The Alaska Territorial blackpowder matches

The 2023 Alaska Territorial Shoot is officially history. Things wrapped up this past Sunday with the awarding of ribbons for first, second, and third place winners in the individual matches, and medals for the same three places in the aggregates for those respective matches.

This year, the match encompassed six days. In years past, the shoot length had been four days. Because the match director is also a shooter, and he had a conflict with being able to shoot and participate in a trip Outside which had been planned for months, the time was extended two days. Nobody had a problem with this. In fact, I enjoyed the extra time because that allowed me to miss a couple of days to meet appointment obligations.

One thing I’m getting a little concerned about for this shooting event is the declining number of shooters present. There were only about a dozen folks for the whole shoot. In years past, we had close to forty shooters in attendance from all over the state. There were no ladies participating for several years now, even though there is a whole section of aggregates for women. There were no youth attending either, again, with an entire series of aggregates for young shooters.

Probably the youngest shooter present was in his mid-fifties in age and there were only a couple of them. Most of the guys are in their seventies. I really hope we start to attract some younger shooters to keep the sport alive in the future.

The shoot went well, in my humble opinion. Nobody protested any scoring that I know about. The guys doing the Range Safety Officer work, the RSO’s, took turns so everybody got to shoot when they wanted, and nobody missed out because of extended time doing the RSO work.

The mosquitoes were their usually nasty selves and lots of Thermacells were running all the time. The weather was generally overcast with occasional rain showers, usually in the afternoon. The humidity would spike after the showers to a noticeably elevated level, usually eliciting a comment from me about the comfort levels, or lack thereof.

I had hoped to drive my RV to the shoot and stay for the duration, eliminating a 114-mile round trip drive to attend. Several of the guys had the same idea, with a couple staying in tents on site. My tent living days are numbered at best. You already know how the non-commuting went with my RV still sitting in my yard waiting to be repaired. I logged 456 miles on the truck to attend the shoot.

So, how did I do? I had planned to shoot four aggregates: sighted smoothbore, military rifled musket, inline bench, and blackpowder cartridge. For several reasons, I ended up only shooting the complete blackpowder cartridge aggregate and two of the three matches required for the inline bench aggregate. Now, for my excuses.

For the inline bench matches, I was shooting a load I had never shot in my rifle before. I originally bought that gun to use as a display in the hunter education classes I was teaching at the time, to potentially use for hunting, and just to become familiar with the inline rifle since I had only ever shot sidelock guns. I used a heavy blackpowder substitute load and a conical bullet to work up hunting loads. To reduce recoil for match shooting, I decided to shoot a much lighter blackpowder load and round balls. It took a few shots to get the sights properly adjusted.

Before you begin to feel sorry for me (yeh, right!), I took first place in both completed matches and had a high enough total score to take the gold medal for the aggregate, despite not shooting the final match. This could easily rank as one of those “blind squirrel and acorn” scenarios!

The blackpowder cartridge aggregate went better than I had hoped. Having done no shooting for over a year, I wasn’t expecting much. With aging eyes and new glasses, I couldn’t get the scope to properly focus, adding to the problems. However, that rifle is a shooter and for the four matches, I ended up with three second place ribbons and one first place one. My overall score was good enough for the second-place aggregate medal.

Oh, and my state record score from two years ago on the standing bear target still stands!

Commuting for about two-and-a-half hours daily, along with delays for highway construction, takes its toll. I hope I have the RV for next year!