Okay, the last hurrah.
I fired three relays today with the first two being respectable but not helping my average. It all came down to one last relay. I fired Stage “A” and almost cleaned it! Two rounds strayed out into the ten ring, earning me a 180-16X.
With no points down, everything depended on a sterling Stage “B”. The first 12 rounds went well with all “10”s and “X”s. Moving back to the long line for the barricade stage, I still had no points down. Eighteen rounds to go, the RO gave the command to load. A moment later, the whistle sounded and the firing line dropped into the kneeling position. The first magazine of six rounds was fired from the right side of the barricade. A half dozen good, surprise trigger breaks later, the slide locked back empty. Hoisting myself up standing, I reloaded with the second magazine and transitioned the pistol to my left hand. From the left side of the barricade, shot number one went off and the pistol recoiled oddly in my hand. I cursed quietly to myself and focused on the next five rounds. They all felt good. Once again the pistol locked open empty. With about twenty-five seconds remaining, I reloaded for the last time and moved back to the right side of cover. The last six rounds thundered downrange smoothly. Seconds later, the whistle sounded and that was it. The only thing left was to score the damage. The group was centered on the “X” ring scoring mostly “10”s and “X”s with a few “9”s. But….
One shot went a little low scoring eight points. And there was that crappy shot starting the weak hand string. A damn “7” way out to the right! Combined with the near perfect Stage “A” score, my total for the relay was a 465-25X out of a possible 480-48X. This duplicated the high score from back in May. Since that was the lowest of my three highest scores for the season, today’s effort yielded no gain.
But I am not upset, I will mark today down as good training. With a season high average of 467 points @ 97.29%, I’m guaranteed to place in the Governor’s Top Ten. I just have to wait to find out where.
Myopicvisionary 