The Tennessee Valley Airgunners gathered together on November 11th to shoot the 2006 Alabama State Field Target match. 17 brave souls ventured to the Ross Airgun Range in Huntsville Alabama on a very blustery Saturday to shoot the 90 shot State match. The day started out a very nice 62 degrees which ended up being the high temperature for the day. The rest of the day the temperature dropped and the wind kicked up. It made for some interesting (and aggravating) shooting. The morning forecast called for showers in the morning but clearing off by noon. Well, the weatherman was half-right, we had a misty rain for much of the morning but only one or two real sprinkle showers.

By 9:00 am most of the airgunners were at the range and huddled up under a 12'x12' tent talking and trying to stay warm. Standing around gabbing about airgun and stuff was just about as much fun as the match itself. Because of the wetish weather, the match start time was delayed from 1/2 hour to 10:30 am. The shooters meeting was called and off we went to shoot. The match consisted of a 90 shot course on 15 lanes with three targets per lane. The overall difficulty was rated at 33 but with the heavy wind and cold it could easily jumped up to 34-35. This may not seem like a really hard course but the standard deviation was 10.42 which means that there were some really hard shots and some pretty straight forward shots. I like to set up my courses like this for several reasons: one, we have several novice and youth shooters who really enjoy the sport and are more encouraged to come back when they hit a fair number of targets; two, the hard/moderate/easy setup takes a shooter up and down emotionally which can also vary the shooters concentration levels and it makes the hard shots seem harder; three, a match with nothing but hard shots isn't as interesting to shoot to me and takes a bit of the fun out of the match. With the weather so blustery, many shots that I hadn't planned on being affected by the wind were and that made it more difficult than I planned. Still, every one enjoyed the course.

The two hardest targets on the course were a 7/8" Prairie Dog at 44 yards and a 1 3/4" Beaver that was right at 55 yards. I am sure that most airgunners would consider the 63 difficulty Prairie Dog a tough shot (and it was with the wind blowing like it was) but the bigger kill zone Beaver was a very tricky target since it was placed such that there were two trees forming a inverted V around the target so you had to thread the needle to hit it. On top of that, it was placed in the woods at 55 yards where the wind would blow across the path of the pellet between 30-50 yards. This made for a lot of weird eddies and swirls to try to content with. The course had two standing lanes (12 shots) and one kneeling lane (6 shots) which is 20% forced position shots.

Even with all the difficult conditions and shots, there was some outstanding shooting going on. The two Roberts, Ray and Crocker, were hitting on all cylinders as was Rod Bradley who was shooting his .22 caliber Whiscombe. Bill Greene won the award for tenacity as he battled a shifting POI all day but stayed on the course and kept shooting while trying to work out the problem. We had one Hunter class shooter, Ben Klein, who was also one of two junior shooters at the match. He shot a whopping 77 using the 1 point for a face plate hit and 2 points for a knock over scoring system. He shot really well on this day.

Once the match was done we headed to the big house for the real reason we all came together to shoot, food and camaraderie. We shoot on the property of Donnie Ross's father. This property is approximately 250 acres that extended up the side of a foothill. The fall colors have been beautiful this year and made the setting even more beautiful than it is normally. Donnie is the President of our club and he decided not to shoot the state match so that he could get the meal ready for after the match. His mom and dad graciously opened their home to us for use as a place to eat after the match. It was a welcome relief from the cold weather we had been shooting in. Donnie brought in Dreamland Barbeque chicken and ribs for us to eat and let me tell you that it was a feast. We had a great time eating and discussing the match and other airgun topics.

The 2006 Alabama state match was a success and on behalf of the club we would like to thank all those who took the time to come shoot with us. We would also like to thank Donnie Ross and his family for hosting our club and putting in the time and effort to provide the competitors with a great meal. We are done shooting for the year, we will start up again next year in March and we hope to see you all then.