Dartmoor.
The weather for our final round looked promising and everybody was predicting high scores. The first detail of the day appeared to confirm this with three excellent cards produced. Then things took a turn for the worse, the non-existent breeze became a combination of light, almost undetectable, air currents featuring some weird thermals which caused the occasional pellet to drop by one or two rings. Several shooters experienced this; my second card registered three low 8’s even though the release and follow through seemed good. This condition was not detectable – a quick return to the sighter target invariably suggested that all was well. Just another frustrating aspect of outdoor benchrest competition!
It really was a classic day for ‘chasing errors’, compensating for these low shots was likely to result in high ones, so probably the best plan was to ignore the intermittent and imperceptible thermals, aim for the middle, and hope for the best.
Rob again managed to outwit the weather conditions, producing the day’s top score of 743:31x. But the closeness of this year’s scores was confirmed once more – with eight of today’s fourteen competitors scoring between 732 and 743.
We welcomed another new recruit today, Neville, who was shooting his first ever BR comp – his FX Impact had to be shot from the shoulder without the benefit of a rear bag. The resulting 697:11x was very encouraging, and once he sorts out a suitable rear support will certainly improve rapidly.
The overall percentage scores for the year were incredibly tight again, I managed to retain the trophy by the ridiculously tiny margin of 0.06%. Rob, Mark, and Gary were all tantalisingly close.
So another year done and dusted, we are now looking forward to our fourth year of winter BR matches with West Devon.
There has recently been some fighting talk from the Pyworthies ……….. But as we all know – talk is cheap!
Paul S.
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