Cowboy Action at Beaver Valley
28 August 2023 09:08 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dime_novel_heroI wasn’t able to make it to my regular Cowboy Action haunt at Logans Ferry and had an unusual Sunday available so I drove far out to attend the shoot with the Beaver Valley Bushwackers.
There were only nine shooters total, which was nice when compared to the 20 or 30 that is pretty common at Logans Ferry. It was much more relaxed and unhurried.
I did not shoot very well. For the shoots this year I had not had more that a single miss for a stage, and had no more than three misses for an entire match. That was actually a big improvement over my shooting in the before times. This match was like those earlier times, 4 misses in the first stage, 3 misses for stages 3, 5, and 6, 1 miss in stage two and only one clean stage.
The one stage I shot clean was the most challenging because it added a Popper.
A Popper is a neat mechanical device that throws a target up into the air. You hit the steel plate with a shotgun blast, it falls back and lands on a lever that then throws something, in this case a water bottle, into the air. The trick is to then hit that bottle while it’s in the air.
For people with coach guns, this is relatively easy as they just have to pull the second trigger. Those with pump guns are allowed to load two rounds (normally they are only able to load one) and can get off that second round pretty quickly. I, however, have an M1887 lever shotgun, and while I am also loading two rounds, the lever is slower than the pump
I made the shot, anyway. Just barely, though. Only a few pellets caught the bottle up near the cap. But a hit is a hit.
I think the pistol targets may have been slightly smaller and set back a little further than I had gotten used to at Logans Ferry. That would have certainly affected my performance, but only by a small amount. I could not really attribute my poor performance to range factors. I think it was bad sight picture with the pistols. I need to take better aim a little lower on the target. Maybe sacrifice a little bit of time for that better aim.
Shooters made a lot of Procedurals, that is, a mistake in target or shooting order. For example, if there are 4 targets, a Progressive Sweep means that you shoot the first target once, the second target twice, the third target three times, and the fourth target four times. If you make a mistake of counting and shoot the first target twice, that is a Procedural and you are penalized 10 seconds (whereas just a miss counts for 5 seconds). As I said, there were a lot of those mistakes.
There were also a huge number of jams. A boatload of mechanical and loading failures. In one instance, a shooter’s rifle jammed and he ended the stage with 8 rounds still in the rifle. Scoring wise, those 8 rounds added time penalties of 40 seconds.
And, even with me having zero Procedurals and zero malfunctions, EVEN THEN, I came in 8th out of a field of 9. People with penalties that more than doubled their times still beat my times. To be honest, when they shoot so much faster than I do, tanking one stage doesn’t hurt that that much. Relative to me, anyway. And, again, that is because I choose to shoot Duelist (one handed).
Overall, I would rather shoot at Beaver Valley. Even though the trip out there take twice as long compared to Logans Ferry, having half as many shooters is much more pleasant. The restriction is that my Sundays are usually busy cutting the grass for my mom. It’s easier to move other things I have to attend to on weekends to go to Logans Ferry on a Saturday than it is to make a Sunday available.
There were only nine shooters total, which was nice when compared to the 20 or 30 that is pretty common at Logans Ferry. It was much more relaxed and unhurried.
I did not shoot very well. For the shoots this year I had not had more that a single miss for a stage, and had no more than three misses for an entire match. That was actually a big improvement over my shooting in the before times. This match was like those earlier times, 4 misses in the first stage, 3 misses for stages 3, 5, and 6, 1 miss in stage two and only one clean stage.
The one stage I shot clean was the most challenging because it added a Popper.A Popper is a neat mechanical device that throws a target up into the air. You hit the steel plate with a shotgun blast, it falls back and lands on a lever that then throws something, in this case a water bottle, into the air. The trick is to then hit that bottle while it’s in the air.
For people with coach guns, this is relatively easy as they just have to pull the second trigger. Those with pump guns are allowed to load two rounds (normally they are only able to load one) and can get off that second round pretty quickly. I, however, have an M1887 lever shotgun, and while I am also loading two rounds, the lever is slower than the pump
I made the shot, anyway. Just barely, though. Only a few pellets caught the bottle up near the cap. But a hit is a hit.
I think the pistol targets may have been slightly smaller and set back a little further than I had gotten used to at Logans Ferry. That would have certainly affected my performance, but only by a small amount. I could not really attribute my poor performance to range factors. I think it was bad sight picture with the pistols. I need to take better aim a little lower on the target. Maybe sacrifice a little bit of time for that better aim.
Shooters made a lot of Procedurals, that is, a mistake in target or shooting order. For example, if there are 4 targets, a Progressive Sweep means that you shoot the first target once, the second target twice, the third target three times, and the fourth target four times. If you make a mistake of counting and shoot the first target twice, that is a Procedural and you are penalized 10 seconds (whereas just a miss counts for 5 seconds). As I said, there were a lot of those mistakes.
There were also a huge number of jams. A boatload of mechanical and loading failures. In one instance, a shooter’s rifle jammed and he ended the stage with 8 rounds still in the rifle. Scoring wise, those 8 rounds added time penalties of 40 seconds.
And, even with me having zero Procedurals and zero malfunctions, EVEN THEN, I came in 8th out of a field of 9. People with penalties that more than doubled their times still beat my times. To be honest, when they shoot so much faster than I do, tanking one stage doesn’t hurt that that much. Relative to me, anyway. And, again, that is because I choose to shoot Duelist (one handed).
Overall, I would rather shoot at Beaver Valley. Even though the trip out there take twice as long compared to Logans Ferry, having half as many shooters is much more pleasant. The restriction is that my Sundays are usually busy cutting the grass for my mom. It’s easier to move other things I have to attend to on weekends to go to Logans Ferry on a Saturday than it is to make a Sunday available.
