulebook when you haven't shot the match before and don't know if you'll like it. I suppose they will just have to pull the brake off and make sure their loads still work without that weight on there won't they!

Once you get the target printing you'll be in business.

How many people do you have attending the clay bird matches?

Cheers.

Dave.

Dave
I took some time off from hosting matches due to work. Ready to get started again. I had a low of 36 and a high of 72 and all numbers between at my 400 and 250 yd matches.
We are currently shooting a 600 yd clay bird match we call the Despicable Pig Shoot. Full size boar made of AR 500 steel  with five
3 3/4 inch holes that have 4 inch clay birds behind each hole. Two sighters and five shots at 5 clays. Very difficult due to mirage and wind.

This Saturday will be our first practice day at the range. Will also be the trial run for the new backers/plates.
Will send some pictures afterwards.
Mike

Saturday the 19th will be our second practice day at Pine Valley.
We're starting to get the hang of shooting the Fly!!!
Hot, humid and lots of mirage here in the great State of Texas.

Good on you Mike...looks like your all getting into it!

Keep us up to speed with your progress.

I'd certainly be interested in how it's going with info like what sort of scores your achieving, what calibers & the equipment being used & of course whether or not the participants are enjoying the discipline!

All the Best,
Belly

please join  our post on 6BR forum. Thread titled "Texas vs Australia Fly Shoot Entry" in the Competition forum.

Thanks to Dave Groves for helping me get our badges ordered.
 Our list of vendors donating to the prize table is growing.