Today was Day One of the 2015 Steel Safari. This is my first rifle match in roughly ten years and my first ‘long range field match’ ever. Zak Smith, one of the match organizers, taught me either directly or indirectly much of what I know about rifles and long range. One of the friends I made at my last TBAC class, has been my unofficial coach, giving me a raft of tips and pointers. Now that Day One is complete, I can say without a doubt that this is the toughest match I’ve shot, period. I could try to compare it to NRA Highpower, USPSA, or 3gun, but the similarities are pretty much limited to the fact that all of them use guns. The hardest part of the match so far is definitely finding the targets under time pressure. Each stage gives you five minutes to find, range, and shoot 6 targets, mostly between 300-700 yards out. If you think finding a black 8×8″ square hidden in the shade of scrub brush 400 yards is easy, you should be here! My goal, of the ~74 shooters here is to score better than fifth from the bottom. I’ll be honest, that might be a bit aggressive for a first timer. In terms of conditions, the last time I was here it was in the mid-20’s… now it’s 97 degrees and sunny. My Hornady Custom 6.5 Creedmoor ammo is shooting a full 60 fps faster here than in Pennsylvania.
My setup:
AI AT in 6.5 Creedmoor shooting Hornady Custom 140 gr AMax ammo
Hensoldt ZF 3.5-26
LRA Bipod
Wiebad Bag
Zeiss 10×45 LRF
Stoney Point Shooting Sticks
Armageddon Gear Precision Rifle Sling
Hey, who’s that guy adjusting the parallax on my Hensoldt!
Zak and the team reading the Shooter’s Briefing.
TheNouveauJäger
thenouveaujaeger 
June 22nd, 2015 → 3:52 pm
[…] grown up in the era of Oehler ballistic chronographs, I saw my first Magnetospeed V3 at the Steel Safari, which we used to get a better velocity on my AI AT. I said immediately, “I need […]