October 12, 2002

HIS WAS A BITTERSWEET MATCH for me in many ways... it would be the last time I would be a "regular" shooter with the Carolina Cattlemen's Shooting & Social Society, since The Wife, The Boy and I were packing up and heading for the mountains. Oh, I knew I'd be back every now and then to shoot with these fine folks, but it probably won't be more than a few times a year at best. Instead of a 45-minute drive to the match, it would be a 4-hour drive. I was happy to be moving to a new house in the High Country, but I sure would miss all my friends here.

I explained all that to my pards, and they all said they'd miss us, too and I shot a fun, smoke-filled match with my blackpowder cartridges. I didn't get around to writing this particular entry until after we moved, and now I can't locate the scrap of paper I used to take my notes during the match. True to the words on the Match Notes main page, I didn't write it down and now three months later I can't remember enough of the details to do it justice. If I run across my notes, I'll fill this in at that point.

I do have the Total Times for my stages, as well as the Rank Points, courtesy of the listings from the North Carolina Cowboys site, but all the good details (like how many times I missed my targets) are not included. For what it's worth, though, here's what I've got:

Deputy Gene won the overall match and the "Traditional" class, with a Total Time of 136.54 seconds and 9 Rank Points. Carolina Jack was the top Frontier Cartridge shooter — his Total Time was 218.46 seconds, with 49 Rank Points.