St. Patrick's Day shoot at PEMI

I have been working hard this winter to develop the best 30-30 home cast, handloads I can.  Last year I had some feeding issues and what I thought was some inconsistent accuracy issues.  Turns out I had a mix of bullets, home cast 31141 and a clone that LaserCast provided.  They look identical until you measure them.  So, without an open range to test ammo, I decided to head north to Pemi.  No range time or air rifle this winter, something which became painfully evident today! It was 34F when I left Hopkinton and by the time I got to Ashland, there were cars in the ditch and snow coming down.  As Lanny Bassham says, "I'm the best snow shooter in the world".

I got there early in an effort to help out and learn from those who are already shooting for accuracy.  Let's face it, score shooters are a bit more demanding than Silhouette shooters.  You can't just hit the target, it has to be an X.  Me, I was happy to be on paper!  New bullet, new load, new front sight insert and no bench time....phew!  There was a lot of twisting of knobs in the first few record shots as I got the kinks out.

As it turns out, there were just 3 out of the 12 shooters shooting non Service Rifle firearms.  My New Haven, Conn Marlin 336CB in 30-30.  Skip's Miroku/Winchester Low Wall in 38-55 and another shooter had a Winchester
Model 70 in .308, it looked pre '64 to me.  Double click on the bottom picture and let me know if I am wrong.  The rest of the shooters were military rifles from .30-06 M1903s to current AR15 platform and everything in between.  I am not up on military firearms.  It would seem, just like silhouette, it all depends how seriously you want to pursue the sport.

The good news, my handloads all loaded without pressure on the bolt and they fired. Getting on the 6 3/8" target bull was not an easy feat. I fear I had a lot of pass shooting due to a numb trigger finger and a host of other excuses.  PRACTICE!  I am woefully out of practice and the time spent reloading is of little value if I can't break on the target.  Still, snow shooting is always fun.  Watching the snow melt on the hot barrel and having to blow the snow off the timer is something I will remember at some hot match in August.

I just wish I had taken a picture of the target so I can figure out what I need to work on.

April 26th is around the corner.  Be sure to dust off those reloading presses and get ready for CLA!

Match Results.