Copied with permission from "yellow" from a post by Jan Vandenberg.
Locals may be surprised that we shot a full 72-shot course in the woods at today's DIFTA match. The early morning was quite rainy, and the forecast was sketchy. But Dean is a veteran radar interpreter, and he was sure that we'd have good conditions at match time. So, instead of reverting to the 60-shot "plan B" course under the covered firing line, we went for the full course that Paolo laid out for us on Thursday. Dean's weather call was right on the money, and the match was almost completely dry, with a nice, constant breeze that was just enough to drift plenty of shots out of Paolo's masochistic killzones.
The course was 72 shots across 12 lanes, three targets per lane and two shots per target. Paolo threw in one forced offhand lane, plus a "fast" lane, with only three minutes rather than the usual seven for six shots. Average difficulty was 26.3 Troyers for this course. A HUGE thank-you to Paolo, who spent Thursday evening setting out the targets, printing scorecards for both "dry" and "wet" courses, etc., even though he wouldn't even be able to join us on Saturday!
The battle for Hunter/PCP, our only fully-staffed class, came down to the offhand lane. Dean dropped a couple more targets on the unforced lanes, but Eric nailed five of six offhand shots to Dean's one! I'm sure Eric's offhand performance, standing on two feet without a scandalously attached bipod, is a fluke and not at all down to well practiced marksmanship. Vince's score was impressive given that he scratched two lanes after dropping his rifle. Still, he managed to figure out the resulting zero shift on the fly, and finished strong even while compensating for the wonky zero.
Despite not shooting the match, Andy and AJ were spotted lurking mysteriously around the course. Asked how this appearance might relate to the upcoming Fantasy Shoot, the Stephens men replied only with diabolical laughter and evil grins.
The full results:
<see attached file>
The next DIFTA event is the spectacular, peerless Fantasy Shoot on October 25. Not that it's ever okay to miss a DIFTA match, but you must not miss the Fantasy Shoot! After that, we have a regular match on November 8. See the chapter calendar for the full schedule.
See you at the Fantasy Shoot!