Drawing a card from the Schuetzen game, Martin Roth has had an ehrenschiebe made up for the first August match. That match is typically the one that is missing a large number of competitors who make the annual pilgrimage to Raton for the Nationals and Martin wanted to devise something for the competitors to shoot for who don’t make the trek.

For those who don’t know what this device is, simply put, it a hand crafted target with a standard Schuetzen target laid over it. Every one will take 1 shot at it off hand at 200 yards, as soon as they finish shooting chickens. Those lucky enough to hit the target autograph their bullet hole. The person who hits closest to the center of the Schuetzen target wins the ehrenschiebe.

The winner of the target is then tasked with the responsibility of making up the target for the match next year. Martin made use of an 11 year old Chinese boy who is artistically gifted. This is a one of a kind item and should be enjoyed by all the match attendees as well as the match winner. Legend has it that the winner had to provide beer for the maker for a full year but I’ll leave that between the maker and the winner.

Finally, some good news regarding Jerry Pace and her treatments for cancer. Jerry had some follow-up surgery this past Thursday to check on her progress as it related to her chemo treatments and tumor shrinkage. After the surgery was completed, the doctor told Bill Pace that there was no detectable cancer any more. Two more chemo treatments and she should be back shooting again.

Jerry Pace has told Bill that she thought maybe her rifle should be rebarreled to .38-55 but after watching Bill shoot last match, she thinks her .40-65 should still do the trick. Hopefully, her broken shoulder will heal well enough to let her handle the recoil without further damage. Due to her recovery from the surgery, Bill & Jerry will miss the Nationals at Raton but I’m sure they’ll be ready to compete again next year.

Now for the Creedmoor results. We had 8 competitors which was soon pared to 7 after the first stage. We had a nice little southeast wind switching to southwest. Mirage was light to heavy by the time we finished the match. Did I mention heat? We started out in the upper 80’s which quickly increased to the lower 100’s by the end of the day. Humidity had dropped from the mid 60’s at the start to the upper 20% by the time we finished.

The heat apparently affected my brain since I referred to Elizabeth Riddles as Marilyn on more than one occasion. The heat took its toll on all of us, except for O.J., as the scores were lower on the 1000 yd target for everyone. Apparently, O.J.’s load is working very well for him at that distance O. J. actually manage to hit the 900 yard target this month without mistaking as the buffalo which proved to be somewhat of a "senior moment" last month.

Matt Carter finished in 2nd place, only 4 points behind. The biggest goal we all have in the long range game is to eliminate all of the misses even if it only means getting a 6. The difference between 0 and 6 is huge and you usually can’t win a long range match with more than 1 miss. At the Nationals, even 1 miss is enough to knock you out of the top finishers.

Since Dave Gullo can’t seem to afford to buy new rifles, he has to win them and he has done that on a regular basis at the nationals and other tournaments. So, we’re headed to Raton with the idea of denying Mr. Gullo any more free guns. Sorry Dave, it’s nothing personal.

Let’s talk about the club match for just a moment. That will be held as 2x40 shot matches to be held on October 13-14 and we should have a pretty good prize pool. Everyone will shoot in their class so there will be prizes for all classes including Junior, Senior, and Woman as well as Club Champion, 2nd & 3rd. The club treasury has been building and we don’t have any major expenses to contemplate so we will pay that out as a nice prize pool.

Plan on attending but you must be a club member to win a prize. You can shoot in the match as a non-member but will not be eligible to receive any of the prize pool unless you join. There may be a two day match in north Texas that weekend but we have no choice as to scheduling. The following match weekend takes us off of daylight savings time. So, if you want a chance at receiving some of your entry fees back as prizes, make your plans to attend. Matt Carter’s won the first two so we need to give him some competition.

Until the next match,
Hold Center,
Tom Berwick