March 8, 2009 Clays Match Report

16 guns entered


Class Won By Score

10 open guns Jay Schoonmaker 46
6 Limited guns Jim Skedd 39

It was 46 degrees at game time, with beautiful blue skies, cool, but with the heaters on it felt good. Midway through the match, in round 3 to be exact, the Puget Sound Convergent Zone, well, converged, and the skies poured forth with snow, sleet, & rain. The temperature, in conditions like these of course......Went UP! Now it was 52 degrees. By the end of the match, the ground was white, it was snowing hard. Hard at least by Western Washington standards for the Month of March.
16 guns came out to shoot in the snow; 10 Open guns and 6 Limited guns. Now the heaters felt REALLY good!! The snow didn't seem to dampen the enthusiasm for shooting at the clays either. The arrays changed from round to round, and were as colorful as the ever-whitening ground.
In the 1st round, we had 8 black micros bracketing 1 orange micro.
In round 2, we had 8 orange micros bracketing a black micro.
Round 3 found 6 orange micros and a green standard clay staggered and bracketing a black micro.
Round 4 found an array of orange micros, all the way across in a staggered pattern.
Finally, in round 5 we saw 6 orange and 2 black micros all bracketing a black micro centerpiece.
As if snowed harder, the competitors shot better. By now the snow was completely covering the ground, with the snow settling and the sleet bouncing. When the shooters went out to re-hang the clays they would come in looking like snowmen, abominable and otherwise. Well, so much for global warming.
At the end of regulation play we had a couple of winners. Jay Schoonmaker led the Open Class with a score of 46. Jim Skedd and his predatory Nighthawk took the Limited Class with a score of 39. Jim was heard to say at the end of the match that he would have scored higher, but all the snowflakes kept knocking his .45ACP bullets out of the way. Apparently Jays little .22LR bullets zigged and zagged around all the snowflakes and sleet pellets.
Fortunately, the roads were just wet, not slick, nothing was freezing, yet!, and so all the adventures hopefully ended at the conclusion of the match. Thanks to Chuck Nicodemus for hosting the match today, and thanks to Doug McLean for doing the announcing and score keeping. Thanks also to OJ for designing and arranging the target arrays. This match just doesn't get boring. See you all next week.

Hal