November 3, 2001

THINK I NEED A NEW ALIAS. With the way I've shot my last couple of matches, perhaps "Jess Missin'" would be appropriate. In any case, it was "Bonus Day" in Salisbury in addition to being "Shooter Appreciation Day" (which meant half-price match fee!). Too bad I didn't get any bonuses. I'm sure that has something to do with my inability to hit the targets...

I had one (count them, ONE) clean stage (oddly enough, on one of the stages that was set up with a confusing target order), but I missed at least one target on all seven of the other stages. Mostly with the pistols — 5 with the right hand and 3 with the left) but I had a couple of rifle misses, too. Actually, I think I was awarded a couple extra misses by the spotters (or was the victim of a typo as the scores were entered into the computer), but it wouldn't have made much of a difference in my final standing. I had so many misses another one or two didn't really matter.

The stages were set up so we shot each one twice, and if we beat the time of our first effort AND shot it clean the second time around, we would be awarded a 5-second bonus. Well, I managed to beat my original time on all but one stage — unfortunately, I always had a miss or two to go along with my faster time, so I went bonus-less for the day.

I had two fumbles with the old Winchester rifle during the day. One goof was on stage two where I picked up a 10-second procedural penalty when I double-tapped one of the rifle targets instead of just shooting it once like I was supposed to. The other slip-up occurred while up on the raised platform on stage seven as I accidently ejected a live round while working the action on the '92, forcing me to grab a cartridge from my pistol belt and reload. That'll slow you down, for sure.

We won't discuss my miserable performance with the revolvers.

My double-barrel has started beating me up, though. I must have changed the way I'm holding the shotgun, since as I fire the first barrel the rear of the trigger guard is smacking into my middle finger, leaving me a lovely little welt at the end of the day. Ouchie. It doesn't happen all the time, and this is the first time I've really noticed it hurting me, so I'll have to figure out what I'm doing.

Even with all that, I had a great time playing cowboy. Here are my stage results:

Marshal Harland Wolff (SASS #5019), competing in the "Shootist" class came in first overall (as usual) with a Total Time of 188.40 seconds and 34 Rank Points. Many other folks were shooting in the Traditional class, where Stinky Jim (SASS #5768) won with a Total Time of 223.49 seconds. Jake Slade (SASS #5965) won my class (Duelist) with a Total Time of 281.97 seconds (about half of my time).

Poor old Grizzly Greg (SASS #10299), who was shooting blackpowder in the Frontier Cartridge class had a revolver drop out of his holster as he was sitting down in the chair to begin stage seven, and that's a match disqualification. Bummer, though at least he got to shoot most of the match before the DQ. He's a tall, lanky guy, and the chair was little — I'm not too surprised that it happened, but it definitely made the rest of us take care when it was our turn to sit in that dang chair...

He wasn't the only one who had troubles. My Duelist pard Mad Sveinn (SASS #35484), who finished 3rd in the class, had a major brain fade on stage seven. There was some question as to the required sequence of shots on the pistol targets. He & I were planning on shooting the targets the same way, and he asked about that as the stage directions were given and was told that was OK. Well after shooting the stage, the scorers said it wasn't the right target order, he said it had been okayed and the Range Officer allowed Sveinn a reshoot. Well, ol' Mad did the exact same thing when he reshot the stage, so he ended up getting a procedural penalty for mis-shooting the target order. Oops. Needless to say, I changed my own plan for shooting the stage.