Ontario Provincials – Match Report 11 Sep 2016

As a first time match director, let me first tip my hat to match directors everywhere, i had no idea organizing a match was so much work! A special thank you has to go out to the people who helped me get this match off the ground in the first place. Nick Poll, John Bradley, Denis St.Jean and Tim MacSweyn all played a huge part in taking care of details that would have been too much for one man to handle by himself. John Birch also deserves thanks for donating some scope enhancers for the winners of the Gunslinger event.

The site in range opened at 0800 as promised, and a few chuckles were had at my improvised pizza box targets, but hey, even with the remnants of a wild storm still blowing through that morning, they did the job. We started the shooter’s meeting at around 1000, and after a brief welcome and a general description of the planned activities, Nick Poll took over for the safety debrief.
After the shooters meeting finished, we started the Gunslinger event. The rules (or something near the actual rules, i don’t know if i missed anything) are pretty simple. Springer shooters compete and other springer shooters, and the same for PCP. It doesn’t matter if it’s WFTF or Hunter, so long as the platform is the same, you’re paired off against someone in a elimination style match. The competitor starts in a seated FT position, with his rifle on the ground and unloaded, and with his pellets in the tin beside him, unsorted. You are allowed to use a magazine if you want to, but the magazine has to be unloaded when you start. After the count down “3 – 2 – 1 Draw!” the competitor could pick up his rifle and start shooting. Initially we had 5 re-settable knock down targets set out at 10, 20, 30, 40 and 50 yards, but after the first pair of springer shooters went through we realized that the wind was really blowing too hard to make hitting the 50 yard targets easy enough to be “productive”. After we got rid of the 50 yard targets, things really picked up.
Vitaly Mezheritsky shooting his WFTF springer rig took the top spot in the Springer Gunslinger, narrowly beating Brian Wernham, who also shot a WFTF springer.
Since each division had a buy, Jeff Hemming with his Hunter springer set up valiantly agreed to shoot against a PCP Open shooter, Dean Leite, to move things along. Word on the street is that Jeff really wanted to compete vs a pcp shooter just to show it could be done. Dean went on from that match to shoot against John Bradley, who had the early lead but got stuck on the last target. Dean Leite took the PCP Gunslinger shooting his 20fpe Steyr.
I think the only change i would make to this event is to put the targets close enough together so that you could see how your opponent was doing – just for some added pressure.

After the Gunslinger, it was on to a 72 shot FT course which was laid out along a path in the woods. All 36 targets faced the same direction, but i don’t think it made a difference to the wind. It was swirling like crazy, and i don’t know that holdover made any difference whatsoever, at least to my 7.87’s. It turned out to be a marathon day of shooting. I’m going to try my hand at figuring out the Troyer factor, but i can tell you that there was much grumbling at reducers. The 2 kneeling targets were located in this part of the course, and a 12yard incline shot that was close to 45 degrees. When everyone had worked through this part of the course, a head count was made and we all pulled back to the parking lot, where a nearby archery tower was put into use for some serious decline shots. Two standing targets and two seated targets made up the last 8 points of this course. It was fun having the extra pressure of having a crowd watch you take your shots.
Pizza arrived, with lots of meat as per Denis’ instructions, and while everyone had a good chow down i wrestled with numbers. Thankfully most people had completed their own cards and it just took a quick double check verify everything. Here’s how it went:

Stacey Cherwonak won the sub 500 Hunter Spring with a 77/146

Eric Clark-Dawes won the Hunter Spring with a 108/160

Vitaly Mezheritsky won WFTF Spring with a 63/80
Brian Wernham WFTF Spring 2nd place 46/80
Jeff Hemming WFTF Spring 3rd place 33/80

Dean Leite won Open PCP with a 65/80

Nick Poll won Hunter PCP with a 134/160

Ryan Landry won the WFTF PCP with a 71/80
John Bradley WFTF PCP 2nd place 59/80
John Birch WFTF PCP 3rd place 56/80
Denis St.Jean WFTF PCP 4th place 47/80

To top off all the fun, Travis at Airgunsource is donating door prizes to the top names pulled from a hat. I don’t know what the prizes are yet, but if they’re anything like the prizes he donated at Nationals in Pt.Colborne this year, there will be some happy shooters. To be honest, i don’t think the prizes or even titles mattered to most people there. In the spirit of most FT shooters, they were just happy to be knocking down steel. Even with all the hiccups that went with the match on Sunday, everyone was smiling, for which i’m most appreciative.
Thanks to everyone who showed up, from the Big Smoke all the way to la Belle Province, it was a most enjoyable day.