John-R Jones
Saturday 18 March was the first long-gun club championship shoot for 2023. It was scheduled to be held on 18 February but was postponed to this passed Saturday due to rain. Some members were glad for the postponement because they would not have been able to attend in February but could participate this time.
Twelve members participated on Saturday; we set up the range to accommodate 3 shooters per detail, this meant that we could complete the shoot in less that two hours, finishing before 12. This make it more likely that all competitors shoot under very similar conditions and allows time for members to shoot other things in the afternoon; e.g. some of us went and shoot .22 silhouette and some others shotgun.
I decided to shoot in the fist detail so that I was not too tired from all the walking up and down guising the shooters through the competition. I managed a reasonable score hitting both plates at 300m sitting over mick-sticks and both brain shots at 50m; the heart long shots at 150 and 100 meters were not so marvelous but still posted a score of 76 out of a possible of 100. The second detail included my 12-year-old grandson Joshua Coetzee who has recently started shooting with me; he managed a score of 54, placing him 9th out of 12; not too shabby considering this was his first ever long-gun club champs. Ronel, our only lady shooter, was part of the 3rd detail and produced a very nice group on the heart-long area of the impala but unfortunately the group was a bit too low, this meant her score was not as good as it might have been (much potential there); this was attributed to the advice of hubby and thus it was deemed that Ronel was the “Guineapig” to establish the “scope setting” for PD to use when he shot. Unfortunately, the proof of that hypothesis was not borne out in the execution, and Ronel’s score put her in 10th place with 52 points followed by PD in 11th place with 44 points.
After the first 3 details were complete, I was still in first place tie with Johan Valentin; but then along came Mr. Jimmy Bekker, one of only four to knock down both plates at 300m; he then proceeded to put each of the remaining 8 scoring shot in the “bull’s-eye”, i.e., the heart and the brain, making his score 100/100; well done Jimmy.
The top 5 scored were:
| 1st | Jimmy Bekker | 100 |
| 2nd | John Rutherfoord-Jones | 76 |
| 3rd | Johann Valentin | 76 |
| 4th | Jacques Potgieter | 60 |
| 5th | Jakes Pieterse | 58 |
The full set of scores were as follows:
The next long-gun club champs are scheduled for 15 April 2023 and will be the Springbuck target 11 rounds, that is; big bore pig and big bore chicken silhouettes at 300m, 3 shoots to hit two plates; 3 heart-lung shots at 200m sitting with mick-sticks; 3 heart-lung-shots sitting or kneeling at 100m, and 2 brain shots sitting with mick-sticks at 100m.
