Shoot Report - The Meadows July 1, 2006

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McGreggor Shoots Ridiculous Score. Divisions Two and Four Share Division Three's Lunch.

By The Rafflemeister

There was a surprisingly good turnout at the Meadows National Gun Club on this sweltering, i.e. normal, July day. This is Georgia, after all; if you want cool weather, move to Vermont where you get nine months of winter and three months of black flies.

The Meadows course traversed nearly all of the club's acreage and provided enough variety in presentations and settings to satisfy the stodgiest sporting-clays-as-simulated-game-shooting purists. The course started in the hollow beneath the power lines with a true pair comprised of a deceptive right-to-left crosser and a nearly straight incomer, moved on to a bird/rabbit combination where the rabbit was fiendishly designed to hop at what would normally be considered its ideal break point. I understand that this hop accounted for one of Vince McGreggor's two misses on this challenging course. We then proceeded to a very interesting true pair in the tall pines along the entry road. I guess I would describe this station as the classic quail/wood duck presentation. The first bird was a looping outgoer that was tilted so that you were looking at the underside of the clay, followed by an incomer from far off in the woods that settled into a little island of vegetation about thirty-five yards in front of the stand. This was the only station that provided a bit of a visual challenge, and I observed at least one shooter fail to see the second bird before it crashed into the bushes. There were several stations positioned along the woods road including a very interesting true pair of converging, going-away shots where the shooter was standing atop an eight-foot platform shooting at two targets launched from either side of the platform base. There was a lot of discussion as to which of these targets to take first, and at initially, there seemed to be no clear-cut choice. After watching a few squadmates attempt these targets, however, it became apparent that the one to shoot first was the one coming from the trap on the right. This target was the lower of the two at its breakpoint, so if you were reasonably quick, you could dispatch the first target with a skeet choke and then simply continue the upward movement of the gun and intersect the trajectory of the second bird as it peaked. One of the more technically challenging set-ups on the course was station seven with its short crosser followed, on report, by a gigantic, looping chandelle that inscribed a beautiful arch across the entire lower meadow. The close crosser seemed like a "gimme" except for the fact that you had to be choked for the longer shot, which left you considerably less margin for error if you were shooting an auto. I cheated on this station. I watched both Vince McGreggor and Gary Pyron shoot it before I had to step into the box. They were both clearly using turkey chokes in their autoloaders because they invariably turned the first target, a bio, into a barely perceptible mist before obliterating the second one at the top of its arch, forty yards away. I crouched down behind them and observed where their barrels were positioned relative to the chandelle when they pulled the trigger. When it was my turn, I screwed in a modified choke to give myself a little wiggle room, put my barrel in what I thought was the same place they had placed theirs, pulled the trigger, and guess what? The darned thing broke every time! I even managed to coax a little smoke out of it on a couple of shots. Unfortunately, my squad never caught up to them again for the rest of the course, so I was on my own from then on. Station eight was similar to a station two double on a magnified skeet field. My squad shot the right bird first, but it could have been handled the other way around as well. Station nine featured two very different right-to-left quartering birds. One was a low, flat target and the other was a higher, faster target with most of its underside exposed to the shooter. There was nothing technically difficult about either one of these presentations, taken by themselves, but together, they were rather confusing and induced some rather inconsistent results. Station ten was a classic Meadows presentation (softened up a little for the SSC). It was a true pair starting with a high quartering bird from the left, followed by a target that was quartering in towards the shooter from a trap positioned to the right of the stand and almost at the edge of the woods. At the risk of sounding repetitive, this was another station where being able to kill the first bird quickly gave the shooter a real advantage on the second target. Station eleven was a report pair starting with a low, fast, outgoer similar to a bunker trap shot followed by a head-high crosser from the trees on the right. This was another station where the autoloader crowd suffered from a bit of a disadvantage because the two targets called for quite different chokes.

The score spread would have been perfectly consistent again this week had it not been for the failure of anybody from Division Three to produce an exceptional score. In fact, not only did the Division Two high guns beat the top Division Three score by TEN BIRDS, but the number one and two shooters in Division Four would have would have placed one and two in Division Three as well, had they been in that division. Ouch!

The high overall for the shoot at the Meadows this week was the 2005 SSC champion, Vince McGreggor, with an unbelievable 98, and as I mentioned before, somebody told me that one of his two misses was caused by a sudden hop from the bunny on station two. Mike Benton came in second with his 96.

Division Two was in fine form this week. Justin Johnson and Buddy Newberry led the pack, each with a fantastic score of 94! Perhaps even more amazing was the fact that the top five slots in Division Two all had scores in the nineties!

Harry Cook's 84 placed him at the top of the lower-than-normal Division Three scores with Martin Anderson in second place with his 83.

Division Four left Division Three in the dust. Tom Magerkuth led the pack with an 87, which just might bump him up a division for the next shoot, and Bud Weiser Lite came in second with a really strong 85! I heard a rumor that big Bud Weiser sprung for a cab to take young Bud Weiser home after the shoot, so he wouldn't have to ride it the same car with him during the long ride back to Locust Grove, but you know how rumors get started.

Division Five was won by Ron Leslein with a very respectable 77, followed by Jim Potter with his 75. One Division Five shooter who wasn't bothered by the heat, was Cory Hickman, Rufus Hickman's grandson, who has just returned from a tour in Iraq. To him, ninety degrees and no body armor must have felt positively bracing. He even managed to chalk up a raffle ticket at his first shoot since returning to civilization.

Neal Sessions had a REALLY good day in Division Six with his 79. Speaking of good days, Plum Merrill tied for second in Division Six with Lee Wilson. Both had 70's. I don't know whether Jeff called her a cab or not, but it wouldn't surprise me.

Patsy Alston also had a good day and was the only Division Seven shooter to qualify for a ticket at this shoot.

The meadows, of course, served their much-anticipated, delicious whole barbequed pig.