Well this years Ruger Rimfire Challange is done. I learned a lot of things shooting in the Ruger Rimfire Challange for the first time ever.

#1 is for this type of shooting even a 1.5x4.5x Rifle Scope on the Semi Custom 10/22 set at 1.5x is too much for this type of shooting and a Dot Type Sight is a must for Optical Sights.

#2 is for this type of shooting the Burris Fast Fire III Red Dot Sight is too difficult to pick up the DOT quickly. I also learned that a larger diameter dot would be a lot faster for these old eyes. The last thing I learned is that a Red Dot is hard to see against a Red Stop Plate, especially when the sun is in my eyes and the red stop plate is in the shadows.

#3 bring a hat next year.

#4 is I SUCK and need lots more practice at quickly acquiring the targets and sight picture.






Above are a few photos showing a couple of the stages of fire and of some grey haired old fart shooting my Handgun and Rifle.

Each stage of fire (there were 5 stages) consisted of 5 white plates and a red stop plate. Yes the red stop plate must be shot last. If one of the white plates was missed it added 2 seconds to the total time and more time was added if the red stop plate was missed. Yes you could keep shooting and pick up missed plates but it was actually quicker to just go to the next plate (with the exception of the red stop plate that is).

At each stage you shot both Rifle and Handgun. Each shooter with each gun shot 4 passes at the plates at each stage. All total if a person never missed this was 24 rounds through the rifle and 24 rounds through the handgun at each of the 5 stages. That's 240 rounds with no misses. For the record I shot a total of 277 rounds for the day but to be honest not all of the extra rounds were shot due to misses. At some of the stages I double tapped the stop plate due to visibility as I could not always tell if I hit it the first time so I just kept shooting.

I managed to win a really nice Blue Ruger Handgun Case from the door prize drawings. Looks like it big enough to hold a 7" Ruger MKIII Scoped. It has pockets for 8 magazines on the outside under a velcro flap and on the other side on the outside are two large pockets for ammo and such.

All in all it was a really fun day and I know I will be going back next year. Next year my oldest daughter is going to shoot in the St Cloud Ruger Rimfire Challange also. My oldest daughter was trying to talk my grand daughter into shooting the Ruger Rimfire Challange next year but at this point she is telling her mom no (but I am betting that will change) My son in law is also talking about shooting next year too.

My nephew Jon shot in the St Cloud Ruger Rimfire Challange this year and it sounds like both his wife and he are going to be shooting again next year.

All totalled there were 97 shooters that competed this year. Yes I was a long way down the list but now know what I need to change for next year. Who knows maybe a new Handgun will be in order for next year.

Larry

We are just getting this started at our range in Texas ( Crosby ) it looks like it is going to be a bunch of fun.

Very inclusive and it does not take a bunch of high dollar equipment.

Cheap fun shooting all can enjoy.


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