A couple of friends and I went to the match this last weekend. The weather was forecast to be very windy with sustained winds from 30 to 45 mph and gusts 60 to 70 mph.

What a great opportunity to experience the effect on bullets out to 900 yards!

Saturday is set-up day. We arrive early to help set up the steel hangers up and down the 2 mile walk-through course including a sight-in and practice range out to 930 yards. Here are some pictures from previous matches.

Sight-in/practice range:





After we set everything up, we go hot on the practice range and pound steel till 5 pm. Winds were full value at 10 mph. We checked 100 yard -0-'s and dialed out to 930, then back to the paper to see how the scopes returned to -0-. Had a ton of fun!

At around 4:30, most guys are done. We have a steel plate downrange toward the complete other end of the course. It's at 1700 yards; about 1 mile. A few of the guys have .338 Lapuas and RUMs and fire away at the plate. I layed down with my Creedmoor and dialed 58 MOA come ups, guessed the wind and let one rip. I felt wind from about 2 O'clock so I held right. After the 2+ second flight time, some dust flew up waaaaay right and low! The wind was really mostly from 10 or 11 O'clock!

I measured the hit with the reticle, adjusted a tad elevation and let another go. After 5 shots holding left about 1 3/4 mil, I had a hit on the plate! I was amazed on how much indication there was. The plate had a hard twist left. Amazing for that 139 grain bullet to have that much KE/P or whatever you prefer to move that plate so much! Nobody else even with the big bad .338's had a hit.

At the match, I was getting honest 25 mph readings on the meter. The match is shot in a canyon along a dry stream bed. Generally all the shooting is across the stream and up the sides of open draws and on the sides of the mountains. The wind funnels down that canyon and does some really strange things. Wind direction is even tough to determine at times. Wind at the shooting position may have an opposite direction to wind at the target! You need to have a command of the art of reading to do well.






It was a really tough day. Scores were low except for a couple of really talented shooters that diagnosed the wind better than any of the rest of us. They had unbelievable 50's out of 60 targets!

The only other highlight of my shoot was that I was able to keep a streak alive that I've had since the end of 2009. Station 1 has the longest target on the course. A 875 yard plate on the side of a mountain. I haven't missed it since the last shoot of 2009.

Other than that, I shot bad

This is one of the places that can be found over on the "Competition" forum of Snipershide.

Zac runs a VERY nice monthly shoot; one of the best.

Alan

Hey GSSP!

Do you compete there regular-like??!

If so, let's get together! I'm there every month!

Rcmuglia,

Nope, have not been down that way yet. I've read tons about it. A couple of guys living in Price, Utah whom I help obtain rifle componets off my FFL turned me on to it and we want to make it down this spring but my wife's health has precluded me from making any overnight trips away from home. I do typically compete at the North Springs range, just South of Price, Utah.

The walking portion of the Whit center shoot intrigues the heck out of me.

http://www.utahshootouts.com/

Alan