Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Competitive Shooting Lodi, 2011 F-class Nationals

Never deviate from the coach.. except when the coach sucks... BTDT. Unfortunately.

There are coaches I'd blindly trust forever.... and a few around I'll never trust again.

Well, as I said, this was a coach in training and the conditions were atrocious. The team scores were fairly low overall, so I am not faulting him at all. If I had had my elevation set properly from the get go, I would have done better because I did lose points to elevation, it's a heartbreaker when you shoot at 6 o'clock. Those were definitely my fault. But once I got that sorted out, things went swimmingly. My elevation issue is that I put on the Bayou 600 yard zero after the prior day's 1000 yard match. I forgot that I needed an extra MOA in Lodi to account for the denser air due to cold and low humidity. Once I remembered that, I was back on.

Team Matches...

I looked at the radar before leaving for the range Thursday morning. Couldn't see anything that would lead me to believe (short of divine intervention) that there was a chance for that stuff to clear out during the day. With a 40% chance of rain I figured we were going to get wet. We should have gotten started precisely at 8:00am, and I believe I voiced my opinion rather loudly (had to be a little careful, there were women squaded next to us). There was no reason to delay the start, we had at that time the weather we would see at 9:00, at 10:00, at 10:30 and what we had when we finally got going...

If we started on time we would have been finished BEFORE that little rain squall hit durring the last relay.

That was my first team match also. We've all shot togeather in local matches and are comfortable working togeather. Monte, I'm gonna get Bob at the next match... that instigating son of a gun . Don't have a clue as to what he's got me into this time, paybacks are a _ _ _ _ _. So anyways I trusted our coach. We shot at a mid-range match this year when the other Al was on the same relay and target next to me. I shot a mid 190's, Al shot a 200-15X. He knows how to call the wind. He did miss a let-up though on me, shot hit within an inch of my POA. Problem was the shot was a "9" at 9:00. I told him I'm going back to center, pounded out a 10 and an X to finish out. I finished the 600 yard match with a 196-10X, best score of our foursome...

Deny's

One thing I"ve noticed reading all your posts for quite some time now, you are a better shooter than you give yourself credit for and as a result of you thinking you are worse, you don't correct fast enough IMHO.

IE shot call is solid, then if the first shot lands low or high I"m correcting right then. Granted I may not make a full correction but more like a 3/4 or so IE if I correct X amount, and am wrong I"ll get a high 10 type of thing... but I don't wait anymore.

The best thing about shooting, you continually learn.

Jeff

AJ
I don't mind a coach missing conditions as much as I hate coaches that don't listen to your shot calls. When I shot a lot, I could call the shot REALLY close, even though it was service rifle irons... I could usually call it within 2 inches at 600 yards as an average... when the coach doesn't listen, and you repeat the call, and the NEXT shooter looses points... thats what aggravates me.

I"ll be the wind pig/dummy every time, doesn't bother me but if you are ignoring my input why should I listen to yours kind of thing..

Jeff

Back to living.

Had a great time shooting and meeting a bunch of you. FTR Shooter great meeting you.

Had Flu but good meds, and spent most time trying to remember where I was, LOL

My rifle shot great. Me as Darrel says "Not so much"

On Team Matches. I put together two teams for development of both shooters and coaches. The first team were guys who signed up months ago and that team had Carpenter from our US National F TR Team. Carpenter is about as good a wind coach as anyone will ever see.

Team Two was put together at event and had Andy, who is from the US Junior National Palma Team. He is a great Young Man and excellent wind coach. He beat many highly experienced wind coaches at 1000 yards. I would be happy to have him coach again. I bet he ends up being one of the best in game in years to come.

Overall we got to see some fantastic shooting under terrible conditions.

It was an honor to be there.

On wind calls we where having constant wind changes. One second four minutes and next 0. One more second three minutes. It just did no have a constant you could dial most of the time

I did miss one call myself...

If the shot broke clean I just said "good". Had a shot that went left, called it a 9 at 9:00. Target came up, X at 9:00. Sometimes the wind is your friend!

Mike, I will have to agree with you on that team match. We did have to scramble to get the team reconstituted just a few minutes before we started shooting and it was as much a surprise to Andy as it was to you, perhaps even more so. I know he was not expecting to be THE wind coach right away. I was the first shooter and my early elevation issues were disconcerting to both of us. But once that was fixed, we performed well as he became acclimated to the conditions.

And following your explicit directions I held exactly where he told me to and I tried to get the shot off within 2-3 seconds of his call.

Having never fired coached team match before, I was unsure of the protocol and he was using different words than what you had told me you would be using. He also pointed out that the targets were very small, which almost caused me to laugh on the line.

I would let him wind coach me again.

Oh, and it was great meeting you as well. Overall, I was very happy to be there and I know I learned a lot. I am really looking forward to TSRA LR this coming weekend.

Apart from continually mispelling my name (what's with the apostrophe?) I think you may have something there. If my first shot goes somewhere on the target, I should make a full correction for that shot instead of second guessing my shooting. I can see where that seems to be a recurring theme with me. Something to ponder. I just consider myself a guy who likes to shoot in matches, perhaps I need to starting thinking that I am a match shooter who needs to perform at his level consistently.

Hmmmm.

I think some of that comes from holding off for a shot... and it goes exactly where your POA was. You want me to hold in the 8 ring???

I'll admit I had a brain fart during the matches. I use my retical to judge corrections. I'd dial in what I THOUGHT was the correct windage, POI would move only half the value. The windage marks on the Nightforce retical is 2MOA dummy, not 1MOA

Ok, my bad on the spelling, once I get something locked in my head I'm that way and usually typing on the run anyway vs sitting down and thinking a reply through very well.

You got it. Denys. Just doesn't look right to me. But I could be typing Dennys...

Some days its the little things that you catch that you try to do differently that make a huge difference in the end. Just trying to be helpful, nothing more.

Jeff

Trust me, you are very helpful.

Here is another picture from the 1000 yard line. We are in the 3 minute prep period. That is me in the white shirt with my scorer behind me in the Sinclair shirt.

Ouch, I've always heard of Lodi... that range could really get squirrely winds if they got to gusting, much weird terrain there to make it interesting to say the least.

Whats that green stuff you are laying on?

Astroturf.

The wind was coming from the right most of the time, but on Friday, it was "blowing" from 1 to 2 o'clock. Also there is a big-ass depression 600-700 yards downrange.

Here's the range from a slightly different angle. You can sort of see the ditch at 600-700 yards downrange.

Thats hilarious... astroturf...

I thought it looked like there should be a creek there somewhere.

Range kinda reminds me somewhat of Knoxville TN range, I can't think of the correct name for it though...

VRPC?

Don't think its that, maybe something akin to the nuke in the area...

I think its Oakridge now that I think about it.