My return to the range

After almost a year of missed shooting matches, I’m beginning my return. This past Saturday, the October Bang ‘n Clang match was held at the Birchwood Shooting Facility. This is a “mostly for fun” shooting event, but there are a few of us that would prefer to shoot well while having fun. I need to work on the shooting part – I always have fun!

The last Bang ‘n Clang I participated in was last November. After the regular match, a turkey shoot was held and, by luck, I won the 17 ½ pound turkey. It was good too! I skipped the December match because of weather and my aching ankle. Prostate surgery laid me low in January and by the time I was recovered enough to think about shooting, I had surgery on my left ankle in May. I was planning to attend the new season’s first shoot in September, but a date change for the match upset my plans. This October shoot was held on schedule, and I was there.

When someone speaks about a shooting match, most folks visualize a paper target and offhand shooting. This Bang ‘n Clang is a little bit different. It’s, basically, a shorter-range metallic silhouette match, where the object is to knock the steel silhouette target completely off the steel rail it sits on. For our matches, the shooter can fire from an offhand position, from a benchrest position, or off a tripod. Most of the folks shoot offhand. I use a tripod, but I’m thinking of going to the x-sticks, benchrest position for a steadier hold.

Metallic silhouette shooting originated in Mexico and the normal ranges for the targets are something like one-hundred, one-hundred and seventy-five, three-hundred and fifty, and five hundred meters distance. A shorter version, similar to the distances we shoot, was developed for handguns. I’ve shot both handgun and rimfire silhouette, but that was years ago.

The targets are chickens at fifty meters, pigs at one-hundred meters, geese at one-hundred and fifty meters, and rams at two-hundred meters. There are ten targets at each distance and a hit is only scored if the silhouette is knocked totally off the rail. The match consists of forty shots, plus sighters on a separate silhouette hanging target at distance. Shooters fire modern rifles with scopes, military rifles with open sights, older style rifles with either open sights or older style scopes, and on occasion, even blackpowder cartridge rifles. Only lead bullets are allowed because jacketed bullets would damage the steel silhouettes.

The winner with the highest number of knockdowns is the winner in each category of scope, iron sight, tripod, or benchrest. I usually end up in the middle of the pack when looking at overall scores, and usually in the lower tier of tripod shooters.

This is an informal shoot and is designed more for fun than “serious” shooting. Folks still want to do well, but missing a target is not the end of the world. A perfect score would be forty, and while this score has been shot, it’s still not common, even with the benchrest shooters. Shooting iron sights on a ram at two-hundred meters is a tough shot – I don’t care what you’re shooting!

My best score to date is a thirty and I’ve been going downhill since my first match when I shot that score. My score for this latest match was a twenty-three, but my excuse is lack of shooting practice over the last year. However, now that I’m on the mend, that excuse won’t last much longer!

I use an Australian Martini Cadet model single-shot rifle with iron sights that has been heavily reworked (weighs about six and a half pounds) and chambered for the 357 Magnum cartridge. When I was first looking into getting back into this shooting, I had doubts that cartridge would knock a ram off the rail, but it does fine with a heavy-for-caliber bullet. I use a 180-grain bullet and a heavy charge of H110 powder. The recoil is light.

I’ve been experimenting with loads, and I think I’ve found the one I like. This last match saw me shooting up the “reject” load. I didn’t have enough cartridges to shoot the entire match with that load. I ended up shooting the rams with my preferred load. Now I need to get busy and reload all my empty cases with my load of choice. Along with several other cartridge calibers I need to reload, I should be busy for quite some time!