Black Creek New Year's Eve Eve

Black Creek Steel Shooters held a special "Pre-New Year Match” today. I saw advance pictures of some of the stages posted on Facebook and decided it would be a fun match. And indeed, the stages proved to be both interesting and challenging. Thanks to the good weather, and a day off for many people, there was a good-sized crowd of 72 shooters. Despite the unexpectedly large turnout, the match was well run and we were done shooting by by about 1:00PM.

Stage 1 consisted of 22 falling and static targets of various sizes and distances, all shot strong hand only. That was certainly a challenge. Stage 2 was very interesting. This was a red, white and blue array of large and small poppers, both the solid and split variety. Each color had to be shot from the appropriate color box. Penalties were accessed for any hit on a wrong color target. A number of the targets were barely exposed behind wrong colored targets. This one really a lot of fun, but one that invoked a lot of penalties. Stage 3 consisted of 12 small poppers, split and solid, hidden behind barrels. Some of the targets were very well-hidden and a number of shooters left targets standing. Stage 4 was another color-coded stage. Shooters shot through ports in a wall. Two large split poppers and 3 static targets were shot through the upper port, and then 6 split small poppers through the bottom port. As with Stage 2, hitting a target out of order earned a penalty.

The match offered a variety of challenges for the shooter. However, for whatever reason, I was not shooting well at all. While I don't see my best performances at these steel matches, today was utterly awful. My best result was Stage 3, where I finished 39th out of 72. I believe I turned in my poorest performance in any match to date. The frustration of throwing so much lead downrange into the dirt put a definite damper on the fun. And it was downright embarrassing too! I'm not sure of the reason. I've only shot a few times in the past month, and have really slacked off with my dry fire practice, but that doesn't account for it. I do have video of me shooting the stages and I see some obvious issues. I'm thankful I asked a squad mate to record me, as at least I have some clues where I got sloppy with technique. Here's hoping I can get some range time in the coming weeks to work it out. I've often remarked that a good day of shooting beats a day of just about anything else, but today tested my commitment to that!

But, getting beyond the poor shooting, it was a nice day spent with fun folks.

Stage 2