I want to thank Don Claxton for calling the match when I was shooting and Dave Barnes for his offers of help and support. Without y’alls help and understanding, it would have been a lousy match. But again the cooperation of the club members made me look good and be available to run the match the next time Tom can’t be there. Just don’t get Tom mad enough to drag up cause I don’t want to do it on a permanent basis. Second, I want to thank all the people who donated prizes for our club match. I don’t know who all the commercial vendors are so I won’t list them here for fear of omitting one but you pretty much have an idea of who they are and your support of them makes it easier for them to donate to us.

I will thank the members of the club who made handmade items for prizes. I’ll list them alphabetically so as to not show preference. Dave Barnes donated several of his handmade leather belts. I tried leather craft once and found it ain’t easy. It also helps if you have talent and I don’t. Don Claxton made a line tote carry box thing that Casey Haley won. Don makes excellent woodwork and his cleaning tables are superb. Buy several, he needs the money. Glen Dixon donated one of his ammo boxes with an etched disk in the top center for the High Master and Bob Rosenbaum walked off with it. I told Glen to put me on his list cause the boxes are beautiful. Looks a lot better than green plastic.

My first entry on the tape recorder for Saturday said "It’s 7:15 in the morning and Dave Cook and family are here". Dave isn’t known for showing up early. I didn’t even have all of my stuff out of the van when they came driving up. I broke my own commandment when I pulled up into Tom’s semi-reserved parking space and took his spot on his table. The jinx must have taken a day off cause I shot pretty good on Saturday and fair on Sunday. I did have two matches in a row in the twenties and that hasn’t happened for a long time. I went back to loading the correct way and using a non-foofoo lube. There’s something to say about not compressing your powder while seating your bullet no matter how little compression you use. As for lube, SPG in its unadulterated state works well. Adding cherry vanilla and a bunch of other stuff didn’t work. Dave also claimed that he had spotter error during Saturdays match when a certain photographer who will remain nameless was looking at one swinger while Dave was shooting at another.

We had thirty four shooters on Saturday. Dave and Katha were at the match and shot. I don’t know how they ended up but it sure was good to see them before they move to New Mexico. Gonna be a long road trip to get my rifle worked on. I noticed that Katha had her chicken boots on. I was scared that I wasn’t gonna hit any cause I was wearing different shoes than normal. Didn’t have my chicken PF Flyers on but I managed to hit two on Saturday. No telling how many would have went down if I had them on. You need to go back several years in the newsletter to get an explanation of the chicken boots.

Faye and Randy Nunn made the trip down from the Dallas area. It’s always a pleasure to be in their company. Faye won high woman shooter and it sure was good to see her shooting again. Hope all goes well for her. We had a new shooter named Frank Scott come and join the club and shoot. Didn’t do too bad for a first time full blown match. Frank ended up winning high B class with a pretty respectable score. Will Crawford was back for his second match and Casey Haley (Texas State Junior Champion) was with us again. He shot an AAA score on Saturday and jumped several classes. Cleaned up on prizes also, much to Marty’s delight. Marty said Casey gets to keep medals and ribbons but the good stuff goes to him. Hope his broke ribs didn’t give him too much problem.

The quote of the match goes to Don Claxton. On Saturday he came up to me and said he was gonna be twice as hard to beat cause he hit TWO chickens. Don has been on a roll for the past few matches and moved up to Master with Sunday’s score. He told me just before shooting chickens on Sunday that he didn’t need any of the little birds to make master. In other words, he had a master score going into them. He still managed to get his two. Not bad shooting for an ex cop. Billy Mills and Lee Johnson were having their usual conversations about Billy being vertically challenged and Lee still growing except he’s growing east and west instead of north and south. Billy claims Lee needs to walk with one arm extended so we can tell if he’s walking or rolling. Always like to listen in on their arguments. Lee said he probably should be mad at Billy if it weren’t the truth.

About halfway through Saturday’s match Jerry Harres broke out a dish he made for everyone to eat. He brought up about 5 pounds of curry coconut shrimp that he had made. His timing was as excellent as the dish he brought. I was just about to head for the pop tarts. That stuff was so good I went back for seconds. Thought his back was turned when I did it but got caught. It was worth it. Thanks to Jerry for thinking about the rest of us. I guess his feeding us was what made for some pretty good scores.

I got so excited when I ran the rams for the first time ever that I went and kissed my rifle maker. That’s ALL I did, contrary to all rumors. Bad part about the whole thing was that Dave kissed me back. As a note to my honesty, when I was shooting pigs I missed the first one, hit the 2^nd and when I hit the 3^rd pig and the first one fell down also Randall told me I should go ask the match director if I could count the first one as a hit. Being the pro-tem match director I thought long and hard but decided that it was a miss.

Saturday’s weather was warmish and humid. It was in the upper 80’s and humidity in the high 50 percent. When Dave and Katha drove up I was in fear of the weather for the weekend cause as y’all know, that little yellow haired girl has a bad habit of showing up when they make the match. She was going to make the trip but had to cancel at the last moment. Even with the threat of her showing, the weather on Sunday was questionable to start with. A cold front made its way through the state and when I got to the range Sunday morning it was cool and windy. When the sun got up it had all the appearances of rain. I came to the conclusion that I’ve driven the range truck to the ram way too much cause when I got done eating my taquito breakfast Sunday morning I reached outside my drivers side window and opened the door to my van from the outside. Think I’ll ride in the back of the truck for a month or so.

As I said earlier, it was cool and windy. The temp. never got out of the 60’s and with the wind blowing out of the north all day, it made for some interesting winds. Scores on Sunday were down from the day before. We had 32 shooters Sunday. Dave and Katha didn’t make it and Randall had to work his security job so he couldn’t be there. Donny Chmelik made the Sunday shoot. Did pretty good for himself also. Ran the turkeys I believe. Tyler was spotting for me and did a darn good job. I just couldn’t see the targets as well as I did on Saturday for some reason.

I guess I celebrated too much Saturday cause when we went to the line for the first relay no one could see where my chicken shots were going. After about the third bird I realized that I never set my sights and forgot to put in the correct insert. After a fast run back to the table for the setting and a magnifying glass to see with I still managed to hit one. Always check your settings and check them again. It’s kind of embarrassing to have shot this sport for so long and forget something as important as that.