Big Bore Steel Scramble and Heats for EBR itself

It’s Friday and the action is truly getting underway. The Big Bore competition is starting with targets from 35yards and beyond, to an outlier at 400 yards! This course needs a serious rifle so the minimum power is 240 ft/lb. There are 5 Stations, and each requires a different shooting position: off sticks; freehand, prone, and bench with 2 different distances at each station. Not for the faint hearted!

Big Bore means Big Gear, Checking scope settings, Ready for the shot

The Action Armour Steel Scramble is another complex match, consisting of five lanes of Precision/NRL22 format stages. The targets are reactive steel targets and the shooting points require physical movement and positional shooting. Here is one of the shooting points:

After all that, it seemed like the Benchrest competition itself would be reasonably straightforward. There’s the 50yard competition which includes a class for springers, and I was down to shoot in the heats for the main Extreme Benchrest match which starts at 75yards.

I was drawn in the lane alongside my old chum and previous EBR winner John Reimers from Hawaii (below), who was looking a bit tense to start with, but later relaxed into his usual big smiles. And here (below right) is Alan Scoles from Australia, on his way to a place in the final.

The format: There’s 30 minutes to shoot 25 targets and that’s plenty time to air-up half way through and wait for the wind to drop a little on each shot. I was shooting with a borrowed Daystate, zeroed alas at 150 yards and with lighter ammo than this rifle usually shoots (so any score would be good)!

Here’s (the good) part of my card! And 2 views, one from my bench (lane 24) and the other looking back at the EBR shooting points.

On Saturday it was more heats for the EBR 100 yard final, and also the much loved Outdoor Speed Silhouette competition. The completion times for this become ever faster. Targets are standard metal .22 LR silhouette, including five rams, five pigs, five turkeys and five chickens, placed at 25, 35, 45 and 55 yards. This year’s eventual winning time in the Open class, which allows semi auto and filled magazines, was an astonishing 18.81 seconds. The standard class demands a cocking device or action for each shot fired and the winner in the (standard) Pro class was under 49”, while the Sportsman class winner was over 1’15”. Quite amazing.