Saturday presented clear and hot at the Mossman & District Rifle Club with brightly illuminated targets yielding a clear sighting picture.

A ‘tricky’ mirage which varied rapidly in intensity complicated conditions for shooters in a Double 400m match.

In the first 400 metre match Neil Attwood opened the Full-bore Target Rifle (308 cal., non-telescopic, manually-supported) competition with a 5-point centre-bull, but then fell away to a string of 4-pointers punctuated by two 3-pointers and a wayward 2-point ‘outer’ at the end.

Attwood closed with a disappointing score of 37 points (out of 50, this 10-shot match) with one centre-bull, reflecting the difficulty of finding the target centre consistently in the fluky mirage.

Rob Wearne followed and opened with two 4-point ‘inners’ before punching out three bulls-eyes and a centre-bull. He then fell back to the ‘inner’ ring for another 4-points before a sensitive trigger saw him loose a round that missed the target entirely.

Setting aside his frustration he closed with two more 5-point bulls-eyes to take the lead with a 42/1.

Veteran Ron Schild was next down, and confirming the difficulty of the conditions “very tricky mirage that” in his words, surprisingly found the centre just once amid a string of 3- and 4-pointers, with even a 2-point ‘outer’ mid-shoot, to close with just a 36/0.

Mal McKellar was last down and he too struggled with the mirage, pulling two bulls and a centre-bull interspersed with three 4-point ‘inners’ in his first 6 shots, but finishing with a 3-point ‘bird’ and three more 4-pointers, for a Rob Wearne-equaling 42/1. But Wearne took this first match on count-back.

Norbert Schmidt opened the F-Class Standard (308 cal., telescoped and bipod-supported) category and though he also struggled with the mirage, he dropped just three points through the match to close with a very acceptable 57 points (out of 60 this 10-shot match, for F-Class).

In the second 400 metre match Attwood again opened for Full-bore, once more with a 5-pointer, and this time he managed a consistent string of 4s and 5s, including another centre-bull, before the mirage again came to dominate the sighting picture and he pulled three disappointing 2-point ‘outers’ to finish with just 41/1 (out of 55, this 11-shot match) to show for the effort.

Schild followed, lifting his percentage significantly despite a wayward 3-point ‘bird’ mid-match, pulling a string of 4s with two 5-point bulls-eyes and a centre-bull to finish, and closing with a respectable score, given the conditions, of 46/1.

Wearne was next down, and though he opened and closed strongly with two bulls-eyes to start and two centre-bulls in his last three shots, a string of five 4-point ‘inners’ mid-match saw him close with a disappointing (for him) 49/2 to once again move into the lead.

McKellar was last down, and with some adjustments to the rear ‘peep’ to try to accommodate the mirage, opened with a 5-point bulls-eye and pulled a string of bulls-eyes and centre-bulls mid-match, bracketed by two 4-point ‘inners’ at each end, to take the match win by a slim margin with 50 points and 3 centres.

Schmidt’s second range for F-Class saw him struggle uncharacteristically to find the centre, the ‘scope obviously not helping with the fluky mirage. He dropped eight points to close with just 58 points (out of 66 this 11-shot match, for F-Class).

With great seeing but a very ‘tricky’ mirage, the Full-bore Target Rifle Double 400m Match was taken by Mal McKellar with 92 points (out of 105) and 4 centre-bulls, just one point ahead of Wearne second on 91/3, and Schild third with 82/1.

The F-Class competition was taken by Norbert Schmidt with 115 out of 126 points.

The Club meets every Saturday at 1pm at the Mossman & District Rifle Club Range midway between Port and Mossman. Visitors are always welcome. 

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